With Erma Bombeck in your corner, laughter is the best coach you can have....

    Set in the darkest days of the Great Depression, this is the timeless story of an 11-year-old orphan’s rollicking journey through the Deep South with a con man who just might be her father. Brimming with humor, pathos, and an irresistible narrative energy, this is American storytelling at its finest. Paper Moon is tough, vibrant, and ripe for rediscovery.

    It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.

    Offering all the qualities of his general bestselling fiction, this is Tom Sharpe's blazing satire of South African apartheid, companion to Indecent Exposure.

    He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life. She liberates trees from city sidewalks and transplants them to the forest, paints smiles on the faces of church statues, and “borrows” cars to remind their owners that life is fleeting—here today, gone tomorrow! A chance meeting between the two turns into a madcap, whirlwind romance, and Harold learns that life is worth living. Harold and Maude started as Colin Higgins’ master’s thesis at UCLA Film School, and the script was purchased by Paramount. The film, directed by Hal Ashby, was released in 1971 and it bombed. But soon this quirky, dark comedy began being shown on college campuses and at midnight-movie theaters, and it gained a loyal cult following. This novelization was written by Higgins and published shortly after the film’s release but has been out of print for more than 30 years. Even fans who have seen the movie dozens of times will find this companion valuable, as it gives fresh elements to watch for and answers many of the film’s unresolved questions.

    But what shines through these five vignettes is the author's engagement with and immense affection for animals in all their forms. From fish to fowl, from lizards to little water fleas (daphnia), Durrell's eye is acute and his prose is tart. You can read this book for the humor alone (for he did perceive his family as some rare and rarefied species), but between the lines you can discern the makings of a world-class naturalist and a cultivated and engaging writer.

    She gets anxious about running out of ball bearings; about snakes sneaking in through the pipes; about making meaningful conversation on New Year’s Eve. Married life, she realizes, is an unpredictable saga even when you know exactly how loud your husband snores every night—and she wouldn’t have it any other way. In this crisp collection of essays, Bombeck shows off the irresistible style that made her one of America’s favorite humorists for more than three decades. When she sharpens her wit, no family member is sacred and no self-help fad is safe.

    Publisher-Darien House in 1971. Over 600 illustrations

    gave me a travel warrant, a white feather and a picture of Hitler marked "This is your enemy". I searched every compartment, but he wasn't on the train . . .'In this, the first of Spike Milligan's uproarious recollections of life in the army, our hero takes us from the outbreak of war in 1939 ('it must have been something we said'), through his attempts to avoid enlistment ('time for my appendicitus, I thought') and his gunner training in Bexhill ('There was one drawback. No ammunition') to the landing at Algiers in 1943 ('I closed my eyes and faced the sun. I fell down a hatchway').Filled with bathos, pathos and gales of ribald laughter, this is a barely sane helping of military goonery and superlative Milliganese.'The most irreverent, hilarious book about the war that I have ever read' Sunday Express'Desperately funny, vivid, vulgar' Sunday Times'Milligan is the Great God to all of us' John Cleese'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy' Eddie Izzard'That absolutely glorious way of looking at things differently. A great man' Stephen FrySpike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comedians of the twentieth century. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during WWII in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success as on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.

    it’s a plane . . . it’s Snoopy! As he zooms through the air and fights off the infamous Red Baron, nothing can stop this flying ace and his Sopwith Camel—except maybe dinner.

    I Paint What I See by Gahan Wilson (Apr 1975) ISBN#: 0671220314 Publisher: Simon & Schuster, a fireside book Format: soft cover Pages: Condition: used, (good) the covers showing wear around the edges, inside is clean & unmarked

    A man is distressed. A thief scampers over rooftops. A child is in danger. A harangued salesclerk weeps. A dog save the day.The intriguing story of The Sopping Thursday is unlike any other Edward Gorey book, both because of its unique gray-and-black illustrations and because it has a happy ending (if one is to dismiss any worry about the child featured in the last frame). In just thirty images and thirty short lines of text, Gorey manages to create a complex tableau of characters and a plot worthy of film noir.

    Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000 (the day after Schulz's death), continuing in reruns afterward. The strip is considered to be one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, with 17,897 strips published in all. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.

    Stories and verse featuring characters from the television show introduce number concepts, letters of the alphabet, and word meanings.

    Sherrock Commission (England, 1939) The Iranian Farmer Commission (Iran, 1942) The General LaCorte Commission (France, 1944) The Scotland Yard Commission (England & France, 1945)Augustus Mandrell: No birth certificate ... no passport ... no identification ... no fixed address ... in fact, he is not officially alive. Which is fortunate, because neither does he have a license to kill. But he does, and supremely well. Not to mention often. Who is Mandrell? British C.I.D. American OSS, the Surete, Interpol and many other agencies would dearly want to know. But they never will. Why? Because Mandrell is a man unlike any other - a throwback, an individualist, a smooth killer who admires beauty in all things (girls, jewels, money ... rugs) yet whose final objective is the ultimate in violence; a man to whom impossible challenge is meat and drink, the thrill of a manhunt is his life's blood, the final savagery merely a necessary part of the murderous courtship that leads up to it. Mandrell kills for profit. You'll love him for it.

    Originally broadcast in Not Only...But Also, these sketches preserve the idot wisdom of Cook and Moore's celebrated, cloth-capped alter-egos, Pete and Dud.

    To put a stop to his wife's unqueenly behavior, the king makes singing and dancing illegal, only to find the queen is willing to sing and dance in jail with the rest of the kingdom.

    

    

    It tell us, for example, what the sixties were truly all about, not by reporting on the psychedelic decade but by recreating it, from the inside out. In the process, this stunningly original seriocomic thriller is fully capable of simultaneously eating a literary hot dog and eroding the borders of the mind.

    Relates the adventures of a little rabbit and his porcupine friend.

    When the Atlantic Ocean disappears, only six-year-old Harry Frogfoot III can get it back.

    signed books

    In 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald arranged for How to Write Short Stories to be published and more attention was then paid to Lardner's work.

    Schulz comic strip PEANUTS.

    

    Who else?

    

    Eight brief episodes show that even best friends and sunny days can have shortcomings.

    Compiled by Douglas and his friends during their twilight years, it was intended for private use among those who were 'anxious to preserve for as long as may be possible the vitality of their youth and middle age'. Now, Venus in the Kitchen is available to all of us who crave an extra dose of vigor in our diets.A whimsical marriage of the utilitarian and the absurd, this collection of over a hundred annotated recipes runs the gamut from the simple and delicious (almond soup) to the dangerously effective (hysterical water) to the downright ridiculous (sparrows' brains, crane). Complete with beautiful vintage illustrations, introductions by Graham Greene and Stephen Fry, and an unforgettable frontispiece by D.H. Lawrence (whom Douglas quipped 'certainly looked as if his own health would have been improved by a course of such recipes as I had gathered together'), Douglas' irreverent cookbook is a gift you can either slip discreetly under your lover's pillow, or keep for yourself.

    

    Wry humor, deadpan delivery, and ironic insight reflect both the shattered innocence and conflicted patriotism of a generation and the definitive tone that has come to represent the 1960s in contemporary culture. Journalistic detail and narrative development of each week's events challenge traditional patriotic images and speak to the current debates of political and military authoritarianism.