Humor Classics

This novel centers on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time lying in bed gazing at life in an apathetic daze, encouraged by his equally lazy servant Zakhar and routinely swindled by his acquaintances. But this torpid existence comes to an end when, spurred on by his crumbling finances, the love of a woman, and the reproaches of his friend, the hardworking Schtoltz, Oblomov finds that he must engage with the real world and face up to his commitments.

From USA Today best-selling author Meghan Quinn comes a sassy and sweet romance about an Irish rebel who falls in love with the wrong girl. Full of witty banter and swoony moments, it's the perfect romantic comedy to binge on.

A foundling of mysterious parentage, Tom Jones is brought up by the benevolent and wealthy Squire Allworthy as his own son. Tom falls in love with the beautiful and unattainable Sophia Western, a neighbor’s daughter, whose marriage has already been arranged. When Tom’s sexual misadventures around the countryside get him banished, he sets out to make his fortune and find his true identity.

Bertie Wooster has taken up the banjolele, but the manager of the building in central London has issued an ultimatum to either give up the music or clear out. Even the faithful Jeeves threatens to leave, so Bertie seeks refuge in the country.

A legendary sword is left behind by his master, the Godking. Trapped for millennia, the sword's spirit awaits the day he'll be set free. Will his new master be worthy of inheriting the Godking's legacy?

In Prohibition-era America, young George Finch is setting out as an artist - without the encumbrance of a shred of talent. He falls in love with Molly, but Molly's imperious stepmother is having none of it. Poor George doesn't seem to stand a chance.

Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.

When the publicity team of the new local restaurant Going in Blind begins their search for a hot, local celebrity to promote the wildly popular eatery, they couldn't have found a better person than Noely Clark. A hopeless romantic with an exceedingly demanding schedule, she found it impossible to find the man of her dreams so being set up on three very different, very attractive, and very distinctive blind dates, seemed like a great idea, but who will she choose?

Set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy but manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. Until the murder of her maid and the kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, with heroic and absurd results. One of Mitford's earliest novels and written before Christmas 1939, Pigeon Pie is delivered with a touch lighter than that of her later masterpieces but no less entertaining. This comedy combines glamour, wit and a fiendishly absurd plot into an irresistible literary confection.

The adventure continues. Tim and the C and C gang face their most difficult challenges yet. Horses die. Eyeballs are eaten. People are urinated on. A god is born.

Loch is seeking revenge. It would help if she wasn’t in jail. The plan: To steal a priceless elven manuscript that once belonged to her family, but is now in the hands of the most powerful man in the Republic. To do so, Loch - former soldier, former prisoner, and current fugitive - must assemble a crack team of magical misfits that includes a cynical illusionist, a shape shifting unicorn, a repentant death priestess, a talking magical war hammer, and a lad with seemingly no skills.

Meet Psmith, with a silent 'P' as in psychic. A gallant, charming individual, Psmith has a gift for getting into awful scrapes, and when he takes over a gentile journal known as Cosy Moments with the aid of Billy Windsor, its sub-editor, he turns it into a radical publication...with alarming and hilarious results.

Here, the master of 20th century English humor, P. G. Wodehouse, presents two of his most beloved classics: The Inimitable Jeeves and My Man Jeeves. The perpetually befuddled Bertie Wooster and his knight-in-shining-tuxedo Jeeves have long been hailed as the greatest literary creations of P. G. Wodehouse, the most popular English humorist in history. Here are two complete novels, the latter containing a handful of short stories featuring Reggie Pepper, an early prototype for Bertie.

Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy's wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable - and he satisfies it with endless charm.

Everyone - even Augustus the cat - has cause to be obliged to Jeeves when he manages to retrieve the infamous Book - the book which lays bare the private lives of three-quarters of the upper classes. And which could prove to be political dynamite at the Market Snodsbury by-election.

Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, sank back in his chair looking like the good old man in a Victorian melodrama whose mortgage the villain had just foreclosed. He felt the absence of that gentle glow which customarily accompanied the departure of one of his sisters. Lord Emsworth needed Galahad....There are tricky corners to be rounded, and assorted godsons, impostors, and pretty girls to be paired off.

A satiric novel by Evelyn Waugh, published in 1930. Set in England between the wars, the novel examines the frenetic but empty lives of the Bright Young Things, young people who indulge in constant party-going, heavy drinking, and promiscuous sex. At the novel's end, the realities of the world intrude, with Adam Fenwick-Symes, the protagonist, serving on a battlefield at the onset of another world war.

Uncle Fred, or to give him his full title: Fredrick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, is considered by some as a "splendid gentleman, a sportsman to his fingertips". Mr Twistleton, nephew to Earl, and otherwise known as "Pongo" to his friends, has a differing view. He simply describes his uncle as "being loopy to the tonsils".

Jasper Fforde's delightfully zany Thursday Next series shows no signs of slowing down with its seventh entry, The Woman Who Died a Lot. Despite being semihappily semi-retired from SpecOps, Thursday accepts the head librarian position at the Swindon library. But soon threats from a supreme Deity, a mnemonomorph, and the nefarious Goliath corporation press Thursday back into active duty.

Here, we have a glorious ensemble of Woodhousian characters knocking elbows to foreheads in the elegant and grand Blandings Castle. Meet Freddy Threepwood, the vagrant son of doddering old Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle. Freddy has recently become engaged to Aline Peters, the American heiress of an irascible father. The snag is that Freddy seems to have at one point become enamored of a struggling actress, Joan Valentine, and written some impetuous and imprudent letters to her.