Humor Classics

Eighteen of the very best American short stories, each a classic in its own right. Stories include "The Little Frenchman and his Water Lots", by George Pope Morris; "The Angel of the Odd", by Edgar Allan Poe; "The Schoolmasters’s Progress", by Caroline M.S. Kirkland; "The Watkinson Evening", by Eliza Leslie; "Titbottom’s Spectacles", by George William Curtis; "My Double and "How He Undid Me", by Edward Everett Hale; "A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters", by Oliver Wendell; and more.

This charming story is about a friendly but forgetful blue tang fish as she tries to reunite with her loved ones, and everyone learns a few things about the true meaning of family along the way.

A Signature Performance: Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce delivers an air of lovable self-importance in his rendition of the classic social satire that remains as fresh today as the day it was published.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The...

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

The beloved King Ik is dead, and there was barely time to check his pulse before the royal throne was supporting the suspiciously shapely backside of an impostor pretending to be Ik's beautiful, long-lost daughter. With the land's heroic hunks busy drooling all over themselves, there's only one man left who can save the kingdom of Jenair. His name is Dungar Loloth, a rural blacksmith turned innkeeper, a surly hermit, and an all-around nobody oozing toward middle age, compensating for a lack of height, looks, charm, and tact with guts and an attitude.

Collected here are eleven of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster short stories (comprising all of the Jeeves tales from "Carry On, Jeeves" and "My Man Jeeves") as well as the complete novels Right Ho, Jeeves and The Inimitable Jeeves. Along with Jeeves and Bertie, we are introduced to an entire cast of beloved Wodehouse characters: Gussie Fink-Nottle, Madeline Bassett, Bingo Little, James "Corky" Corcoran, Tuppy and Honoria Glossop, Rockmetteller Todd, and the terrifying and bombastic Aunt Agatha.

While staying with his weird great-aunt Kathryn, Evan visits an eerie old toy store and buys a dusty can of Monster Blood. It's fun to play with at first. And Evan's dog, Trigger, likes it so much, he eats some. But then Evan notices something weird about the slimy green ooze. It keeps growing. And growing. And growing. And all that growing has given the Monster Blood a monstrous appetite...

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

She feels like an eternal wallflower. His father kicked him to the curb. Can two lonely hearts pen their own classic love story? Violet Fuller yearns for her own happily ever after. Certain her town contains zero leading men, the Jane Austen-adoring librarian is devastated when a potential meet cute turns into a coffee shop fiasco. So when she discovers a notice accusing her of failing to pay for the library’s renovations, the people-pleasing young woman is primed for an argument… only to discover a handsome new man in charge. Max Cavanaugh has one foot out the door. Secretly helping to...

Lightning McQueen is a hotshot young race car competing for the coveted Piston Cup. But when he gets lost on the way to a big race, he realizes that he still has a lot to learn about what it takes to be a true friend.

Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes, the story centres on Mr Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to it.

Have you ever wondered how and why the animals came to be as they are? In these magical tales, drawn from stories he heard as a child in India as well as on folk traditions he later collected all over the world, Rudyard Kipling gives some wonderfully imaginative explanations.

Desperate to escape their high-pressure life in Los Angeles, the Finch family moves to rural Oregon. But it doesn’t take long to learn that “small town” is not code for “stress-free.” As the new owners of Applegate's one and only general store, the Finches find that the simple life’s anything but simple when your little store is the town's only grocery store, gas station, hardware store, fire station, and occasional dentist’s office.

An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had...

From Boston's social underworld emerges Verena Tarrant, a girl with extraordinary oratorical gifts, which she deploys in tawdry meeting-houses on behalf of "the sisterhood of women". She acquires two admirers of a very different stamp: Olive Chancellor, devotee of radical causes, and marked out for tragedy; and Basil Ransom, veteran of the Civil War, with rigid views concerning society and women's place therein. Is the lovely, lighthearted Verena made for public movements or private passions?

11-year-old Josh and 12-year-old Amanda just moved into the oldest and weirdest house on the block--the two siblings think it might even be haunted! But of course, their parents don't believe them. You'll get used to it, they say. Go out and make some new friends. But the creepy kids are not like anyone Josh and Amanda have ever met before. And when they take a shortcut through the cemetery one night, Josh and Amanda learn why.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

Scamp is one of Lady and Tramp’s puppies. He has three sisters who are gentle and ladylike, just like their mother. Scamp is not gentle! He longs for mischief. Listen along to this fun audio story as Scamp finds adventure around his neighborhood.

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime—sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag—to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong? In Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a...