Short Stories Humor

Everyone at the large agricultural college dubbed Moo U. has an agenda. Whether it's massaging data, running secret experiments, or seducing the powerful, each person is dedicated to a plan. Meet Dr. Lionel Gift, who feels that his economic principles come directly from God. Visit with "Earl Butz", who is being groomed to be the biggest hog in history. Mull over The Common Wisdom, what every secretary knows. As these agendas begin to collide, Moo trots toward a deliciously loony climax.

The time is the early '80s. The characters go to the same schools and eat at the same restaurants. Their voices enfold us as seamlessly as those of DJs heard over a car radio. They have sex with the same boys and girls and buy from the same dealers. In short, they are connected in the only way people can be in that city.

“Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve -- and makes you laugh along the way.” —Lena Dunham Single, Carefree, Mellow is that rare and wonderful thing...

Allison Horvath is an attorney, a wife, and a mother. This is a day in her life.

Seal Island is home to a moonshine-making billionaire, a pot-growing fisherman, a celebrity flower child, a handsome romance writer, a sex-addicted realtor, a womanizing pub owner, a cop, a pot-bellied pig…and a serial killer. The island is serene and remote. It is only accessible by boat. The residents like it that way, until those with the deepest and darkest of secrets start dying in the most bizarre of ways.

From a "genius" (New York Times) storyteller: a new, subversive, hilarious, heart-breaking collection. "There is sweetheartedness and wisdom and eloquence and transcendence in his stories because these virtues exist in abundance in Etgar himself... I am very happy that Etgar and his work are in...

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths - for good and evil - of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies.

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

"Suppose que tu rencontres un fou qui affirme qu'il est un poisson et que nous sommes tous des poissons. Vas-tu te disputer avec lui ? Vas-tu te déshabiller devant lui pour lui montrer que tu n'as pas de nageoires ? Vas-tu lui dire en face ce que tu penses ?" Son frère se taisait, et Édouard poursuivit : "Si tu ne lui disais que la vérité, que ce que tu penses vraiment de lui, ça voudrait dire que tu consens à avoir une discussion sérieuse avec un fou et que tu es toi-même fou.

A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Story Prize, the first ever collection of “dazzlingly told” (The New York Times) literary short stories from Don DeLillo, the National Book Award-winning author of Underworld and Falling Man. Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a...

Do not let Etgar Keret deceive you. The Israeli writer who's worked in film, illustration, animation, and radio, is a storyteller in all senses of the word. Like a conman, he'll promise you a simple story and then the next thing you know your emotional reserves have been completely emptied. It's a literary bait and switch, and he'll get you every time.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers...

Ossie and Baxter are on a mission. They've been sent to conduct a membership interview with Yancey Allyson, the latest applicant to The Society of Super Powered Heroes. But what will they do when they discover that Mr. Allyson is a little bit...unorthodox?

"Mother, Interrupter" is a humorous short story about a mother who interrupts her son as he is in the most delicate and intimate of situations.

The irresistible wit and charm of Alexander McCall Smith's New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series has won over countless fans. The same subtle humor and enchanting characterizations are full on display in At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, the third entertaining novella starring Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld.

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.

100% of The Late Show’s proceeds from this book go to disaster relief. Whose Boat Is This Boat? Comments That Don’t Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane is a picture book made entirely of quotations from President Donald Trump in the wake of Hurricane Florence. It is the first children’s...

Nonsense Novels was first published in 1920 yet a century later remains a huge favorite among Stephen Leacock fans. The British-born Canadian writer was renowned for his humor, and Nonsense Novels epitomizes both this skill and his mastery of the ridiculous. From an ill-fated Middle Ages romance to the dubious skills of a pitiful private eye and the happy outcome of a generations-old Scottish feud, Nonsense Novels is a tremendous listen.

Peter, Quinn, Romeo, and Sam are four (lame) shapeshifters (platypus, mosquito, piranha, sloth) who also happen to be best friends and members of a (terrible) garage band. But the local Battle of the Bands is happening on the full moon, and the boys are forced to turn to Sam's non-were (Goth) sister Natalie to help them out.

Bert runs a hot dog stand on the street of New York and is just scraping by. His friend Alf washes windows eighty stories up in the air and makes five times what Bert makes. He's asked Bert to join him up in the clouds but Bert is afraid of heights. On the other hand, if Bert doesn't joins him, he may lose his apartment. What to do, what to do.