Family Humor

From the outside, anyone would think that Lucy Palmer has it all: loving children, a dashing husband and a gorgeous home. But when her marriage to Michael comes to an abrupt and unexpected end, her life is turned upside down in a flash. As the truth of her marriage threatens to surface, Lucy seizes the opportunity to swap her house in London - and the stories it hides - for a rural escape to her parents' farmhouse in the Chilterns. But Lucy gets more than she bargained for when she moves back to her childhood home.

Teddy Telemachus is a charming con man with a gift for sleight of hand and some shady underground associates. In need of cash, he tricks his way into a classified government study about telekinesis and its possible role in intelligence gathering. There he meets Maureen McKinnon, and it's not just her piercing blue eyes that leave Teddy forever charmed but her mind - Maureen is a genuine psychic of immense and mysterious power.

For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?

John Updike's 21st novel, a bildungsroman, follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River.

Are you looking to have a fun-filled family game night that gets everyone involved or something to break the ice at a party? Perhaps, you're wanting to get to know your kids and loved ones better, or maybe, something to do while on a road trip or sleepover? This Would You Rather game book is suitable for all ages, and it will have hours feeling like minutes and have everyone thinking hard and definitely laughing or groaning even harder!

Coming from one empathetic parent to another, the tips in this book are real, clever, honest, and designed to make life with a terrible two- or three-year-old a little bit more manageable. Hilarious, helpful, and handy, this book will be appreciated by any parent who has asked: "Why didn't anybody warn me that unconditional love would be so much work?"

Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life - a husband, kids, and a minivan in the suburbs. Now that she’s marrying the man of her dreams, she’s sure this is the life she’ll get. Then Marnie meets Blix Holliday, her fiancé’s irascible matchmaking great-aunt who’s dying, and everything changes - just as Blix told her it would. When her marriage ends after two miserable weeks, Marnie is understandably shocked.

Oliver Clock has everything arranged just so. A steady job running the family funeral parlour. A fridge stocked with ready meals. A drawer full of colour-coded socks. A plan (of sorts) to stay trim enough for a standard-sized coffin. And in florist Marie, he’s even found the love of his life - not that she’s aware of it. When a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of his life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with a fast-approaching fortieth birthday, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love.

A young boy comes of age within the confines of post-civil-war Beirut, with conflict and comedy lurking round every corner. Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut, but who has ever heard of an Arab on the moon? He battles with his father, a book-hoarding journalist with a penchant for writing eulogies, his closest friend, Basil, a Druze who is said to worship goats and believe in reincarnation, and a host of other misfits and miscreants in a city attempting recover from years of political and military violence.

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.

After becoming trapped in present-day Bath due to a mishap with her time-traveling charm, Jane Austen is safe and sound back in the 1800s thanks to Rose Wallace’s help. Now, Rose is ready to focus on her fledgling romance with dreamy Dr. Aiden Trevellyan. But when Jane reappears in the present, it looks like Rose and Aiden have no choice but to follow her back to 1813....

Kate and Scott’s marriage has always been a lot of fun, with alcohol at the heart of it. After all, what’s more entertaining than a good laugh and a large drink…or six? But recently, those relaxing drinks have become more crutch than comfort - and the couple have almost forgotten how to talk to each other sober. Then their teenage daughter Holly uploads a video of their humiliating drunken escapades, which gets picked up by YouTube superstar PinkyPud - and goes horrifyingly viral.

All it takes is the right book to turn a Book Hater into a Book Lover… That was what Elliot—the beloved co-owner of Over the Rainbow Bookshop—believed before his untimely passing. He always had the perfect book suggestion for the self-proclaimed Book Hater. Now his grief-ridden business partner, Irma, has agreed to sell the cozy Over the Rainbow to condo developers.

Set at the outbreak of World War II, Lady Sophia Garfield dreams of becoming a beautiful spy but manages not to notice a nest of German agents right under her nose. Until the murder of her maid and the kidnapping of her beloved bulldog force them on her attention, with heroic and absurd results. One of Mitford's earliest novels and written before Christmas 1939, Pigeon Pie is delivered with a touch lighter than that of her later masterpieces but no less entertaining. This comedy combines glamour, wit and a fiendishly absurd plot into an irresistible literary confection.

Tietam Brown tells the story and speaks in the voice—at once innocent and too knowing for his age—of Antietam (Andy) Brown, named for the great-great-great- grandfather who died on that Civil War battlefield. Andy at seventeen is himself the veteran of a violent boyhood, having been locked up in the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center for killing a teenager who attempted to rape him. Now, after seven years, he is out, free, at a crossroads, trying to make a fresh start.

For almost four decades, Bartholomew Neil has done nothing but live with his mom. When she begins calling him Richard - for reasons unknown - and then dies, Bartholomew is woefully unprepared.”

Willow Havens is 10 years old and obsessed with the fear that her mother will die. Her mother, Polly, is a cantankerous, take-no-prisoners Southern woman who lives to chase varmints, drink margaritas, and antagonize the neighbors - and she sticks out like a sore thumb among the young, modern mothers of their small conventional Texas town. She was in her late 50s when Willow was born, so Willow knows she's here by accident, a late-life afterthought.

Eighteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel finds herself a new job in a dentist's surgery after answering a classified advert in the Leicester Mercury for a 'mature lady with a strong interest in dental issues'. Working for an eccentric dental surgeon who's obsessed with becoming a Freemason, Lizzie's life is uneventful until Andy Nicolello turns up one day to deliver a crown. Lizzie seizes her chance to find love and soon begins calling him her boyfriend even though they have never so much as kissed or even sat next to each other on the sofa.

The much-loved Guardian columnist asks what it takes to make a husband, and looks to his own married life to provide the answer. Anything resembling advice should be taken at listener's own risk. You'll never get divorced if you never get married. Not even your granny minds if you live in sin anymore. And if you're single you can choose curtains without somebody else butting in. So why bother with marriage? It can't just be an easy way round having to buy your own deodorant.

Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents' wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there's Violet Devohr, Zee's great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room.