eBook Listing For Genre "Humor"

Political unrest. government scandal. corruption... extortion! What do all these things have in common? They are perfect targets for satire! In Sitting on Cold Porcelain, readers will find an amusing, perceptive, and laugh-out-loud take on the state of our country and our world, on celebrities and politicians, and all the news events that make us roll our eyes and groan.

Its satirical essays include "Giuliani's Gaffe Could Qualify for Political Darwin Award," "Rush Limbaugh: The Don Rickles of Radio," "State of The Union 2010: Bitch-Slapping Congress," "Islamic Cleric Declares Jihad on Mickey Mouse," "Little Egypt to Run Against Sarah Palin," and "Who Moved My Mascarpone?"

As Derek and April discuss their dire financial situation after being rejected for food stamps and told to have children by the county welfare office, their ten-inch long red devil cichlid fish paces the 50-gallon with an expression that every owner knows too well: Feed me! Feed me! Feed me! When Derek gets the brilliant idea of serving up the red devil as fish filet, the red devil has other ideas about what's available for dinner.

This 1,380-word short story first appeared in Fiction365 (4 July 2011).

Kitty, are you wasting your nine lives by always napping on the same windowsill, chasing the dog around the kitchen table, sniffing catnip mousies on the couch? If so, you're in a rut. Roberta Beach Jacobson, former Cat Lady blogger at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, encourages you to take charge, to strut your stuff, to be your own cat. She offers an inspirational exercise for every day of the month. Who doesn't desire to lead a flealess, fearless feline life?

Something to Read on the Plane is a light-hearted variety of ‘back page’ humorous articles, short stories ranging from hypochondria to murder, plus a quiz, agony aunt column, limericks and a collection of malapropisms to keep passengers amused.

For your reading comfort we have used a decent-sized font and made the book pocket-sized, and for those who only read books with pictures we have included a few illustrative drawings (except for the kindle version as the HTML conversion threw up its hands and didn’t want to know)

REVIEWS
"Should be compulsory reading to keep incorrigible chatterers quiet" - Frequent Flyer.
"Could also be used to ram down their throats" - Flight Attendant.
"The stories about me are hugely exaggerated" - Author's Spouse.
"Shredded drafts of this book line my litter tray. Royalties from this book will go towards proper deodorized litter and reduce complaints about the smell" - Family Cat
"What a relief that will be" - Family Dog.

In an undisclosed location somewhere in China’s wall, a most peculiar baker labored dawn to post-nightfall. This surreptitious baker used fortune and good luck to craft world-famous dishes; his name was Peking Duck. So skilled in Asian cooking this waterfowl’d become— the multi-tasking Peking Duck could wok while chewing gum.

To kick-off Rantalicious' monthly Thrifty eBook Series, Alisa Steinberg is celebrating the last month of Spring in "Rantalicious: Spring has Sprung" with three humorous and heartwarming true-life tales for the season and all-year-round.

Go back to childhood and Spring in the early 1970s with the first of these tales -"The Kissing Girls Club"; experience the enchantment of the season in "Behind the Magic Eight Ball"; and fly off to college in New York in "Birds of a Feather."

Read the Rantalicious series and "Rantalicious: True Tirades from a Woman on the Edge," and find out why Steinberg is the ultimate ranter.

Fearless Francis is a little boy living in Glasgow in the late 1950s. He lives in a fantasy world, playing in the tenement streets and backcourts, having all sorts of imaginary adventures…….but they are more like mishaps!

Children growing up in these old run-down Glasgow tenements did not know that the poor sanitary conditions and low pay endured by their parents contributed to ill health and low living standards.

A young healthy child like Francis only knew that fun could be had with his friends among the discarded furniture, abandoned cars, tin cans to use as footballs or climbing up small outhouses in the backcourts. Children did not need expensive toys to play with, just their imagination.

This introduction has 4 short stories:

The Martian Invasion Of Cubie Street

The Phantom Jobby Flinger

Gunfight On The Auchenshuggle Express

The Graveyard Game

An alternative fairy tale with heart.
Written in verse and just 2,200 words, 8 is the story of Creepy, who is banished to the cottage basement for being different. From there, he affects the plot of the original fairy tale when Snow White (an intruder Creepy refers to as "The Maid") happens upon their dwelling.

