Historical Humor

June 1813. As the Peninsular War edges toward its climactic battle at Vitoria, a well-bred, newly commissioned, and hopelessly incompetent officer arrives to take charge of a seasoned troop of British cavalry. The troop's eloquent but shifty corporal takes the officer under his wing, and thus begins a journey through the campaign with many laugh-out-loud moments as the less-than-upright members of the troop determine to turn the war against the French to their pecuniary advantage.

Mailand 1493: Der junge Pandolfo liegt mit eingeschlagenem Schädel in einem Abfallhaufen. Der Seidenhändler Bernardino Bellapianta findet den Schwerverletzten und pflegt ihn in seinem märchenhaften Palast gesund. Doch Pandolfo hat sein Gedächtnis verloren. Auf der Suche nach seiner Vergangenheit überlebt Pandolfo einen zweiten Mordanschlag, steigt mit einem Flugmaschinenbauer in die Lüfte auf, verliebt sich zum zweiten Mal in dieselbe Frau und kommt langsam dahinter, dass sein Wohltäter nicht ganz so tadellos ist, wie er scheint.

Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that reimagines the world of the 19th-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes Lewis Carroll. Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelganger in Gothic fiction, amid the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life.

Milligan and the Samurai Rebels is a humorous historical novel set in the Japan of the 1860s. The Shogun has been forced by the threat of Western firepower to re-open Japan to the outside world, while samurai outraged at this decision are scheming to topple the Shogunate and re-establish Imperial rule. In parallel to this struggle, Britain and France are fighting by every means except open warfare to establish themselves as the leading influence on the government of Japan and secure the accompanying trading privileges.

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers, lifeguards, poets, and bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place "Pepperland", after the Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine.

Der junge Pandolfo hat einen Schlag auf den Kopf erhalten: Er weiß nicht mehr, wer er ist. Der schwerreiche Seidenhändler Bernadino Bellapianta findet ihn verletzt in einem Misthaufen liegend, nimmt ihn mit sich und pflegt ihn gesund. Wieder genesen erweist sich Pandolfos Geschick fürs Zeichnen und er wird als Musterzeichner für luxuriöse Webstoffe eingestellt. Aber er macht sich auch auf die Suche nach seiner Vergangenheit.

It is the early 1990s in Seattle, and the MTV video for Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has just premiered the previous week. Lethargy is in the air. Grunge fashion is all the logy rage. Something is brewing beneath these moist, overcast Seattle skies. Twenty-two-year-old Willow Montgomery has freshly arrived in town, having just graduated from an elite liberal arts college back east.

Renee is from a small town, in provincial France, who flees to Paris, only to find that it has been overrun by Nazis. He returns to his hometown of Brassac to discover that the fiancé he abandoned on the night of their wedding has joined the local convent. He finds himself mayor of the town he abandoned when the former officeholder flees to avoid working with the Vichy government.

We all come to crossroads in our lives where a step in one direction or another can dictate the rest of our time on the planet. It can happen just once for some, or like Stephen and his son Terry, it can happen often and each time they make a choice, they have half a chance to make the right one. If it is wrong then the next choice, even though it may be fueled by alcohol or drugs, may be a little more complex, and so it goes, life unfolds, and we take what we get.

When David is drafted at the last minute to cover a class on human sexuality, he prepares by attending a sex therapists conference, where a fellow attendee confides that she’s being blackmailed over illicitly obtained sex tapes. Things take a sinister turn when murder is thrown into the mix, and as David fumbles his way through his first mystery, he discovers he has a talent for sleuthing—and for finding himself in sticky situations.

Seventeen-year-old Sean needs a lot of things: He needs his parents to stop hassling him. He needs his Jewfro to grow out into heavy metal hair. But most of all, he needs a band...Without one, he isn’t sure that he’s ever going to make it out of this two-horse town. He’s been trying to put a band together for as long as he can remember, but finding like-minded metalheads in rural America has been challenging. Finally, the stars align and a band is born. It’s magic. But can these five talented metal kids keep things together long enough to play the show of a lifetime?

