Short Stories Humor

Pleasant Dreams (1960), published just a year after his more famous Psycho, finds Robert Bloch leaving behind his earlier Lovecraftian influences to find his own style and voice in this collection of masterful tales, in which the horror is often laced with an undercurrent of pitch-black humor.

WITH SPECIAL APPEARANCES by Lena Dunham, Jenna Fischer, Mindy Kaling, Julianne Moore, Carey Mulligan, Katy Perry, Jason Schwartzman, Emma Thompson, and Rainn Wilson B.J. Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly...

Seize auteurs aux styles variés osent une incursion dans la littérature érotique.

Just when things have finally cooled down for 88-year-old Maud after the disturbing discovery of a dead body in her apartment in Gothenburg, a couple of detectives return to her doorstep. Though Maud dodges their questions with the skill of an Olympic gymnast a fifth of her age, she wonders if suspicion has fallen on her, little old lady that she is. The truth is, ever since Maud was a girl, death has seemed to follow her....

The nine stories and one poem in this volume formed the basis for the astonishingly original film Short Cuts, directed by Robert Altman. Collected altogether in this volume, these stories form a searing and indelible portrait of American innocence and loss. With deadpan humor and enormous tenderness, this is the work of "one of the true contemporary masters" ( The New York Review of Books).

In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.

Driving with a donkey stuffed in the back seat; jackdaws pecking brains out through the roof of a confessional box; cat piss and astronauts. This is the world not as you see it, but as it is, twisted from the maverick mind of Blindboy Boatclub. These are stories of the strange unsettlings in the souls of men caught in between the past and the possible; stories of heart-blinding rage and disquieting compassion. Topographia Hibernica is a collection that unravels the knotted threads of humanity, nature and colonisation from a contemporary Irish perspective.

The Irish have always had a knack for telling wonderful stories, and their fantastic ability has been recognized from early Gaelic times. For centuries, stories of all kinds have been offered to friends and strangers alike as a form of entertainment and communication. Today in Ireland, the short story is revered even above the novel. Hearing these magnificent stories, we become aware of more than just the humor and travail of a small island.

The one thing that could be expected to disturb the peace of life at Blandings is the incursion of imposters. Blandings has imposters like other houses have mice. On this occasion there are two of them--both intent on a dangerous enterprise.

Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and...no qualms about a little murder. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only 18, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late 80s, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way.

A writer Time magazine has said "everybody should read", Sam Lipsyte, author of the New York Times best-selling The Ask, offers up The Fun Parts, a book of bold, hilarious, and deeply felt fiction. A boy eats his way to self-discovery, while another must battle the reality-brandishing monster preying on his fantasy realm. In another story, an aerobics instructor, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, makes the most shocking leap imaginable to save her soul. These are just a few of the tales, some first published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Playboy, that unfold in Lipsyte’s richly imagined world.

With over two million copies of his works in print, Patrick McManus is an accomplished humor author. In The Bear in the Attic, he once again invites listeners to peek into his unique perspectives on life and his favorite topic, the great outdoors. Here listeners are treated to amazingly absurd tales of young male hijinks, camping mishaps and neighbor-eating bears! Norman Dietz adds another dimension to McManus' humor with his brilliant comic narration.

David Sedaris's beloved holiday collection is new again with six more pieces, including a never before published story. Along with such favoritesas the diaries of a Macy's elf and the annals of two very competitive families, are Sedaris's tales of tardy trick-or-treaters ("Us and Them"); the...

Patrick McManus, author of How I Got This Way and one of America's favorite humorists, is an impish commentator on the obvious and not so obvious absurdities of modern life. His national best seller, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, is a collection of hilarious short pieces about fishing, its exotic equipment, and activities like "gunkholing". You will learn, for example, that the best way to learn to fish is to build an addition to your house first.

"If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that logic is the sworn enemy of grief," writes Halimah Marcus, co-editor of Electric Literature, in her introduction to “Firewood," a hilarious and devastating story by J. Robert Lennon. "When the narrator’s wife (expectedly) leaves him, too devastated to admit the obvious, he concocts an impossible explanation for her disappearance. All I’ll say is that it involves the woodpile. The invented story is more horrible than the truth, but somehow easier to manage."

The next novella in the New York Times bestselling Sworn Soldier series, featuring Alex Easton investigating the dark, mysterious depths of a coal mine in America. "The audiobook narrated by Avi Roque is delightful." —BuzzFeed News on What Moves the Dead Alex Easton does not want to visit...

He was a legend, until he walked away. I was nobody, until I was dragged into the light. I was never supposed to be part of Wicked, but it was always part of me. Now it's my turn to do something that matters. Even if the man I love hates me for it.

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and black in America.

In her second volume of short stories, which follows the hugely successful 'Encounters', Barbara Erskine has created a compelling world of love, betrayal, suspense and grief.

A biographer investigating a tragic death hears voices from the past drawing her towards the...

Now in audio for the first time, Without Feathers is narrated by Woody Allen himself. Here they are: 16 of the funniest tales and ruminations ever recorded, by one of the great comic minds of our time. From "The Whore of Mensa", to "Fabulous Tales & Mythical Beasts", to "No Kaddish for Weinstein", old and new Allen fans will laugh themselves silly over these sparkling gems.