Historical Humor

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.

Dr. Siri Paiboun is summoned to the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current communist government hid in caves, waiting to assume power. Now a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, but an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk laid from the president’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs. Siri must supervise the disinterment of the body attached to the arm, identify it, and determine the cause of death.

College senior Patty Wyatt is a fun-loving, headstrong, and intelligent girl who gets herself into mischief and learns valuable lessons, both in and out of the classroom. Written in 1903, this is Jean Webster’s first of many great American novels.

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".

This is an all-new story from Martin Archer. It is his longest and best. The action, political incorrectness, and wide-eyed innocence, and ignorance is non-stop in this exciting medieval times novel. The company's archers sail for Constantinople to join the fight against the orthodox army attempting to re-establish the Byzantine Empire with the help of the Venetians. Richard arrives from England and takes his horse archers out to delay and harry the invaders.

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!

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.

Jane Austen skewers the novelistic extremes of her day made popular in many 18th-century Gothic potboilers. Dilapidated castles, locked rooms, inexplicable chests, enigmatic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly sardonic twist.

They're a Weird Mob chronicles the hilarious attempts of an English-speaking Italian migrant coming to grips with the Australian way of life. It is also an insight into the importance of idiomatic language to the Australian people.

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.

Penniless, homeless, and virtually lifeless, the vagrant “Doughface” Jack is about to discover that where medical marvels meet the mysteries of the human mind, amazing things happen. The Tramp acquires a capability beyond his imagination and without equal on Earth. Riding the rails, Jack runs afoul of a local sheriff and ends up with a crushed skull. He’s as good as dead until a savvy country doctor performs a bit of medical magic.