David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn't it? In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His...

A two-volume set that contains more than 270 speeches, sketches, short stories, maxims, and other writings by Mark Twain.

Contains 136 stories and sketches written by Mark Twain between the years of 1862 and 1904. Thirty of these selections have been taken from the following books: Roughing it; Innocents abroad; A tramp abroad; Life on the Mississippi; and, Following the equator.

Nestled in the lush Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the town of Big Stone Gap has been home for Ave Maria Mulligan Machesney and her family for generations. She's been married to her beloved Jack for nearly twenty years, raised one child and buried another, and run a business that binds her community together, all while holding her tight circle of family and friends close. But with her daughter, Etta, having flown the nest to enchanting Italy, Ave...

A collection of humorous stories featuring a teenaged mummy, a homicidal turkey, and the world's largest pool of chocolate milk.

The author has always had a special affinity for Christmas. His celebrated National Public Radio debut, The Santa Land Diaries, which first appeared in print in Barrel Fever was hailed the Seattle Times. The New York Times also wrote of this book. Now The Santa Land Diaries & five other hilarious Christmas stories are available in a wonderfully subversive holiday gift package. For anyone who has had enough of the forced good cheer, family madness,...

From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.

From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler's experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist's shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that...