Short Stories Humor

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.

The Short(Cuts) is a collection of seven unique and individual stories that range across all different genres. Sometimes humorous and other times sad, the collection represents some of the smaller works that Matthew Fish has written in the past 18 years. They range in length from 1,000-word shorts to 30,000-word pieces that have been dated to show a progress and change in both narrative style and tone.

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.

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.

From a comic mastermind comes this brilliant collection of stories. Three teenagers believe they are witches. A woman defaces a local billboard. A bored landlord tries to influence his son's best friend. A cul-de-sac WhatsApp group discusses eggs at length. A heavily pregnant woman finds a way to time travel and a girl discovers joy on a stolen bicycle. Each tale paints a life in miniature and offers an escape chute from the catastrophes of modern life.

What do you get when you combine a chicken named Elvis, a locked diary, and a secret Violet Parker does not want share with her daughter? Seeing Trouble is the first of many short stories involving the characters of the Deadwood Mystery series.

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.

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.

Encore, Encore! The brilliant sequel to the smash bestseller Auntie Mame is back and the reviews are in....

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.

Set in the author’s native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet.

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.

Un caleidoscopio di incontri inattesi, di racconti folgoranti, di ironiche riflessioni. Con scrittura cristallina e rapidi tratti, Carofiglio disegna personaggi memorabili e, in un gioco di specchi tra verità e finzione, allestisce fulminee messe in scena dove appaiono intensi frammenti di mondo. Un piccolo gioiello in cui si alternano storie amare a situazioni comiche, osservate con impareggiabile sguardo critico e grande umanità.

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.

An accountant by day, Mr. Rodgers spends his nights and weekends indulging in a unique passion. Traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood as an unknown entity, he uses unconventional methods to help long-suffering wives rediscover the love they once had for themselves and their husbands. Some might consider him a selfless hero, ahead of his time. The residents of Poagstown, however, have cutting-edge ideas of their own.

Pamela is a newly retired teacher with time on her hands. She’s finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for what’s ahead: exhausting postdivorce dating rituals and an uneasy relationship with her emotionally stunted, live-at-home son. But for Pamela, there’s a surprise in store that could challenge the status quo and, against all expectations, make life interesting again.

This collection of short stories is a good example of early Wodehouse. It is here that Jeeves makes a brief first appearance with these unremarkable words: "Mrs. Gregson to see you, sir." Years later, when Jeeves became a household name, Wodehouse said he blushed to think of the off-hand way he had treated the man at their first encounter.

From money-making schemes involving placing wagers on vicars to poor Bingo having to produce the village school Christmas entertainments, every one of Wodehouse’s superb short stories are guarantee to raise a smile from even the most stony-faced listener!