Manners Comedy

One enduring bachelor, one determined fixer, and a marriage settlement that refuses to behave. Viscount Aubrey Denham has reluctantly agreed to a dutiful match with a suitable young lady. Her charming, “artistically inclined” brother arrives to secure the contract, recognizes a fellow “enduring bachelor” at once, and quietly begins sabotaging the engagement in favor of an even more unsuitable understanding. Lord Aubrey Denham has spent years evading the young ladies his formidable mother parades before him. His “inclination” is understood, but not excused; his duty is still to ...

Julian Fellowes, creator of the Emmy-Award winning TV series Downton Abbey, established himself as an irresistible storyteller and a deliciously witty chronicler of modern manners in his first novel, Snobs, a wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds of aristocrats and actors. "The...

A Reese's Book Club Pick and New York Times Bestseller “Fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine will love The Cactus.” —Red magazine An unforgettable love story that shows sometimes you have to embrace the unexpected. Susan Green is like a cactus: you can't get too close. She likes...

Two gentlemen. One shared suite. A Season already deciding their story. When impeccably composed Mr. Julian Harcourt and irresistibly unpredictable Lord Adrian Fenwick are assigned adjoining accommodations at Penworth House, society anticipates intrigue, speculation, or at the very least entertainment. What it does not anticipate is companionship. What begins as polite inconvenience becomes, to society’s great satisfaction, a story. Observed by matrons, interpreted by gossip columns, and subtly arranged by well-meaning allies, the Season’s most discussed gentlemen discover that ...

In Miss Julia Hits the Road, she is becoming increasingly concerned about her gentleman friend, Sam, who has suddenly started wearing cowboy boots, sending her flowers, and writing bad poetry. And when he shows up on a Harley-Davidson Road King and asks her to hop on, she's convinced he's lost his mind. Meanwhile, her invaluable housekeeper, Lillian, has been evicted from her home by her greedy landlord. Deciding that Lillian's need is greater than her own fear (not to mention loss of dignity), Miss Julia takes Sam up on his offer and sets off on a motorcycle Poker Run.

Setting A frost-bitten Regency house party at Ashbourne Hall, where candlelight, claret, family debts, and a lake with excellent dramatic instincts all conspire to make Tuesday socially fatal. Hook A debt-bargained engagement becomes a murder investigation when the most irritating man at dinner dies before anyone can decide whether romance, ruin, or dessert should have gone first. Promise A closed-door, banter-rich Regency romance with a true happily ever after, paired with a fair-play country-house mystery built from ledgers, servants’ memories, poisonous manners, and clues that behave ...

When a young woman trades places with her noble cousin, their innocent ruse leads to true love in this sparkling new Regency-era romantic comedy of manners from the author of Mr. Malcolm’s List. When Arabella Grant’s wicked aunt dies suddenly, both Arabella and her cousin Lady Isabelle...

A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America. “All four narrator performances are consistently humorous, real, and winning." — Kirkus (Earphones Award Winner) This program features...

The fantasy novel you've always wished Jane Austen had written Shades of Milk and Honey is exactly what we could expect from Jane Austen if she had been a fantasy writer:Pride and Prejudice meets Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It is an intimate portrait of a woman, Jane, and her quest for love...

Miss Elizabeth Bennet, headstrong and witty, is about to unleash her undying admiration onto one unsuspecting Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy has one mission: To find the lady who bewitched him at the masquerade. Unfortunately, he is clueless to the fact that the masked Queen Elizabeth and Miss Elizabeth are one and the same, which naturally leads him to put his foot in his mouth—repeatedly—until nothing but the consumption of an unrivalled amount of humble pie will redeem him.

‘My name is Harriet Manners, and I am a geek.’ Books 1 – 3 in the bestselling, award-winning GEEK GIRL series. GEEK GIRL Harriet Manners knows that a cat has thirty-two muscles in each ear, a “jiffy” lasts a hundredth of a second, and the average person laughs fifteen times per day...

Coworkers at a legendary but troubled New York City museum struggle with issues large and small over the course of one extraordinary day in this whip-smartnovel that is “satirical and incisive...like nothing you’ve ready before” (Town & Country). When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major...

In Modern Manners, cultural guru P. J. O'Rourke provides the essential accessory for the truly contemporary man or woman - a rulebook for living in a world without rules. Traditionally, good manners were a means of becoming as bland and invisible as everyone else, and thus of avoiding calling attention to one's own awkwardness and stupidity.

Campbell Flynn, art historian, professor, and fêted fixture of the literati, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public—yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. He’s never taken other people half as seriously as they take themselves, which is the first of his mistakes. The second is a new project: opportunistic and precisely calibrated to rake in a fortune.

A gentleman with too much duty. A bookseller with far too many opinions. And a society that notices everything—except what truly matters. England, 1819. Lord Edmund Ashworth has perfected the art of polite evasion. He smiles when required, dances when cornered, and avoids marriage with admirable consistency. Unfortunately, society—and his formidable mother—have decided it is time he be seen. Enter Benjamin Hartley: son of a bookseller, reader of forbidden literature, and a man who does not belong at garden parties… yet refuses to leave them quietly. One chance encounter over ...

Julian Fellowes, creator of the Emmy-Award winning TV series Downton Abbey, established himself as an irresistible storyteller and a deliciously witty chronicler of modern manners in his first novel, Snobs, a wickedly astute portrait of the intersecting worlds of aristocrats and actors. "The...

Grumble globally. Laugh locally. Step into the polished shoes of Britain’s most opinionated old lords as they blunder, bicker, and sip their way through international diplomacy, domestic crises, and improperly brewed tea. Whether facing haunted Scottish inns, Far Eastern tea rituals, or bridge scandals in the drawing room, these noble curmudgeons always carry one thing: a deeply held belief that everything was better in 1903. The Noble Art of Grumbling is a sharp, satirical anthology of short stories for fans of P.G. Wodehouse, dry British wit, and eccentric gentlemen hopelessly out of ...

A Regency romp of ruined playhouses, moral theatricals, and one very ill-advised reunion. When Lord Sebastian Wentworth is sent to a shabby seaside resort to oversee a “moral season” of improving dramas for his brother’s election campaign, he expects leaky ceilings, cabbage-scented air, and pious local committees—not the return of the one man he has never quite managed to forget. Jamie, once a scandalous London actor and Sebastian’s greatest mistake, arrives under a respectable alias to coach the town’s well-meaning amateurs and keep the whole enterprise from collapsing. Between...

AN UNEXPECTED RIVAL The eighth volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain — Cádiz carries Gabriel Araceli into the besieged island city where Spain's first constitution is being born, and where a drawing-room intrigue will end in blood on the sand. It is 1810, and Cádiz is the last free city in Spain. While French cannon fire arcs across the bay and the newly convened Cortes debates sovereignty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of feudal lordships, Gabriel finds himself entangled in a world of tertulias and domestic politics more dangerous ...

Jeeves and Wooster return in a new espionage caper full of japes, high jinks, and jiggery-pokery in a series that is “impossible to read without grinning idiotically” (Evening Standard). The Drones club’s in peril. Gussie’s in love. Spode’s on the war path. Oh, and His Majesty’s...