Humor Short

Laugh till you cry in this new collection of stories from the “Serena Williams of humor writing” (New York Times Book Review) about raising babies and trying to learn how not to be one.

FBI special agent Kate O’Hare has made it her mission to nail international con artist Nicolas Fox. When she discovers his plot to plunder a venture capitalist’s 20th-story Chicago penthouse of all its cash and treasures while the self-proclaimed "King of Hostile Takeovers" is getting married, Kate is 85 percent - okay maybe 92 percent - sure that she’s finally going to bag Nick Fox. Problem is, first Kate has to convince her boss, building security, and maybe even herself, that wedding planner Merrill Stubing is actually Nicolas Fox. Second, she has to figure out how to corner and capture him without disrupting the event of the year.

He was a legend, until he walked away. I was nobody, until I was dragged into the light. I was never supposed to be part of Wicked, but it was always part of me. Now it's my turn to do something that matters. Even if the man I love hates me for it.

With over two million copies of his works in print, Patrick McManus is an accomplished humor author. In The Bear in the Attic, he once again invites listeners to peek into his unique perspectives on life and his favorite topic, the great outdoors. Here listeners are treated to amazingly absurd tales of young male hijinks, camping mishaps and neighbor-eating bears! Norman Dietz adds another dimension to McManus' humor with his brilliant comic narration.

What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice - two city slickers from Chicago - make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town? Joey and Mary Alice make seven summer trips to Grandma's, each one funnier and more surprising than the year before.

In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore, in a perfect blend of craft and bewitched spirit, explores the passage of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and hilarious pitfalls to reveal her own exquisite, singular wisdom...Gimlet-eyed social observation, the public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through each of these narratives in a heartrending mash-up of the tragic and the laugh-out-loud - the hallmark of Lorrie Moore - land.

Satire, Humor and Irony in some cases have been regarded as the most effective source to understand a society, the oldest form of social study. Contents: The Cop and the Anthem by O. Henry; The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry; What Stumped the Blue Jays by Mark Twain; The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain; The Toys of Peace by Saki (H. H. Munro); The Artful Hussar by Johann Peter Hebel; From The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe; The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner; When I Was a Witch by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Micromegas: A Philosophical History by Voltaire.

Veronica Ruiz is on the run for the first time in her life—though certainly not the last. After being falsely accused of stealing money from her college sorority, she packs up and heads to her cousin Ramón's apartment, planning to change her name and rebuild start over away from backstabbing girls and university drama (and far, far away from her arrest warrant in Maryland). At the local bank on the first morning of her new life, it occurs to Vero that she'd be a better bank teller than most of the current employees.

The “best short story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose—wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned—Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.

Simon Rich is "one of the funniest writers in America" (The Daily Beast) - a humorist who draws comparisons to Douglas Adams (The New York Times Book Review) and James Thurber and P.G. Wodehouse (The Guardian). With Hits and Misses, he's back with a hilarious new collection of stories about dreaming big and falling flat, about ordinary people desperate for stardom and the stars who are bored by having it all.

In this dual collection of short stories, Alexander McCall Smith brings his trademark humor and warmth to inventive tales of spying and vengeance. In one story, a spy dropped deep into enemy territory manages to disguise himself—quite convincingly—as a nun. In another, an invitation to join the Vatican Secret Service sends a prospective operative down a rabbit hole of controversy and confusion. A third story finds an author, on the brink of public ruin, seeing the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day.

For centuries, the woods have been a pivotal part of the wonder and danger of fairy tales, for once you enter anything can happen. Elves, druids, fairies - who knows what you will find once you dare step into the forest?

And now, New York Times best-selling author Kim Harrison ventures into these mysterious, hidden lands of magic and mystery in her first short-story collection. Into the Woods brings together an enchanting mix of brand-new, never-before-published stories and tales from Harrison's beloved, best-selling Hollows series.

H.H. Munro (Saki) is one of the undisputed masters of the short story. In this complete compendium, the full gamut of his subjects and themes is experienced. His stories are imbued with humorous satire, biting irony, and often the macabre, all of which have one target: the stupidities and hypocrisies of Edwardian upper-class society.

John Grisham returns to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his immensely popular first novel, A Time to Kill. This wholly surprising collection of stories reminds us once again why Grisham is America's favorite storyteller.

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.

Johannes Cabal, a brilliant scientist and notorious snob, is single-mindedly obsessed in heart and soul with raising the dead. Well, perhaps not soul.... He hastily sold his years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. But now, tormented by a dark secret, he travels to the fiery pits of Hell to retrieve it. Satan, who is incredibly bored these days, proposes a little wager: Johannes has one year to persuade 100 people to sign over their souls, or he will be damned forever.

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, New York Times best-selling author Dave Eggers is the voice of a generation. This stunning collection of his matchless short fiction includes the highly acclaimed “The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water.”

One of Canada's most cherished writers, British-born Stephen Leacock was probably best known and loved for his works of light humor. First published in 1912, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is one of his most popular and enduring pieces of fiction. This collection of short stories describes the people that comprise a typical but fictional small town in Ontario - Mariposa. The book's appeal lies in the universality of the characters Leacock describes so eloquently, they live out their 'large' lives in the little town.

There's no one like Etgar Keret. His stories take place at the crossroads of the fantastical, searing, and hilarious. His characters grapple with parenthood and family, war and games, marijuana and cake, memory and love. These stories never go to the expected place, but always surprise, entertain, and move.... In "Arctic Lizard", a young boy narrates a post-apocalyptic version of the world where a youth army wages an unending war, rewarded by collecting prizes. A father tries to shield his son from the inevitable in "Fly Already".