Humor Classics

An early collection of short stories by England's greatest humorist, P. G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves features eight of the most enjoyable and popular short stories of the early 20th century.

Mo Collins, the reluctant hero, has sailed around the country on board the replica pirate ship, the Viva Ancora, and now he finds himself only miles from his childhood home. But now the world has gone to hell. Hordes of naked, blue, biting zombies have flooded the now dead Alabama lake town. Mo and his only surviving shipmate, Crow, are surviving. They fish and watch the monsters roam the night; seeking untainted flesh and leaving a disgusting mess in their wake. But when a lone survivor stumbles upon Mo and Crow they gain a new crew member but also find much needed direction.

Flatland is populated by Squares, Triangles, Circles, and Lines, all of which are strictly divided by class and gender. However, our narrator, A Square, living a practical life in this two-dimensional universe, dreams of other worlds. Perhaps A Sphere, a figure from a three-dimensional realm, can help drive home the point. But, as A Square soon discovers, educating Flatland about the shapes of things to come proves to be a dangerous infraction.

"The wonderful visit" fu una delle prime tre opere di Wells, pubblicata nel 1895, anno in cui pubblicò anche "La macchina del tempo". Nel racconto lungo si parla di un angelo, atterrato su questo mondo, e non riconosciuto nella sua qualità di visitatore angelico. Il rapporto fra i mondi, situazioni spazio temporali diverse, l'esistenza di una vita oltre la vita, costituiscono il substrato del racconto, oltre che essere un tema dominante nella scrittura di Wells; e non è un caso che il racconto venne dedicato al suo acaro amico, morto di polmonite quello stesso anno.

After having been trapped in his office for 10,000 years, Lacerto, the god of small to medium-sized lizards, escapes to seek revenge. They say when you go looking for revenge, dig two graves. If you're a god, make sure one of them is the size of Mount Olympus.

A couple of jerks wake me up at the crack of noon. Seems my klepto uncle stole an ancient deck of Tarot cards from a high-powered wizard, and too many losers want to ruin my day to get them back. The cards are cool, so I check them out, but my magic-happy cousin, Sabrina, tells me I'm not supposed to touch them. Oops. Too late. Now the damn cards are tuned to me, and if someone else wants to use them, I have to die. Why couldn't she have led with that information?

Two American travelers have been killed—one with poison, the other with a knife through the heart—and the only clues at the scene are a woman’s wedding ring and the German word for “vengeance” written in blood. The military surgeon Dr. John Watson is brought in to investigate, along with his clever, arrogant new roommate, Sherlock Holmes.

Considered one of Twain's most important short works, The Mysterious Stranger tells the story of the devil coming to a medieval village in the persona of a beautiful, lovable, yet exasperatingly amoral young man. Befriending a small group of boys, Satan exhibits strange charm, compassion, and indifference as the tale comes to a surprising comclusion.

Every Boy Should Have a Man takes place in a post-human world, where creatures called oafs keep humanlike "mans" as beloved pets. One day, a poor boy oaf brings home a man, whom he hides under his bed, in the hopes his parents won't find out. When the man is discovered, the boy admits it is not his - but the boy is no delinquent. Despite the accusations being hurled at him, he's telling the truth when he says he found the man wandering aimlessly in the bramble.

Zombie socialite Amanda Feral and her undead friends, Wendy and Gil, shamble into an idyllic seaside village for an event promoting Amanda's memoir, Happy Hour of the Damned and, as usual, to consume cute coastal townsfolk. As is their unique luck, plans are derailed when they become embroiled in a gory mystery at the Miss Sand Flea Pageant.

You Know Me, Al is a classic of baseball, the game and the community. Jack Keefe, one of literature's great characters, is talented, brash, and conceited. Self-assured and imperceptive, impervious to both advice and sarcasm, Keefe rises to the heights, but his inability to learn makes for his undoing. Through a series of letters from this bush-league pitcher to his not-quite-anonymous friend Al, Lardner maintains a balance between the funny and the moving, the pathetic and the glorious.

The Diary of Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to epitomize English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency.

When Keith Knight sets out one morning to buy a tin of custard from his local shop, he didn't bank on falling through the fabric between his world and a land of fantasy. Mistaken as the "Knight" from afar who, it is said, will lift the Mushroom King's curse on the land, he must face dragons, avoid swamp donkeys and negotiate the "forest of certain death" to seek out the elusive and dangerous Baba Yaga in order to complete her three impossible tasks if he has any hope of reaching the Wishing Tree and returning home.

The Big Bleep is the story of hard-boiled, Harley riding detective Sam Shovel, digging up the truth on a comedic, existential journey of self-realization. It's an investigation into a universe where a fictional character can become self-aware - just like in real life! And, it's the only book that tells the truth about what REALLY happened to the Earth dinosaurs... (really).

Mark Greene, that semi-smart layabout, is back. Venturing to Bunk Bunk Community College to enroll in courses that he hopes might lead to some sort of employment, Mark inexplicably finds himself tossed into the lowest depths of the teaching profession. He's hired as an adjunct to teach English at midnight. Try as he might to impart literature and spark creativity to those in his charge, Mark Greene cannot help but get his own schooling - good and hard.

The Capulets and the Montagues have some deep and essential differences. Blood differences. Of course, the Capulets can escape their vampire fate, and the Montagues can try not to kill their undead enemies. But at the end of the day, their blood feud is unstoppable. So it's really quite a problem when Juliet, a vampire-to-be, and Romeo, the human who should be hunting her, fall desperately in love. What they don't realize is how deadly their love will turn out to be - or what it will mean for their afterlives....

David Wilson is called "Pudd'nhead" by the townspeople, who fail to understand his combination of wisdom and eccentricity. He redeems himself by simultaneously solving a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities.

A mysterious stranger arrives in a small Sussex village, covered up from head to toes with a coat, gloves, bandages, goggles and hat. The stranger demands to be left alone, spending most of his time in his room working with chemicals and laboratory apparatus. He quickly becomes the talk of the village as he unnerves the locals. Eventually, though, after a burglary (in which the thief was unseen) the stranger's secret comes out.

Gogol's great comic masterpiece paints an hilariously satirical picture of provincial life in 19th century Russia. Its publication in 1847 not only provided inspiration for succeeding generations of Russian writers, but fanned the already flickering flames of social discontent which were eventually to flare up and consume Russia in the revolution of 1917.

This novel is Shakespeare's worst nightmare. It takes two of the bard's most famous plays, Hamlet and Othello, and recasts them with fantasy characters in a place called Gundarland. Hamlet is a dwarf and Othello is a dark elf. Iago and his wife, Emilia, are trolls. If that isn't bad enough, these two tragedies are now comedies with Falstaff, Shakespeare's most popular rogue, thrown in as a bonus. Not familiar with Shakespeare? No problem. You'll still enjoy this romp.