It's the summer of 1989. Jack McGuinn is a dockporter, transporting tourists' luggage piled high in the basket of his bike on Mackinac Island, Michigan. It's a summer resort where cars are outlawed and pedal power rules. He's got the season wired tight: a family cottage on the bluff, a dream job, and a loyal crew of hell-raising, tip-hustling buddies. When his old friend turned rival challenges him to ride a record-setting load of luggage, he takes the bet. Soon, he realizes he's not just carrying suitcases; he's carrying the island's future, which is about to be paved over for profit.

Una narrazione disincantata e ironica denuncia il vuoto di valori che seguì la disfatta napoleonica. La cittadella descritta da Stendhal è in realtà molto diversa dalla vera cittadella di Parma e, invece, molto simile a Castel Sant'Angelo, dalla cui cella fuggì (calandosi con delle corde), nel Cinquecento, Alessandro Farnese, rinchiuso per aver rapito e sedotto una nobildonna romana. In seguito diviene cardinale e, poi, papa.

David reluctantly joins members of his high school bridge club at their 20th class reunion in the hope of solving a personal mystery from his own past. But reuniting soon delivers a few unwelcome truths, and fear sets in when a classmate is found dead. As old rivalries and resentments flare, the gathering on the Queen Mary in Long Beach for a weekend of memory-making brings forth more murder. David enjoys a high school flashback with an old flame but is left with more questions than answers.

The Alehouse at the End of the World is an epic comedy set in the 16th century, where bawdy Shakespearean love triangles play out with shapeshifting avian demigods and a fertility goddess, drunken revelry, bio-dynamic gardening, and a narcissistic, bullying crow, who may have colluded with a foreign power.

Ne "I Miserabili" Victor Hugo narra con assoluta sensibilità ed estrema modernità la solitudine dell'uomo, il contrasto tra ceti sociali, ma anche la redenzione attraverso la rivolta e l'amore. Il romanzo, dal ritmo incalzante, magistrale e irripetibile per l'autenticità delle emozioni e per la complessità della trama narrativa, viene qui tradotto ad alta voce da un unico narratore, Moro Silo, che con la sua più che trentennale esperienza di lettore, riesce a cogliere l'enorme quantità di significati presenti nel libro nel massimo rispetto dello stile unico e originale dell'autore, del suo contesto storico-culturale e filologico.

Questa colossale opera fu pubblicata nel 1862. Considerata uno dei romanzi più importanti del XIX secolo, narra la storia di vari personaggi nell’arco di 20 anni, intrecciando la loro vita alle vicende storiche della Parigi post Restaurazione.

It's downbeat Dublin in the late 1980s. Temple Bar, bedsits, and dole queues. Fred, a loser adrift in the world, and Maggie, a fiercely intelligent and complicated writer, are brought together through circumstances they think they can handle, whereas they are totally out of their depth. In this first part of a planned trilogy, the key ingredients are that the "Butterfly Effect" of two seemingly fringe characters in their society turn out to trigger changes far beyond their plans or wishes.

What if I told you that the biggest heist in history was one that never made the newspapers, was never seen on TV, and has never even been mentioned in any history book? And I’m talking about 40 billion dollars stolen. Sounds pretty unlikely, don’t you think? What if I told you that this robbery was pulled off by a bunch of over-the-hill 70-year-olds: a WW I vet who paid his dues in the trenches of Europe, a small-time crook who paid his in regular installments behind bars, a hotheaded Irishman who thought dues were don’ts, and a giant gorilla who, well, he’s a gorilla.

Cobble is a Neanderthal with itchy feet and the mind of an engineer, unlike anyone else in his old-fashioned tribe. Making Man follows his journey as he leaves the village of Boardom behind, taking him through mountains, underground animal lairs, and into new landscapes. As with all good prehistoric comedies there is a mysterious pendant and a healthy dose of talking insects.