Short Stories Humor

Emily Keane has her life all planned out. She's played by the rules and never stepped outside her box, and now she will finally be rewarded with everything she always dreamed of: a job promotion, a fiancé, and a future she can count on. But when her perfectly planned world falls apart, Emily is plunged into the wildest year of her life. From the beaches of California to Jamaica, New York, and Europe, Emily finds herself on a madcap race against time, running from an unscrupulous organ broker who wants her dead, all the while checking items off her unusual bucket list.

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.

Ready to feel the chills running down your spine? Wait, that's just the green gelatin monster from one of the stories in this collection of very silly (and a few not-so-silly) horror stories. Vampires, werewolves, demons, mummies, and zombies compete with evil little Shirley Temple look-alikes and their collectibles, centerpieces and church women, cops and monster hunters, for your laughs. It's a light-hearted take on the horror genre.

Here is a story collection about love, death, humor, and the glue called family. In one narrative, a man wakes up one morning to find the odor of dead fish won't go away, but no one else can smell it. In another, a couple's visit with friends to watch the Academy Awards has the protagonist envying his friends' lawn and lifestyle. In these and 11 other stories, Christopher Meeks balances tragedy and wit.

Ever dream about writing to your favorite writer and receiving a package as a reply? What's in that package? What if you could see murders and suicides before they happened? How would you proceed? Easy answer, but what if you enjoyed it? Why is a grandmother singing about the apocalypse in the street? Most importantly, what's your good line?

“Creemos que somos únicos e irrepetibles. Nos han vendido la idea (y sin dudarlo la hemos comprado) de que nadie es como nosotros. Pero la realidad es que nos parecemos tanto a los demás que no nos damos cuenta. Crecemos con la necesidad de sentirnos integrados a nuestra comunidad y nos hacemos dependientes de las masas. Hacemos lo que hacen los demás, queremos ser como la gente que admiramos. Somos todo lo que vemos, escuchamos, leemos, comemos, bebemos, compramos, amamos y odiamos. Vivimos con el instinto gregario a flor de piel”.

J. Harris Anderson's popular character Thumper Billington is at a crossroads in his life. A brief and impetuous marriage has ended, a new person has captured his interest. Has she captured his heart too? How can he assure this new relationship will be the one he's always hoped for? An avid foxhunter, he comes to a compelling realization: Life is about The Chase. Through a series of stories and lessons, told with wry humor and sprinkled with a wealth of practical tips, Thumper brings the listener along on his journey of discovery. It's Dave Barry meets Rita Mae Brown meets Dr. Phil!

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.

Todos somos los héroes o las heroínas de nuestro propio cuento. Pero ese cuento cambia según quién decida ponerse tras el papel para narrarlo, o quizás si entran en escena personajes que no nos esperábamos o que deciden, de golpe, cobrar un papel más protagonista. ¿Qué pasaría si el príncipe no puede salvar a la princesa... porque tiene que quedarse en casa cuidando a su padre? ¿El cuento hubiera terminado de la misma manera?

Wodehouse introduces us once again to the "wonder butler" Jeeves, who, as usual is able to solve any and all of Bertie Wooster's endless problems with ease and finesse. And he also introduces us to a character not dissimilar to Bertie . . . by name of Reggie. Such fun to follow Jeeves in the hijinks!

Clare es una adolescente normal en su primer año de preparatoria. Ansía ser aceptada, y no desea otra cosa que escapar de su realidad. Encuentra seguridad y santuario dibujando y escribiendo historias, pero cuando conoce a Sherry, comienza a combinar su necesidad de interacción humana con su gusto por la fantasía. Juntas las dos jóvenes se embarcan en una aventura en la que el subdirector, el señor Cortez, es la estrella.

Horror, humor, and science fiction collide in this collection of weird tales about possible futures, warped present-day realities, and alternate history. Unreliable narrators run rampant alongside aliens, ghosts, bullies, cannibals, home invaders, heroes, villains, unimaginable creatures, and gifted individuals of all ages. Paranoia, fear, and bizarre situations abound in these reality-bending stories guaranteed to take you places you've never been.

He has the mind of a child, the sexual proclivities of a teenager - and the subconscious of a scientific genius. And despite the best efforts of Mama Schimmelhorn to get her old man to make Swiss cuckoo clocks by day and stay home by night, Papa's inventions will keep coming.

Seventeen stories of small-town America that will make you laugh. Guaranteed. If you grew up in the rural Midwest, you've met big, easy-going Sheriff Tip Tungate, with his uniquely local sense of justice. You've sat in front of hulking principal Butch Bauer, who runs "the best sports program in the state", and seen his football trophies in the display case behind him. You have eaten baked beans and chocolate cake at the church carry-in supper, been embarrassed by a revival, and seen what happens in small towns to intellectuals who won't shut up.

In this collection of 19 short stories, Craig Nybo invites you to visit the lives of mostly unfortunate souls as they face the most terrifying moments of their existences. With everything from vampire hunting to zombie bashing, from steampunk death devices to shifty soul brokers, Nybo brings his own sense of perspective and, of course, his sense of humor to this collection of departures from reality. Terrifying Lies contains Nybo's acclaimed story, "The Mechanic", along with 18 other tales of the macabre.

Bella and Andy have escaped the rat race for the sun-drenched, relaxed lifestyle on the island of Ibiza. But with a run-down house to make habitable and a distractingly gorgeous neighbour, is their island idyll all that it seems? Tamara Gold has been Hollywood's most notorious car crash since she was a child star. Now clean and sober, and engaged to Tinseltown's hottest leading man, it seems like she's finally conquered her addictions, if not her bratty behaviour. But a summer in Europe with all the hedonistic lures of Ibiza beckons.…

The third of the Sweet Tea story collections treats listeners to a panorama of Southern life, both then and now. Family dramas, comic mishaps, sentimental remembrances and poignant choices illuminate these thirteen stories by new and established authors. There's something for every listener: The gritty realism of a hunt for wild boars, the gentle grieving for a home now filled only with memories, the funny battle between a woman and her recipe for deviled eggs, and much more.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

So there was all that: the ordinary twill of life; the ho-hum sturm und drang of the workplace: the ubiquitous absurdities, the annoying co-workers, the bloody deadlines and even bloodier bottom lines; the bland, eternal, Sisyphean, absolute, unrelenting, surreal certainty of the day-in-and-day-out of it all. Life as a slice of white bread, moistened with spit and rolled into a messy glob, a doughy ball that couldn't make the slightest dent in the iron gates of life. But then, suddenly, on August 27, 2002, all that changed. Suddenly, Rae-Jean's uneventful life began to leaven and swell with hypotheticals.

Raising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon-to-be 26th president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley's assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a "perfect bull in a china shop," a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president.