Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Literature & Fiction

Paul Pennyfeather is a quiet and unassuming student at Scone College, Oxford. One evening, on his return to his rooms, he is set upon by a member of the notorious Bollinger Club resulting in the loss of his trousers. He is expelled from the college for indecent behavior.

If the name seems familiar, these tales about Darby O'Gill and his encounter with the fairies were adapted for a Disney movie, Darby O'Gill and the Little People. They tell the story of an Irishman whose cow is captured by the fairies - or "good people". In his determination to recover his property, Darby finds himself in the center of their home, the mountain Sleive-na-mon.

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) may be considered the Canadian counterpart to Mark Twain. For many years he was professor of economics at Magill University and published a number of well-regarded texts on economics and political science. However, he is best known today for his many volumes of humorous fiction. During the 1920s he was one of the most widely read authors in the English-speaking world and was considered by Jack Benny and Groucho Marx to be one of the greatest comic writers of all time.

Follow the foils and foibles of Bertie Wooster and his devoted man, Jeeves, through all of his wild adventures in The Inimitable Jeeves, the first collection of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series. There are schemes to bet on the clergy's length of sermon, attempts at theatre, communist curiosity, and nearly every chapter finds Bertie's best mate, Bingo, falling in love, all under the watchful eye of Jeeves, who always finds a way to make things just right.

Born in England in 1869, Stephen Leacock would immigrate to Canada and become a teacher, political scientist, and writer. He would ultimately come to be best known and loved as a humourist. Literary Lapses was first published as a collection of sketches in 1910, although many of the individual stories were first printed in various newspapers and periodicals, such as Punch, New York Life, and the Detroit Free Press.

In compiling this collection of humorous short stories by both well known and more obscure authors, Alexander Jessup applied a broad interpretation of humour; the stories span the period between 1839 and the beginning of the first World War.

In his first collection of golfing stories, presided over benignly by the Oldest Member, Wodehouse extracts high comedy from the noble and mysterious game. Including the clash of literature and golf that impedes the romantic progress of Cuthbert Banks; the horror of golfing garrulity; two cases of ordeal by golf between romantic rivals of sharply varying skill; the advantages of encouraging women to take up golf; and the remarkable golfing career of American multi-millionaire Vincent Jopp, whose overwhelming confidence seems certain to make him amateur champion in his first season.

Eleven adventures of PG Wodehouse's longest-serving 'hero', Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge: great brain, potential millionaire—and foe of the human race. First, ten scenes of his bachelor days, as (among other things) dog trainer, mastermind of an 'accident' syndicate, boxing promoter, and political campaigner. And then, as a newly married man, embarking upon a foolproof enterprise as a chicken farmer, on a borrowed farm, with 'borrowed' hens, and an entire lack of knowledge.

One of Canada's most cherished writers, British-born Stephen Leacock was probably best known and loved for his works of light humor. First published in 1912, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is one of his most popular and enduring pieces of fiction. This collection of short stories describes the people that comprise a typical but fictional small town in Ontario - Mariposa. The book's appeal lies in the universality of the characters Leacock describes so eloquently, they live out their 'large' lives in the little town.

As Blandings Castle slumbers in the sunshine, secret passions are astir: Lord Emsworth's niece, