Humor Anthology

First published in The Saturday Evening Post, "The Ransom of Red Chief" is a humorous short story written in 1910 by O. Henry. A pair of con men kidnap and attempt to ransom a prominent Alabama citizen’s son. Immediately they find themselves at the mercy of a particularly spoiled and clever boy who begins driving them mad. The ironic ending remains the story’s most enduring feature.

According to an LA Times, May 14, 2014 article, the following entry came from a notebook of a gold-seeking prospector, Samuel Clemens, in 1864. "Coleman with his jumping frog - bet stranger $50... - stranger had no frog & C got him one - in the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump - the stranger's frog won." Little did Clemens know that this would be the source for his short story that would launch his career as one of America's greatest authors.

Jump-Start: To jump-start American consumerism after decades of zero economic growth, the vaganus is wholesaled in casino fashion.

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.

Thirty years after his death, Capt. Stormfield is still speeding across the universe, on his way to the next life, though he doesn't know yet where or when his journey will end. It's not a spoiler to tell you that he does get into heaven (it's in the title after all), but you may be surprised at some of the customs, characters, and spectacles he finds there.

This is the humorous story of the royal huntress Josefa. When a lion was about to attack her, a knight intervened, to her chagrin, as she wanted to shoot it. The knight then claimed that the lion was his pet and that he tried to protect it, and Josefa played along but as it turns out, never believed it.

Is it possessed? Is it some kind of experiment? It doesn't matter. All that matters is that it is out to get you. The DilDozer, or DD for short, calls on all of those in its path in the hopes that one day it can unleash its 20 full inches of destructive force upon the world. Keep listening, if you dare, to the tale of the DilDozer. Deadly. Dangerous. Ribbed for her terror.

Set in the author’s native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet.

Humorous short stories relating to actual events that happened in Atlanta in 1957. A seven-year old remembers what happened in the previous year.

A frustrated lawyer finds release where she least expects it - and where she needs it most - in this exhilarating, sexy romp through the finest gluten-free indulgences in a New York City grocery store. After another long workday, the only thing Meredith wants is a big bowl of paleo maple-pecan coconola. But the hour-long checkout line at 7:00 p.m. at an all-organic supermarket stands between her and satisfaction, and the yupster mob is working her last nerve. Then, out of nowhere, a spontaneous flirtation with a stranger shows her there’s a lot more than coconola waiting for her.

A small-town waitress, awestruck by dreams of a bigger world, looks forward to the biggest break of a budding career in this darkly comic short tale of what happens when innocence collides with cynicism. Eighteen-year-old Keridee is done with high school, her cheating boyfriend, her jealous friends, and Nowhere, Florida. She’s determined to do something with her life, and her small-time modeling agent has already scored her a gig. She’s working an event for a real estate mogul who happens to own a huge modeling agency. What if he’s dazzled by her smile and makes her a star?

Tales from the Seaside is a humorous collection of short stories reflecting on life by the seaside, attempts to successfully wrangle two small children, and the result of being inspired by the sun, the sand, and the sea.

Mark Twain nos narra las historias del Jardín de Edén. Los divertidos diarios de Adán, el padre legendario, y Eva, la madre de la raza humana. Las relaciones entre el sexo femenino y el masculino ¿han sido siempre las mimas? Twain nos responde a esta pregunta presentándonos a nuestro padre Adán constantemente importunado por la curiosidad de su compañera que, con su particular modo de ver las cosas, pone e impone nombre a todos los lugares, seres y animales el jardín.

Oliver Smith, known as Food to his friends, so called on account of the fact he can’t afford to feed himself, is a vagrant. After being turfed out from the family home by his wife, Food moves into a lads’ flat in the big city. However, things are not so easy for Food as he struggles with advancing his nonexistent career, housemates who refuse to give him a break, as well as the government, who Food is convinced are stalking him. These are the least of Food’s problems, however, given that due to his impoverished nature, he struggles on a daily basis to even feed himself.

Leading sacred cows to the slaughter, peeling the pun for its extra daughter, crafting sinister grams and sly fun, Bob Macaulay reveals his skill in distilling Scottish humours, in whimsical surgical tellings for listeners’ drop-in pleasure. Prankster, funster, language doctor, he re-stages Scotland in satire. A surgeon of his native tongue, as spoken by the living and the never were, he offers a forensic dozen herein, counting the missing organs, of course.

Crisman Cooley, despite an admitted lack of expertise, aims to educate the reading public in the mysteries of the alphabet while frolicking about in the vast lexicon of English. He has managed to include all 26 letters mostly in the right order. For the data driven: This book contains 2,449 total words, and 1,744 of them are unique words - only used once. That's a 71.21 percent Unique Word Ratio (UWR). That's a higher UWR than the King James Bible (1.86 percent UWR) and Shakespeare (3.26 percent UWR). The author has confidence that this problem can be better solved by Big Data.

"Cattivi Soggetti", unica opera letteraria di Luciano Salce per la prima volta in audiolibro letto dal figlio Emanuele, attore e regista. Un'antologia di racconti, di epoche differenti e umori diversi. "Cattivi soggetti" è ovviamente un titolo a doppio uso. Sono cattivi soggetti certi personaggi poco raccomandabili, ma anche soggetti cinematografici cattivi, cioè non piaciuti, non realizzati, cestinati, restituiti (quasi mai) dai produttori ai quali erano stati proposti. E una loro origine cinematografica si può ritrovare nel gusto per l'intreccio, la trovata, la situazione.

Cain’t Do Nothing with Love was the winner of the CIPA EVVY Audio Book Award 2014. All stories treat the most difficult topics - death, religion, family - with sharp humor and urgent respect.

Welcome to Colorful Colorado is the sometimes-humorous tale of one man’s decision to begin an adventure on the other side of the “world”, when that world is 1,000 miles away.

Greetings from Darbyshire, a town where some wacky and offensive characters live and interact. This is the first book of the series and introduces a handful of characters in stories where they have limited contact with one another, although they all live in the fictitious city of Darbyshire. Darbyshire: Welcome to the Jungle is Maverick Alexander's first title and opens up the living, breathing world of his wild imagination.