Humor Short

An awful poet, dumped by his girlfriend, roams through Italy, where he clearly doesn't belong; an oil delivery man falls in love with a clumsy woman and becomes even clumsier than she is; and a six-year-old and his father kill over 200 flies at a horse farm while the father wonders about life and death. Poor Advice and Other Stories, with its mix of the serious and the absurd, reveals Lou Gaglia's humor, imagination, and range.

Within these diverse stories, you will encounter a magician whose finale is murder, shared nightmares, a magic carpet that lives up to its name, a recipe for a Martian non-vegetarian main course, a cook who purloins the body of a stranger, and other interesting topics and characters. A few can be classified as horror stories, one as science fiction, and the majority just plain quirky. There's a story here to amuse almost anyone.

A writer Time magazine has said "everybody should read", Sam Lipsyte, author of the New York Times best-selling The Ask, offers up The Fun Parts, a book of bold, hilarious, and deeply felt fiction. A boy eats his way to self-discovery, while another must battle the reality-brandishing monster preying on his fantasy realm. In another story, an aerobics instructor, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, makes the most shocking leap imaginable to save her soul. These are just a few of the tales, some first published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Playboy, that unfold in Lipsyte’s richly imagined world.

These stories attest to the generous compass of Thomas McGuane's fellow feeling, as well as to his unique way with words. In this collection, filled with grace and humor, the ties of family make for uncomfortable binds: A devoted son is horrified to discover his mother's antics before she slipped into dementia, and a father's outdoor skills are no match for a change in the weather. But complications arise equally in the absence of blood, as when lifelong friends on a fishing trip finally confront their deep dislike for each other.

This is a humorous, episodic novel of dark fantasy and science fiction, composed of the four novellas Amy and the Ankylosaurus, Helen and the Evil Elves of the Elder Gods, Sithe in the City, and Dragon vs Dinosaur. It begins when Magnus creates a device to open portals to other quantum universes so he can show his ex-girlfriend, Amy, real dinosaurs. This goes awry when Amy goes through the portal and he has to rescue her, accompanied by his fellow scientist Helen, Amy's best friend.

In a quartet of tribute tales from theses authors that both idolize and have recently encountered Hank's works, the voice of the poet laureate of the gutter is restored, so that once more the good duker can take a swing.

Ebola Saves the Planet! and Other Wholesome Tales is a collection of 11 wild tales from the mind of Matthew A. Clarke.

Alicia Erian's characters are brave, disarming, affectionate, and deeply flawed. They inhabit the not-so-very-wide space between a good intention and a bad outcome. The Brutal Language of Love challenges traditional notions of right and wrong with what has become Erian's signature—an achingly stylish humor and a deep understanding of the brutal truth about human nature. These surprising, provocative, and deeply resonant stories marked the emergence of a major talent.

This anthology consists of 50 stories, which are separated into four series, as well as independent stories.

Have you ever passed out and woken up in your girlfriend’s apartment only to find you’ve lost access to your multi-million dollar dark web auctioning website–right after she found out she’s not your only girlfriend? Have you ever been accused of attempted murder by a talented and vindictive mime? Have you ever gone to jail for defending yourself against a papercut from a yoga teacher? If you haven’t, you haven’t lived!

Hollywood and Broadway are icons of the American Dream. But what happens to those who feed off that dream? Just as drug cartels have many underlings who must get paid along the journey to the addicts, so do the characters who need to be nourished by the luminaries who make up this star-studded world above us. James Musgrave’s collection of 11 stories, in many ways, addresses the theme of “star power”, but in a way that satirizes the stereotypical “Hollywood endings” in very unique and literary ways.

This book consists of 27 short stories of murder, mystery and mayhem. This is book one in a series of eight short story compilation books.

Meet Rowena Halley, a former human rights activist turned academic. Rowena thought teaching on US college campuses would be a lot safer than interviewing torture victims in Russia. Boy, was she wrong. Rowena quickly gets caught up in campus intrigue that threatens to turn deadly. Meanwhile, the life and lover she thought she’d left behind in Moscow might not be so firmly back in the past as she’d believed.

It's junior year and Rachael is psyched to ditch dorm life and share a house with four other girls. But, she can't shake the ominous feeling about her narcissistic roommate-landlady, who has a history of derailing her love life. And then there are those uninvited visits by the ex-boyfriend of another roommate, who brings brushes with the law and heaps of drama as his calling card. When Rachael's mother and her psychic groupies show up in their double-decker bus during a house party, Mom reveals a troubling premonition.

E.E. King offers a unique perspective on life, love and sometimes the meaning of the universe. This exuberant collection of short fiction and a novella is often hysterical, occasionally tragic and always thoughtful. Funny and dark, these tales will have you up all night.

Surprising and revealing, set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, Ann Beattie's astutely observed new collection explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging.

Few authors in America write with such sheer love of story, language, and imagination as T.C. Boyle, and nowhere is that passion more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and widely praised short stories. In After the Plague, Boyle speaks of contemporary social issues in a range of emotional keys. Presented with characteristic wit and intelligence, these 16 stories will delight readers in search of the latest news of the chaotic, disturbing, and achingly beautiful world in which we live.

Amalia Guglielminetti (1881 –1941) fu una scrittrice e poetessa italiana, nota forse più per il suo legame con Guido Gozzano che per i suoi scritti. Eppure di lei Graf scrisse: «la sua ispirazione è viva, schietta, delicata quanto più si possa dire, e l'arte la seconda a meraviglia. Quelle sue figure di fanciulle e donne son cose di tutta gentilezza, e molti sonetti son di squisita fattura.

A senior older brother calls his sister to pay for his prostitute. A dissatisfied young housewife attends a Total Woman seminar. Twirling class from a tyrannical band director. Just a few of the East Texas hard-living souls erupting from Small Texas, a collection of short stories from the wild mind of Cindy Marabito

Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible.