Historical Humor

When Hubert Larnaudie invites some fellow residents of his Parisian apartment building to drink an exceptional bottle of 1954 Beaujolais, he has no idea of its special properties. The following morning, Hubert finds himself waking up in 1950s Paris, as do antique restorer Magalie, mixologist Julien, and Airbnb tenant Bob from Milwaukee, who's on his first trip to Europe. After their initial shock, the city of Edith Piaf and An American in Paris begins to work its charm on them.

In the 1980s, a man is pulled up out of the Indian Ocean in Port Pallid, South Africa, claiming to have been kidnapped as a baby. So begins the odyssey of Jimfish, who defies the usual classification of race that defines the rainbow nation. His journey through the last years of Apartheid will extend beyond South Africa to the wider world, where he will be an unlikely witness to the dying days of the 20th century.

Okano, a convenience store employee with a troubled past, is but one of the many unforgettable characters found in this collection of four stories. Among the others are three boys facing a frightening lesson in mortality, a woman using garbage to fill a hole in her heart, and a nurse struggling to cope with the oft-brutal cycle of birth, life, and death. Remaining constant even as it fades in and out of view is the great Mount Fuji, one of Japan’s Three Holy Mountains. It serves as the anchor for these characters’ lives, and for Randy Taguchi’s Fujisan, an exploration of redemption, discovery, loss, and remembrance.

Bath, England. A city steeped in culture and rich historical significance. Except it's the seventies and this once glorious city has seen better days. Enter Peter True. Peter is a much-loved and mollycoddled four-year old boy who enjoys the attention of his mother, father, cousins, and aunts. But not his sisters. When it comes to his education, Mum has the very best intentions for Peter. So she sends him to a girls' school. Whatever was she thinking?

A comedy of errors when four octogenarian Egyptology docents steal a mummy which has no value to find artifacts they know do not exist and are mistaken for a band of professional art thieves.

When a young brother and sister decide to effect an Unrest Cure on the prematurely middle-aged proprietors of a country hotel, success seems assured. Until, that is, the arrival of an unexpected guest....

Due to financial hardships at Tawcester Towers, the Dowager Duchess has decreed that the only way the family fortunes can be restored is to marry Blotto off...to an American! Reluctantly, Blotto, together with Twinks and his trusty chauffeur Corky Froggett set sail.

In 1945, Milton Reynolds introduced the ballpoint to the United States and triggered the biggest single-day shopping riot in history at Gimbels in Manhattan. The Reynolds International Pen Company made $5 million in eight weeks during the first non-wartime Christmas season. Thereafter, increasing competition from established companies such as Eversharp triggered several years of the "Pen Wars".

Una descripcion morbosa de la decadencia. La Montana Magica fue la obra que logro para Thomas Mann, el insigne escritor aleman, el Premio Nobel. En esa historia, situada en un sanatorio de tuberculosos en los altos de una montana, el autor creo un increíble microcosmos, reflejo de lo que el consideraba la decadencia de su patria y de toda la civilizacion europea.

It's summer and renowned actress, Dame Pamela Harcourt, has organized a treat: the first Purley Hall Jane Austen holiday - to the home of Mr. Darcy no less. With Katherine and Warwick, Robyn, Doris Norris and the rest of the gang, it's going to be a trip to remember.

Has something gone amiss at the home of the Clam sisters? In the early years of the 20th century, one sister purchases a rare blue spong from a songbird dealer without realizing its strange provenance. Soon, the aristocratic sisters and their staff find themselves exposed to a flying koan, provoking them to cast off their commonplace mores, their staid lives, for something altogether bold and ribald: criminal activities, same-sex affairs, even political agitation!

This novelette is an homage to the amazing P. G. Wodehouse and his legendary characters Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. While living in 1920's New York City, Bertie is saddled with looking after the son of one of his Aunt Agatha's best mates, the Lady Mallowan. Bertie thinks that the young Lord Wiltshire is a useless, annoying nitwit, but he has no idea that left on his own a completely different side of the young Dermot will start to emerge, putting Bertie in a serious pickle.

The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures. As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, listeners around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic. At all times, Patrick O’Brian’s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller.

Flying into action, daredevil photojournalist Johnny Brice is always looking for trouble...and more often than not, finding it. But he doesn’t know what real trouble is until he rescues the beautiful woman he calls Jinx from a sinking ship. They’re made for each other - even if they are a dangerous mix.

Set in a small town of the industrial North of England in the late 1950s, this is a feel-good story about the antics of a young man's attempt to make something of himself with a little help from the lads in his yard. Thwarted with bad luck and inexperience, their journey of persistence never to miss an opportunity through the hardships of the time will make you smile.

Set in 1919, The Greatest Living Englishman tells the comedic adventures of "England's Worst Poet" Colin Gilfeather Millaney: an egotistical - though loveable - rhymer who is wholly untouched with even the faintest speck of talent. He is so awful that people throw rotten produce at him on the streets. They buy his books, just to throw at him. But that does not stop him from penning his doggerel, or inflicting it upon what he claims is the "misguided" public.

A humorous and poignant story told through letters from a displaced mill worker to his friend, depicting the changing landscape of rural American life in the 1980s. James E. Moore grew up in western Pennsylvania. A graduate of West Virginia University, he served in the U.S. Navy in the 1960s. Now retired, he lives with his wife, two dogs, and a cat in Connecticut.

Nothing escapes the snooping opera glasses of Miss Elizabeth Mapp. She whiles away her busy hours observing the small English village of Tilling, and recording the antics in her notebook. But her observations are set to be disrupted by amorous advances of two retired army generals, both vying for her affection. With Miss Mapp distracted, who will keep Miss Susan Poppit in her place or oversee the correct playing of bridge? More importantly will quiet Tilling be subject to a violent duel?

In the summer of 1320/1941 while the war is raging in Europe and spreading to the borders of Iran, the illustrious Azimi family migrate to their summer home and sprawling property in the north of the city as they do every year. This is a humorous story of the summer of war conspiracy theories and the Azimi family dealing with the war at their door step.

When De Cocksdorp's head dyker Joosie Twaat wakes to find her finger has been sloppily inserted in her own now-leaking dyke, François and his crew immediately come to help De Cocksdorp. But small leaks become large leaks, and large leaks become gushes. And before long, Joosie's gaping dyke threatens to flood the whole town.