Short Stories Humor

Topical, relatable, and just plain fun, these and many other stories in this collection deal with friendship, kinship, and the complexities of the modern world, and are sure to leave you with a smile.

In Englander's amazingly taut and ambitious "The Twenty-seventh Man," a clerical error lands earnest, unpublished Pinchas Pelovits in prison with twenty-six writers slated for execution at Stalin's command, and in the grip of torture Pinchas composes a mini-masterpiece, which he recites in one glorious moment before author and audience are simultaneously annihilated. In "The Gilgul of Park Avenue," a Protestant has a religious awakening in the back of a New York taxi.

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.

In the first tale, we follow two workmen on an intriguing journey to Coney Island, where the heartsick and disgruntled Tobin has his palm read. Who knew that palmistry could be so unpredictable? Secondly, a tale of kidnapping gone awry. A little boy, self proclaimed "Red Chief", is taken from his home, and has so much fun he never wants to go back, much to the chagrin of the kidnappers.

Bill Driscoll and Sam (we never learn his last name), a pair of turn-of-the-20th-century con men embark on quite an adventure. The pair need $2,000.00 to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scam in Western Illinois. They decide to kidnap the only son of a prominent Alabama citizen in the small town of Summit. They should've known when they grabbed their target, who was at the time throwing stones at a kitten, that it would be best to leave him alone. Particularly after he beans Bill with a brick. The situation does not improve with time. O Henry, famous for his humor, plays on words, and plot twists makes this a highly amusing short story.

Did you know that just 10 minutes of laughter a day burns calories and keeps you trim? Do you need a good belly laugh or two to release the tension of the day? Would you like to be healthier, happier, and more relaxed? You don’t need a prescription pill just try to up your daily laughter quotient. Research shows that laughter lowers blood pressure, engages your rest-and-digest system, and is linked to physical changes in the body that reduce stress and even increase pain tolerance. So basically, y’all need to be laughing a lot more.

The events unfolded in these tales, the collected shards of my fractured memories, are neither sworn truths nor total fictions. We all know that two different witnesses to the same history standing right beside each other are likely to have differing opinions as to what just transpired before them. Because perceptions, those mirrors to our souls that authors are damned to try and change in others, are born of deeper stuff than mere experiences of perspective. The weight of human experience strongly suggests that this is rarely accomplished by telling the naked truth.

Seventy-five-year-old Eugenia Thompson thinks it's time for a change in her life. After losing her husband last year to a short illness, she decides to mortgage her house and open up a cupcake shop in her hometown of Shelbington, North Carolina. What could possibly go wrong, she wonders? Well, for starters, Eugenia's part-time helper calls out sick on opening day, forcing her to hire a temp on very short notice. She then wonders whether her business will succeed when the avalanche of customers she was expecting doesn't materialize.

Somewhere people act normal - but not in the Downy Mount Mobile Home Park, where recently widowed Marfa Bacot lives with her mother-in-law, Lulu, who cleans from hell to breakfast and has her make-up tattooed on so she's always ready for the rapture.

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths - for good and evil - of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies.

Fitzgerald's tale of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences. This story was the basis for the Oscar-winning Brad Pitt film of the same name.

Jeeves stays his hand. Yes, that's right. Even though a particularly well-upholstered friend of Aunt Agatha chucks her bleary-eyed milk sot of a son, Bertie, for a month. Jeeves refuses to rally to the cause. Of course if Bertie would simply throw out the offensive tie and hat, things might be smoothed over soon enough. But Bertie, just this once, has decided to be firm.

In vignettes both comic and sexy, the owner of a coffee shop recalls the day his first wife seemed to achieve a moment of simple perfection, while she remembers the women's softball game during which she was stricken by the beauty of the shortstop. A young couple spends hours at the coffee shop fueling the idea of their fierce love. A professor of philosophy, stopping by for a cup of coffee, makes a valiant attempt to explain what he knows to be the inexplicable workings of the human heart.

"'Who are you? The new number three. Who is number one? You are prisoner 69."

Galen Micheal presents a zany collection of short stories covering a wide variety of elements, from a cursed chair to a real-life Djinn. Constant throughout the whole collection are relatable characters, bizarre events, and an ever-present dash of humor.

Detta är en antologi med tio kortnoveller. Innehåller följande historier: Jared Pond räddar (och tar mödomen från) en arabisk prinsessa, Meditationslägret, Skjutningen vid Davids herrgård, Diah Lubis och jakten på den perfekta korven, Diah Lubis och jakten på grottryfflarna, och mer.

Detta är en antologi med tio kortnoveller.

The Desert Living Retirement Community is located smack dab in the middle of the Southern California desert, surrounded by windmills. Within this retirement community is a quaint little coffee shop running on a budget. Join the retirees in this quirky and comical short story as they spend their day drinking coffee and gossiping.

The request was a first for Eli Marks: "Can you help me make my tuba disappear?" Magician (and magic shop owner) Eli Marks is confronted with this odd demand just before he is about to close up shop for the day. Over the next few tense minutes, he finds a solution to that question which also, fortunately, puts him the positive side of what turns out to be a life-or-death situation.

In Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts Mr. Darcy has never been more devilish and the seemingly chaste Elizabeth never more turned on. The entire cast of characters from Austen's classic is here in this rewrite that goes all the way. This time Mr. Bingley and his sister both have designs on Mr. Darcy's manhood; Elizabeth's bff Charlotte marries their family's strange relation and stumbles upon a secret world of feminine relations more to her liking.