Two Dogs who had been fighting for a bone, without advantage to either, referred their dispute to a Sheep. The Sheep patiently heard their statements, then flung the bone into a pond. "Why did you do that?" said the Dogs. "Because," replied the Sheep, "I am a vegetarian." This and 244 other "fantastic fables" from the bitter pen of Ambrose Bierce fill this little volume to overflowing with a rich feast of Bierce's misanthropy. Bierce didn't miss a...

Saki (pseudonym of H. H. Munro), English author, is best known for his witty, sometimes whimsical, often cynical and bizarre short stories; they are collected in Reginald, The Chronicles of Clovis, Beasts and Super-Beasts, and other volumes. Contents of The Chronicles of Clovis include: Esme, The Match-Maker, Tobermory, Mrs. Packletide's Tiger, The Stampeding of Lady Bastable, The Background, Hermann the Irascible, The Unrest-Cure, The Jesting of...

The Average American Marriage, the long-awaited sequel to Chad Kultgen's much debated, always controversial The Average American Male, is a matter-of-fact foray into the male mind and sexual fantasy. Now married with children, Kultgen's lewd and sex-obsessed narrator once again offers up his deep (and not so deep) thoughts on love, marriage, kids, and (naturally) sex: from birthday sex to interns to parenting, The Average American Male looks upon...

Eleven sparkling stories of family, love, and art from New York Times–bestselling author David Lipsky
My mother doesn’t know that I owe my father three thousand dollars.
 
From the opening line of the acclaimed title story—a Best American Short Stories selection that first appeared in the New Yorker—to the tender last scene of “Springs, 1977,” this pitch-perfect...

First performed in 1895, "An Ideal Husband" is Oscar Wilde's classic and much-loved comedic drama. The play tells the story of an up-and-coming politician, Sir Robert Chiltern, who tries to hide his secret past from his judgmental wife and the blackmail scheme he is forced to participate in to keep that secret quiet. Lady Chiltern has a very particular idea of what makes the "ideal husband" which leaves her with little tolerance for Sir Robert's all...

There is an important decision to be made. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife, Maria Theotoky, decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish-connoisseur, collector, and notable eccentric-whose vast fortune endows the Foundation. The grumpy, grimy, extraordinarily talented music student Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E.T.A. Hoffmann's unfinished opera...

It began as a dinner-party contest: when Mark Twain and his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner criticized the deplorable quality of their wives' reading material, the two writers were challenged to come up with something more intriguing. Thus, for the only time in his career, Twain collaborated on a novel with another author. The title of their rollicking 1873 tale became synonymous with the rampant post—Civil War corruption of Washington, D.C., where...

Brought together here in this volume is a classic collection of satirical works from Jonathan Swift, perhaps one of the greatest satirist in the English language. While Swift is probably best known for his novel "Gulliver's Travels", he was a brilliant satirist with a cutting wit and mastery of language. His skills with the pen, which made him both famous and feared by the powerful, can be seen in "A Modest Proposal". Swift's famous essay, originally...

It is a curious fact that of that class of literature to which Munchausen belongs, that namely of Voyages Imaginaires, the three great types should have all been created in England. Utopia, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver, illustrating respectively the philosophical, the edifying, and the satirical type of fictitious travel, were all written in England, and at the end of the eighteenth century a fourth type, the fantastically mendacious, was evolved

...

When Bertie Wooster, a blundering, but well-meaning bachelor, returns home to London after spending time in the Canes with his aunt and cousin, he discovers that his valet, Jeeves, has been advising an old friend on love. Gussie, Bertie's school friend, is head-over-heels in love with a young, whimsical lady named Madeline. Unsure what to do with his crush, Gussie turned to Jeeves in Bertie's absence, happy with the help he received. Bertie, however,...