A collection of odes, fables, stories, limericks, songs, nursery rhymes on cats drawing on sources from all periods of history, worldwide. It includes every aspect of the subject from myths and legends, queens and kittens, the domestic tiger, the fireside sphinx, Old Deuteronomy, the Witch's familiar, Krazy Cats, Felix D'or and In Memoriam.
The mummy lives . . . As a figure of the supernatural the mummy has attained iconic status in the popular imagination. For the first time, The Mammoth Book of the Mummy presents a collection of tales written for the twenty-first century-including three brand-new stories-that explore, subvert, and reinvent the mummy mythos. Some delve into the past, others explore alternative histories, and some bring mummies into our own world. Within these covers lie stories of revenge, romance, monsters, and mayhem, ranging freely across time periods, genres, and styles sure to please both mummy-lovers and those less wrapped up in mummy lore!
With over 10,000 entries, arranged by topic and fully indexed, here is a giant new collection of witticisms and wisecracks for the 21st century. If you're looking for a bon mot for an after-dinner talk, struggling to put the finishing touches to a wedding speech or just want to cheer yourself and your mates up, this fabulous fat book provides all you'll ever need. Entries range from insults, put-downs, gags and one-liners to homespun philosophy, witty proverbs, movie quotes and graffiti. Among the contributors featured are Woody Allen, Dave Barry, P. J. O'Rourke, Winston Churchill, Will Rogers, Jay Leno, P. G. Wodehouse, Bill Cosby, W. C. Fields, Oscar Wilde, Spike Milligan, Groucho Marx, George Bernard Shaw and many more. Never be stuck for a good line again! 'Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.' P. J. O'Rourke 'I'm sure sex wouldn't be as rewarding as winning the World Cup. It's not that sex isn't good, but the World Cup is every four years and sex is not.' Ronaldo
A collection of 10,000 side-splitting one-line jokes arranged in categories from bestselling humour editor Geoff Tibballs. 'Is my wife dissatisfied with my body? A small part of me says yes.' 'Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.' 'I read somewhere that 26 is too old to still live with your parents. It was on a note, in my room.'
Love will find a way - 19 fantastic future-set romances. The good news is, in the future there will be no shortage of romance. On space ships, on newly-colonized planets or on a barely recognizable Earth, life forms, whether human, alien or something in between, will find their way to love. As giant corporations grasp new opportunities for profit and future armies clash, both in deep space and 'dirtside', former romantic partners try to put the past behind them and time-travelling rebels set out to romance the past. These science fiction stories of future love and lust - by Marcella Burnard, Bianca d'Arc, Jess Granger, Linnea Sinclair, C. L. Wilson and many more - are brimming with passion and humour. So, even though in space no one can hear you scream, they might just be able to hear you laugh.
This dazzling new collection of off-the-wall fantasies features stories from the minds of the funniest writers in the field, including Esther Friesner, Neil Gaiman, Tom Holt, Paul di Filippo, Adam Roberts and Molly Brown. Here are 35 stories guaranteed to reassure us that the next-door world will be just as mad as this one. It includes a mix of brand-new stories and rare finds or forgotten gems, with a wide range of tales to suit every taste in humour. From the missionary plunged into the bizarre initiation rituals of a lost tribe to the bloke who thought magic would help his love life, from a wizard allergic to magic who sneezes his way into chaos to a man who finds his shoes have taken over control of his life, The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy unfalteringly turns fantasy and horror fiction on its head and makes magic into mayhem. A welcome new shot of comic genius in the sphere of fantasy fiction.
Whether celebrated in odes, fables, stories, limericks, songs, nursery rhymes or just plain caterwauls, cats have been part of our lives since ancient times. This book brings together the very best that has been written about cats in poetry and prose for more than a millennium. It includes: poets on cats, including Chaucer, Emily Dickinson, Edward Thomas, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, Shelley, William Wordsworth, and Oscar Wilde; writers such as Ellis Peters, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, George Mackay Brown, Saki, and Mark Twain; and jokes and humor from Lewis Carroll and Ambrose Bierce to Edward Lear and Jerome K. Jerome. Draws on resources from all periods of history.
This bumper collection of Irish humour covers topics such as Absenteeism and Zoos and everything in between. It would be disappointing should such a large collection not include the best of famous Irish wits such as Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, but the emphasis is very much on contemporary Irish humour from the likes of Tommy Tiernan, Dylan Moran, Ardal O'Hanlon and Dara O'Briain, to name just a few. Lunatic, iconoclastic and, as Spike Milligan might have put it, involving 'sideways thinking', this is Irish humour at its very best.
Hear the cannon roar at Valley Forge with George Washington, dance the night away at a Chicago Speakeasy during Prohibition, take a ringside seat for the gunfight at the OK Corral, ride Apollo 11 to the moon, hear Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, join with Harry S. Truman on the A-bomb deliberations, land with John Smith at Virginia, ride against Custer at Little Horn, get on down to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, march to 'The Grapes of Wrath' at Shiloh, work your fingers to the bone at Henry Ford's car plant . . . this is America - the beautiful, the powerful, the tragic, the glorious. The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: America is the story of the making of America in the very words of those who were there, from its 'discovery' by Christopher Columbus to George W. Bush's War Against Terrorism. Composed of firsthand eye-witness accounts of the seminal moments in US history, this is an intimate, revealing, insightful guide to the greatest nation on earth. In five chronological sections, this volume tracks the main phases of American history: Discovery, including the exploration and settlement of America; Independence, the Revolution and wars against British rule; Destiny, covering expansion into the West and the split between North and South; Frontier, including the settlement of the American West and the Indian Wars; and finally Century, the 100 years that saw America becoming a superpower on the world's political stage.
Twenty tales of intrigue, murder and mayhem from this most bloodthirsty and exciting of times. With dramatic settings ranging form the Eternal City of Rome to the most remote outposts of her Empire, here are new tales form the masters of the historical detective story, with classic gems and rare reprints - plus a special introduction, and a new Gordianus the Finder novella from Steven Saylor. A Gladiator Dies Only Once, Steven Saylor: set just before the rebellion of Spartacus, Gordianus is sent to investigate, not a murder but a resurrection. Heads You Lose, Simon Scarrow: someone is beheading soldiers during the siege of Jerusalem, but could the assassin be within the Roman camp? Never Forget, Tom HOlt: having defeated Hannibal, Scipio Africanus has a murder to solve and consults a wily Greek philosopher to help him. The Hostage to Fortune, Michael Jecks: during Caesar's invasion of Britain, the murder of one of the hostages causes a real problem for the guards. The Finger of Aphrodite, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer: with Rome under siege by the Ostrogoths, John the Eunuch is faced with a locked room murder. Edited by Edgar Award winner Mike Ashley