It's Tim Burton meets Wicked in a tale with heart reviewers have called "clever" and "charming". The theme of being ostracized for being different is crafted to appeal to tween, teen and up.

Emmet Storch was an unemployed sponger who thought he had no calling in life. All that changed when he landed a job in the call centre at the monolithic Star Insurance where, from the very first day, he was magnificent. It was as if the very essence of insurance ran through his veins and he and his telephone were as one. Irate policyholders found comfort in his soothing words; recalcitrant contractors became polite and respectful. It would have been perfect if not for his lecherous and treacherous hormones.

A humorous look at love and lust in the iAge where consumerism runs rampant and integrity can go and get stuffed.

Abutting an abandoned barn, a crib devoid of corn, with weathervane and cupola, the rooftop, sagged and worn. The corncrib was repurposed by fowl society, a chicken troupe—Barred Plymouth Rocks, the white variety.

Bandleader of the feathered group,
This five-fowl poultry show,
A southern bird of Creole stock
Was dubbed Ole Chick’ Gumbo.

Ole Gumbo plucked the banjo strings,
On French horn — Cordon Bleu,
With Kiev on percussion,
And Lo Mein played kazoo.

"Love Me, Need Me: A Narcissist's Tale" is about a bumbling sexual predator, narcissist, and author of three insipid zombie books. Middle-aged Arlen J. Stevenson hails from Alabama. His relentless and often hilarious pursuit of women online leads him to our other protagonist, Los Angeles-based writer of term papers, Helena Hoffman.

She isn’t aware of what Arlen is as she only sees his amusing and entertaining side in their daily email correspondence.

Told in alternating points of view, we see Arlen’s self-absorbed lifestyle as he endeavors to screw his numerous catches all over the South. Helena and Arlen get friendlier via their online communication, and he invites her to be his personal manager because of her communications skills, gullibility factor and location. Unlike his other victims, she never sends him pictures of herself, but she launches a MySpace site for his new company. Soon he realizes there are thousands of available women in his region alone! Unlike the jailbait that many online stalkers pursue, Arlen chases after their mothers and grandmothers. Helena is aware of his perpetual cheating and decides to investigate it in person. What happens after that is alternately scary and darkly humorous.

This controversial book contains graphic sexual content and language.

By Craig Davis

Joe B. enjoys the sweet life as a vice president at a huge conglomerate, Universal Whirligig, where his career has been humming. But along with the Big Boss’ favor, he has also gained the notice of a bitter human resources manager, Luci Fernandez. Hateful of any success but her own, Luci manages to get him demoted to the mailroom! A rollicking comedy of errors follows as Joe B. tries to figure out what's happened to him -- why he and his home have been consigned to such suffering -- and attempts to get a meeting with the Big Boss.

Joe B.'s great expectations have taken an all-over twist. His family is forced to make a series of hard adjustments, and he gets only lame comforts from a string of the worst friends anyone could have. Will he persevere in the workplace? Will he finally track down the cause of his frustrations? Or will he only learn a lesson about what it is to be the boss, and that what is apparent is often only a shadow of a greater ongoing good?

The Midwest Book Review calls "The Job: Based on a True Story (I mean, this is bound to have happened somewhere)" "a humorous and enlightening read. Highly recommended." "The Job" is a modern parable, a comic tragedy of ancient troubles and truths.

‘Fun with Dick and Shane’ introduces Gillibran Brown, a houseboy with the gift of the gab.

Gilli shares a unique relationship with his Daddies Dick and Shane. Based on Gilli’s personal diaries the book deals with everyday life, love and corporal punishment in a gay ménage à trois.

Gilli’s observations and anecdotes are entertaining, sometimes hilarious and often moving.

If you think this houseboy’s life might interest you, then welcome. Step over the threshold, but wipe your feet first, as he’s just polished the parquet.

A funny, fascinating, insightful and sexy book about men in a discipline relationship.

•Do you refuse to take the top newspaper on a stack (even if perfect)?
•Insist that the toilet paper hang "over"?
•Wait for the phone to ring at least twice before answering?
•Keep returning to the refrigerator hoping that something new to eat has materialized?

Outrageous, outlandish and downright ridiculous eccentricities exhibited (and confessed to) by otherwise normal people. From hilarious bathroom behavior, funny money routines, and unconventional clothing habits to eating and sleeping peculiarities, germ-a-phobia, and more. Everyone has at least one oddity in his or her daily way of life. Reiser documents the zany traits that make us who we are.

