Humor Anthology

Todos somos los héroes o las heroínas de nuestro propio cuento. Pero ese cuento cambia según quién decida ponerse tras el papel para narrarlo, o quizás si entran en escena personajes que no nos esperábamos o que deciden, de golpe, cobrar un papel más protagonista. ¿Qué pasaría si el príncipe no puede salvar a la princesa... porque tiene que quedarse en casa cuidando a su padre? ¿El cuento hubiera terminado de la misma manera?

How would you describe life? If you bumped into God and it asked you to give an overview of what life on Earth was like, what would you do? You wouldn’t tell it one long, drawn-out story. Not at all. You’d give it a mixed bag of quick stories to give it a good taste of what life is. If that day did somehow come about, and you did find yourself talking nonsense to an infinite being on a lovely summer’s day, I’m sure you’d never again forget to keep yourself hydrated.

The 10 stories vary; some are funny, some more serious but they are all about real people in real situations, so the listener can identify with them. In some a cheat or a bully gets their comeuppance which is always very satisfactory for both writer and listener.

New York-born John Kendrick Bangs was associate editor and then editor of Life and Harper magazines, eventually finding his way into the Humour department. Here, he began to write his own satire and humour. Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others is a delightful humorous collection of short tales relating encounters with ghosts, including "The Mystery of My Grandmother's Hair Sofa", "The Exorcism That Failed", and more.

These are the stories of three boys living in Texas: one growing up, one dreaming, and one fighting to stay alive in the face of destitution and adversity. There's second-grader William, a shy yet imaginative boy who schemes about how to get back at his school-yard bully, Randy. Then there's Sam, a 15-year-old boy who dreams of getting a 1980 Mazda RX-7 for his 16th birthday but has to work at a Greek restaurant to fund his dream. Finally, there's Seff, a 21-year-old on the brink of manhood, trying to survive along with his roommate, working as waiters and barely making ends meet.

Fifteen linked stories chart a true course through the lives of families, farmers, loggers, former classmates, and the occasional stripper. In the richly imagined town of Renata, Oregon, a man watches his neighbor's big-screen TV through binoculars, an errant son paints himself silver, mysterious electrical humming emanates from an enormous barn. In A Simplified Map of the Real World, intimate boundaries are loosened by history - and high above the strife and the hope and the often hilarious, geese seek the perfect tailwind. Stevan Allred's stunning debut deftly navigates the stubborn geography of the human heart.

He has the mind of a child, the sexual proclivities of a teenager - and the subconscious of a scientific genius. And despite the best efforts of Mama Schimmelhorn to get her old man to make Swiss cuckoo clocks by day and stay home by night, Papa's inventions will keep coming.

Appalachian Galapagos follows the smash success of Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors with authors Weston Ochse and David Whitman returning us to the world of rednecks, human-skin beer cozies, urban legends come to life, southern mythology, drunkards flying in lawn chairs, contemplations on the nature of god, and the monsters within us all. Galapagos cements its ownership of the genre opening with a grand opus of a novella co-written by both authors, featuring backwoods churches, boat rides, and bigfoots.

Here is a collection of darkly humorous short stories previously published in magazines such as Adbusters and Apex Digest of Science Fiction and Horror.

The third of the Sweet Tea story collections treats listeners to a panorama of Southern life, both then and now. Family dramas, comic mishaps, sentimental remembrances and poignant choices illuminate these thirteen stories by new and established authors. There's something for every listener: The gritty realism of a hunt for wild boars, the gentle grieving for a home now filled only with memories, the funny battle between a woman and her recipe for deviled eggs, and much more.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

Critically acclaimed author David Schickler made a splash with Kissing in Manhattan, a best-selling story collection that Booklist said is "magical" and "never ceases to amaze and impress". Now this gifted writer's extraordinary imagination produces a brazen novel that reads like Bonnie and Clyde meets Robin Hood.

Remember the stories your grandfather used to tell you about way back when? Remember laughing out loud as the stories got deeper? If you like to LOL, then this really is a book for you. Here you'll find some observations on life in general and people in particular, as seen through a collection of newspaper columns, presenting skewed, offbeat, semiserious, and sometimes amusing views of the world.

So there was all that: the ordinary twill of life; the ho-hum sturm und drang of the workplace: the ubiquitous absurdities, the annoying co-workers, the bloody deadlines and even bloodier bottom lines; the bland, eternal, Sisyphean, absolute, unrelenting, surreal certainty of the day-in-and-day-out of it all. Life as a slice of white bread, moistened with spit and rolled into a messy glob, a doughy ball that couldn't make the slightest dent in the iron gates of life. But then, suddenly, on August 27, 2002, all that changed. Suddenly, Rae-Jean's uneventful life began to leaven and swell with hypotheticals.

In the 1930s, the fictional town of Toad Springs, Florida, is filled with the adventures and daily whatnots of worthy, down-to-earth folk such as Flavey Stroudamore, owner of a three-legged gator named Precious who also just happens to have a birthmark of Jesus on his side.

Искатели приключений — сатирическая зарисовка американского новеллиста XIX века О. Генри (англ. O. Henry, 1862–1910). Рассказчик твердо убежден, что на свете есть приключения, перед которыми меркнет даже африканское сафари и охота на слонов. Автор историй с неожиданной развязкой, О. Генри известен по ряду новелл "Орден золотого колечка", "Брильянт богини Кали", "Тысяча долларов, Сыщики", "Золото", "которое блеснуло", "Багдадская птица", "Алое платье и Комфорт".

An implant that gives moral advice whether you like it or not, an irritable galactic ambassador examining Earth’s religions, a future where love can’t happen without litigation, pushy alien anthropologists without regard for the human need for privacy, discrimination against an artificial intelligence in a multicultural world, alien sex - love in the time of deformity, neighborly nitpicking made easy by Computer Court, the excruciating reality of Martian music, invasion of the toe snatchers, something crunchy on the menu, and a transgenic pig dog at war with an android nemesis.

The Fellowship Flock is a collection of “church-in” stories that center around a small church in Fairhope, Alabama. There are sad stories, funny stories, and, at the end, it is all pulled together as we find out who the narrator is.

Álex Ayala escribe acerca de unos jubilados que cumplen heroicamente su última misión en la vida: vigilar una estatua de John Lennon para que nadie robe sus características gafas. Y también lo hace sobre los habitantes de un pueblo de Bolivia que comercian con sus recuerdos sobre las últimas horas de vida del Che Guevara. En otro capítulo se habla del sastre Sillerico, quien ha gozado del dudoso honor de ver en paños menores a la mayoría de los presidentes de su país.

In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises — writers, video game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.