Humor Short

From the highly acclaimed author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood, Padgett Powell's new collection of stories, Cries for Help, Various Stories, follows his mentor Donald Barthelme's advice that "wacky mode must "break their hearts". The surrealistic and comical terrain of most of the 44 stories here is grounded by a real preoccupation with longing, fear, work, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. These universal concerns are given exhilarating life by way of Powell's "wit, his...dazzling turns of phrase" (Scott Spencer).

Within these diverse stories, you will encounter a magician whose finale is murder, shared nightmares, a magic carpet that lives up to its name, a recipe for a Martian non-vegetarian main course, a cook who purloins the body of a stranger, and other interesting topics and characters. A few can be classified as horror stories, one as science fiction, and the majority just plain quirky. There's a story here to amuse almost anyone.

In You Will Never Be Forgotten, Mary South explores how technology can both collapse our relationships from within and provide opportunities for genuine connection. Formally inventive, darkly absurdist, savagely critical of the increasingly fraught cultural climates we inhabit, these 10 stories also find hope in fleeting interactions and moments of tenderness. They reveal our grotesque selfishness and our intense need for love and acceptance, and the psychic pain that either shuts us off or allows us to discover our deepest reaches of empathy.

Meet Rowena Halley, a former human rights activist turned academic. Rowena thought teaching on US college campuses would be a lot safer than interviewing torture victims in Russia. Boy, was she wrong. Rowena quickly gets caught up in campus intrigue that threatens to turn deadly. Meanwhile, the life and lover she thought she’d left behind in Moscow might not be so firmly back in the past as she’d believed.

The Best of Bizarro Fiction: Vol. 2 features 11 carefully crafted surreal tales of the absurd, the hilarious, and the outright horrific. Edited by Matthew A. Clarke.

This anthology consists of 50 stories, which are separated into four series, as well as independent stories.

In compiling this collection of humorous short stories by both well known and more obscure authors, Alexander Jessup applied a broad interpretation of humour; the stories span the period between 1839 and the beginning of the first World War.

O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.

i>39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities---Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.

Poder escuchar historias en ésos trayectos cortos que diariamente hacemos en el tren, metro, coche etc. se va a hacer muy agradable de la maño de Flora Smith, en este recopilatorio de sus relatos.Vamos a poder conocer a Ana Sicosi, una mujer obsesiva que sube siempre en la misma estación de la parada de Sants o Andresito qué se baja siempre en la estación de Atocha distraído con su móvil sin mirar a su alrededor, o lo mejor navegaremos por Matalascañas en Cádiz en una barcaza y nos encontremos a un par de amantes apasionados y no os extrañé qué escuchando éstos relatos os podais encontrar también con algún pirata.

A new collection of short stories examining the extraordinary shades of ordinary life, from the prize-winning fiction writer Richard Bausch (“A master of the short story" —The New York Times Book Review) In these twelve new stories, Richard Bausch explores the passions of men and women...

It's junior year and Rachael is psyched to ditch dorm life and share a house with four other girls. But, she can't shake the ominous feeling about her narcissistic roommate-landlady, who has a history of derailing her love life. And then there are those uninvited visits by the ex-boyfriend of another roommate, who brings brushes with the law and heaps of drama as his calling card. When Rachael's mother and her psychic groupies show up in their double-decker bus during a house party, Mom reveals a troubling premonition.

In Searches & Seizures, Elkin tells the story of the criminal, the lovelorn, and the grieving, each searching desperately for fulfillment - while on the verge of receiving much more than they bargained for. Infused with Elkin's signature wit and richly drawn characters, "The Bailbondsman," "The Making of Ashenden," and "The Condominium" are the creations of a literary virtuoso at the pinnacle of his craft.

E.E. King offers a unique perspective on life, love and sometimes the meaning of the universe. This exuberant collection of short fiction and a novella is often hysterical, occasionally tragic and always thoughtful. Funny and dark, these tales will have you up all night.

Amalia Guglielminetti (1881 –1941) fu una scrittrice e poetessa italiana, nota forse più per il suo legame con Guido Gozzano che per i suoi scritti. Eppure di lei Graf scrisse: «la sua ispirazione è viva, schietta, delicata quanto più si possa dire, e l'arte la seconda a meraviglia. Quelle sue figure di fanciulle e donne son cose di tutta gentilezza, e molti sonetti son di squisita fattura.

For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a listener as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success.

“These gripping, magical tales span time travel, portals, menacing butterflies, and more. A can’t-miss meditation on families and survival.” —People “A gorgeous book that also serves as a series of unanswerable, probing questions: How did we get here? How will we move forward? Can we...

Hollywood and Broadway are icons of the American Dream. But what happens to those who feed off that dream? Just as drug cartels have many underlings who must get paid along the journey to the addicts, so do the characters who need to be nourished by the luminaries who make up this star-studded world above us. James Musgrave’s collection of 11 stories, in many ways, addresses the theme of “star power”, but in a way that satirizes the stereotypical “Hollywood endings” in very unique and literary ways.

Ebola Saves the Planet! and Other Wholesome Tales is a collection of 11 wild tales from the mind of Matthew A. Clarke.

Vor langer Zeit, als der erste Höhlenmensch das Feuer erfand und Drachen noch existierten, also irgendwann in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren, veröffentlichte Kultautor Sir Terry Pratchett Kurzgeschichten unter Pseudonym. Dank mühevoller Archivarbeit wurden mehr als zwanzig Geschichten wiederentdeckt und liebevoll illustriert in dieser wunderschönen Edition zusammengetragen.