Just what extremes do people go to in their everyday activities?

•Flipping through a magazine at a newsstand then reaching for a fresh copy to buy because the one they were flipping through is no longer new.
•Enumerating (1, 2, 3...) while urinating and trying to end their peeing on an even number.
•Eating the most expensive part of a meal first, just in case they can’t finish everything.
•Ironing the newspaper before reading it to protect themselves against germs.
•Wearing T-shirts an equal number of times so none of them will get offended.

You will laugh while gaining insight into yourself and others!
People do the darndest things!
http://www.judyreiser.com

Have you ever dreamed of winning lotto? Dreaming about all the things you will do with those amazing, wonderful millions.

Tahlia Cameron does. Every day! Poring over her gratitude folder full of the things she wants to buy, and do, and have. It possesses all of her waking thoughts. So does a certain suave TV actor.

Which TV star is she referring to? Michael Anthony! Star of the sexily suave TV naval drama she watches every week. Tahlia is convinced she will win lotto, and when she does, she will move to L.A. and marry him. Then the call comes. She's won lotto.

Moving to L.A. she sets up her business, goes after the man she loves, has run-ins with seriously bitchy celebs, one being the bitch (not the bane) of her existence, is stalked by a hot Italian stud from a hot TV crime drama, and saves a big wig TV network C.E.O., then his wife. And it all happens before she meets Michael!

But tragedy strikes at a huge network function, where she has to save Michael, and every actor, actress and C.E.O. from the network all while bleeding to death!!! And then open her company for business the following week!

Tahlia's life is now way too complicated as she battles her own anguished demons, life altering wounds and seriously depleted karma from the fallout. Everyone's calling her a hero. She sees herself as a killer. And the pain that follows is hell to deal with. But with the love of the man she finally snagged, she knows she can get through anything and gain her good karma back. Especially with Michael by her side. And then she receives a call. Another call. A call that's about to change her life. Again.

"Hello…Tahlia. This is Oprah Winfrey."

When a girl with obsessive compulsive disorder falls in love with a sociopath, she must fight for her sanity and her life.

Maxine’s brain is stuck. Everything around her feels wrong and the only way to fix it is to check, double-check, rearrange and count everything. What Maxine can’t fix though is her parents’ constant nagging over the absence of a husband. A humiliation that is further compounded when her younger brother runs off with Miss Perfect. Then she meets Sam, a smooth-talking charmer with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and enough terminal diseases to wipe out a small village. Maxine decides that Sam is her salvation, never mind that his life is more depressing than a Greek tragedy, and others are urging her to get away from him. The problem is that Sam has Maxine under his spell. Will Maxine escape from Sam before it’s too late?


A Life Lived Ridiculously will be published and available for purchase in April 2012

A seashore near the ocean where
The breakers scattered foam,
A turtle dwelt with two small friends—
The sandy beach their home.
“Benevolence”—their motto,
Marine Society
Of turtle, clam, and hermit crab—
Companions by the sea.

The turtle’s shell – beguiling—
Chartreuse with flecks of puce,
But flawed—a leak predicament—
Her shell, a trifle loose.
Her faulty home let in a draft
When ocean breezes blew,
The gusts that wafted ‘round felt like
El Niño swirling through.

Every civilization needs to reflect on what is or is not important. In times gone by, it was knowledge, love, or honour. Things have changed.

At the dawn of Western society, great thinkers and writers such as Plato, Aristophanes, and Euripides bent their minds to the many problems that beset our fledgling civilization. Their toil played no small part in making the West what it is today. Time marches on, however, and Western civilization has evolved and changed. Sadly, Plato and his toga-wearing contemporaries are no longer all that relevant to your average iPod toting consumer.

Symposia is made up of 5 short stories that revisit the themes that motivated Plato, Aristophanes, and Euripides. Thankfully, they are not around to complain...

Through the middle of a cornfield with its ripe and golden grain, ‘round a waist-high prairie meadow wound a pot-hole riddled lane. It was there a shallow puddle where a sign read, “Zoned – No wake,” (named with hopeful aspirations)was the pond called Mammoth Lake.

Now the puddle, at its broadest point was scarcely ten feet wide, and submerged within its shallow depths a catfish did reside. A well-educated catfish for he’d memorized the rules so he’d graduate—top of his class at Small Fry Catfish School.