Historical Humor

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

An invigorating swim in the loch was exactly what Calan Campbell, Laird of Kilcairn, needed after defeating his enemies in battle. What he didn’t need was a thief running away with his plaid while he swam. Calan gave chase and managed to catch the lad, only the lad turned out to be a lass, and obviously a lady. Having hit her head when he’d tackled her to the ground, the woman was now unconscious and couldn’t explain how she had ended up bruised and naked in his woods. He’d have to take her back to his castle and tend her wounds to learn that.

Flashman must choose - politcs in London or slave trading in Africa - not that it matters really in this hilarious third installement of the Flashman Papers. When Flashman was inveigled into a game of pontoon with Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck, he was making an unconscious choice about his own future - would it lie in the House of Commons or the West African slave trade? Was there, for that matter, very much difference?

Bartholomew Bandy has become an air ace. On the ground, he causes disasters wherever he goes, but in the air, he's deadly, shooting down dozens of German planes in the course of thrilling aerial combats. As a handy but disposable war hero, he encounters a number of hair-raising adventures, not to mention English plumbing and an unforgettable honeymoon night.

Karen Cushman's Newbery Honor-winning book tells the story of a medieval girl who works to avoid the marriage her father has arranged for her during her 14th year. Contained in this program is Catherine's diary - Catherine, called Little Bird or Birdy, daughter of Rollo and the lady Aislinn, sister to Thomas, Edward, and the abominable Robert. Against a vivid backdrop of everyday life on a medieval English manor, Catherine's earthy, spirited account of her fourteenth year is a richly entertaining story with an utterly unforgettable heroine.

Mrs. Harris is a salt-of-the-earth London charlady who cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich. One day, when tidying Lady Dant's wardrobe, she comes across the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life—a Dior dress. In all the years of her drab and humble existence, she's never seen anything as magical as the dress before her and she's never wanted anything as much before. Determined to make her dream come true, Mrs. Harris scrimps, saves, and slaves away until one day, after three long, uncomplaining years, she finally has enough money to go to Paris.

The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around fast. If the preacher's wife's petticoat shows, the ladies will make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things take a scandalous turn. That is the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, elopes with Miss Love Simpson, a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee!

Mark Robarts, a young vicar, is newly arrived in the village of Framley. With ambitions to further his career, he seeks connections in the county's high society. He is soon preyed upon by a local member of parliament to guarantee a substantial loan, which Mark, in a moment of weakness, agrees to, even though he knows the man is a notorious debtor; it brings Mark to the brink of ruin.

As usual, the RAF top brass don't know what to do with maverick flying ace and well-known loose cannon Major Bartholomew Bandy. They pack him off to a squadron where the flying record barely registers, thinking it'll keep him out of their hair. But after a shaky start, Bart gets a firm grip on things - one of those things being the adjutant, who jealously guards his own private and baroquely magnificent WC. With old pal Dick Milestone, Bart reinvigorates the superbly turned-out but demoralized pilots, who start doing some serious flying and very serious damage to the enemy.

Phryne Fisher is doing one of her favorite things -dancing at the Green Mill (Melbourne's premier dance hall) to the music of Tintagel Stone's Jazzmakers, the band who taught St Vitus how to dance. And she's wearing a sparkling lobelia-coloured georgette dress. Nothing can flap the unflappable Phryne -especially on a dance floor with so many delectable partners. Nothing except death, that is.

While transporting a woman to an insane asylum, Deputy Kopp discovers something deeply troubling about her story. Before she can investigate, another inmate bound for the asylum breaks free and tries to escape. In both cases, Constance runs instinctively toward justice. But the fall of 1916 is a high-stakes election year, and any move she makes could jeopardize Sheriff Heath's future - and her own. Although Constance is not on the ballot, her controversial career makes her the target of political attacks.

Peace has broken out, and World War I flying ace and all-round chancer Bartholomew Bandy isn’t exactly making a success of being a commercial pilot in the USA. But when a job lot of aircraft bits purchased with the last of his pay turns out to be a complete Vickers Vimy bomber, he feels his luck has changed. With the help of his very tall, very sweet girlfriend Cissie, and the hindrance of his very short, very bad, and beautiful girlfriend Dasha, Bart smashes (literally) straight into the exciting new world of the movies.

In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early 19th-century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a nave young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry.

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH leaps cities and decades as Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty.

Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating narrative. The hero—or antihero—of Mo Yan’s new novel is Ximen Nao, a landowner known for his benevolence to his peasants. His story is a deliriously unique journey and absolutely riveting tale that reveals the author’s love of a homeland beset by ills inevitable, political, and traditional.

It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book.

Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.

After escaping from the English soldiers who attacked her home and imprisoned her in a dungeon, Lady Elysande de Valance is grateful for the rugged Scots who are escorting her to safety in the Highlands. Even with danger dogging their every step, she hadn’t expected to welcome the strong comforting embrace of their leader, Rory Buchanan. They say he’s a healer, but she finds the heat of his touch does so much more....

When London journalist Eleanor-Rigby Donovan receives an anonymous letter alluding to a crime committed by her deceased mother, her life is turned upside down. It points her to a bar on the Baltimore Harbor, where she finds a stranger who has received the same mysterious letter about his own mother. Together, Eleanor-Rigby and this young man, George-Harrison Collins, embark on a quest through the shadowy past of the Stanfields, a moneyed Maryland family full of unimaginable secrets.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all. What caused the Indian Mutiny?