Humor Classics

A couple of jerks wake me up at the crack of noon. Seems my klepto uncle stole an ancient deck of Tarot cards from a high-powered wizard, and too many losers want to ruin my day to get them back. The cards are cool, so I check them out, but my magic-happy cousin, Sabrina, tells me I'm not supposed to touch them. Oops. Too late. Now the damn cards are tuned to me, and if someone else wants to use them, I have to die. Why couldn't she have led with that information?

George and Weedon Grossmith were born in London into a theatrical family, and it was natural that they should both take up careers on the stage. Weedon initially studied art but later joined his brother, George, in the theatre.

You Know Me, Al is a classic of baseball, the game and the community. Jack Keefe, one of literature's great characters, is talented, brash, and conceited. Self-assured and imperceptive, impervious to both advice and sarcasm, Keefe rises to the heights, but his inability to learn makes for his undoing. Through a series of letters from this bush-league pitcher to his not-quite-anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious.

A mysterious stranger arrives in a small Sussex village, covered up from head to toes with a coat, gloves, bandages, goggles and hat. The stranger demands to be left alone, spending most of his time in his room working with chemicals and laboratory apparatus. He quickly becomes the talk of the village as he unnerves the locals. Eventually, though, after a burglary (in which the thief was unseen) the stranger's secret comes out.

Gogol's great comic masterpiece paints an hilariously satirical picture of provincial life in 19th century Russia. Its publication in 1847 not only provided inspiration for succeeding generations of Russian writers, but fanned the already flickering flames of social discontent which were eventually to flare up and consume Russia in the revolution of 1917.

Wer Karl Kraus im Literaturbetrieb des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts kannte, verehrte oder verabscheute ihn - Gleichgültigkeit löste er jedenfalls nicht aus. Mit nur 25 Jahren gründete Kraus in Wien die Zeitschrift Die Fackel, mit der 1899 seine steile Karriere als Journalist und Kritiker, Dramatiker und Satiriker begann. Bis zu seinem Tod im Jahr 1936 galt er als scharfzüngigster Beobachter des kulturellen und politischen Zeitgeschehens. Seine Worte richteten sich gegen die Verlotterung der Sprache, gegen Phrasendrescher und Kriegstreiber, gegen Korruption und Heuchelei.

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters and depicts issues of marriage, gender, age, and social status.

Linbury goes green and Jennings and Darbishire want to do their bit for the environment. Given the simple task of distributing leaflets, what could go wrong? But when Darbishire’s shoelace refuses to stay tied, Jennings, using his usual initiative, removes the rubber band holding the leaflets together and performs an emergency shoelace repair. All seems fine, until a gust of wind hurls the leaflets over Marina Gardens.

The brightest light of the Pickwick Club is its founder member and illustrious leader, Samuel Pickwick. He is joined by his three friends and fellow club members: the poetic Augustus Snodgrass, the romantic Tracy Tupman, and the sporting Nathaniel Winkle. Their mission is to travel the country in search of interesting scenes and characters and to report back the results of their observations. What follows is a series of adventures and misadventures, encounters and intrigues which show the dazzling brilliancy of Charles Dickens' comic invention with regard to character and situation.

"Il Maestro e Margherita" è il romanzo più conosciuto di Michail Bulgakov e capolavoro della letteratura del XX secolo. Dopo svariate stesure viene ultimato dalla moglie dello scrittore un anno dopo la sua prematura morte. Oggetto di censura da parte dell'autorità dell'Unione Sovietica, vede la pubblicazione nella sua integrità solo venti anni più tardi. A rendere il romanzo tanto scabroso è l'impietoso e satirico ritratto della Russia stalinista che l'autore fa emergere attraverso le caratterizzazioni dei numerosi personaggi che prendono parte alla storia: individui meschini e gretti, la cui infima statura morale viene svelata dall'arrivo, inatteso e incredibile, di Satana in persona, incarnato nell'esperto di magia nera Woland, e del suo losco e bizzarro entourage.

Emmeline Lucas, known to all as "Lucia", and her husband, Peppino, acquire a second home in fashionable Brompton Square in London from a deceased Aunt. When they move there for the season, Lucia's 'subjects' in Riseholme seethe with envy and outrage that she has deserted them for more illustrious circles, where her snobbism and blatant ambition reach new heights.

Nicholas Nickleby or The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839. It was Dickens' third novel. The story centers on the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse fu un umorista inglese dalla prolifica produzione di racconti e romanzi. Il suo tratto delicato e leggero è inconfondibile, oltre che l’ambientazione dei suoi romanzi, che si svolgono spesso nella pacifica campagna inglese, in un mondo quasi irreale.

Vitangelo Moscarda, il protagonista dell'ultimo, straordinario romanzo di Pirandello, in seguito alla banale osservazione della moglie a proposito del suo naso che pende un po' da una parte, si mette sulle tracce del vero se stesso, accorgendosi però, che se il corpo può essere unico, così non accade per l'anima. La sua ricerca finisce per prendere inquietanti aspetti che si avvicinano ad una molteplicità di sapore faustiano, fino ad una modificazione tale dei propri comportamenti, che spinge sua moglie, i parenti e gli amici a considerarlo pazzo.

Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, is the daring and hilarious tale of Paul Pennyfeather, a theology student expelled from Oxford and sent to teach at a private boys’ school in Wales. Previously a modest young man, Paul finds himself a bit out of place amongst the teachers of Llanabba, who are all misfits, fools, and derelicts themselves: Prendy (the anxious) and Captain Grimes (the drunk), just to name two.

The lifestyles, careers, romances, and peccadillos of various British intellectuals, scientists, and artists are dealt with - often with hilarity and sometimes with dark comedy and sophisticated banter. All of this is set off by the ingenious idea of self-inflating pants!

Raised by vampyre relatives, Jane grows to resent the lifestyle's effect on her upbringing. No sunlight, nighttime hours, and a diet of bloody red meat is no way for a mortal girl to live. Things change for Jane when the ghost of her uncle visits her, imparts her parents' slayer history, and charges her with the responsibility of striking out to find others of her kind and learn the slayer ways.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

Mr Finchley takes a fancy to a horse-drawn caravan that he sees for sale, but his new wife does not relish the prospect of a caravan journey, so he sets off alone to explore the countryside and go house-hunting. While learning to handle the horse and the caravan, he encounters a variety of eccentrics and country characters, and several unsuitable houses. It gradually emerges that the caravan contains a secret, and Mr Finchley finds himself in real trouble. This gentle comedy trilogy was a runaway bestseller on first publication in the 1930s and retains a timeless appeal today.

Prepare for the most uproariously grim tour of Tudor England ever recorded! Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett's classic satire skewers the so-called "golden age" of English monarchy, revealing the Tudors as they truly were: a parade of tyrants, schemers, and royal disasters who treated their subjects like pawns in a deadly game of power.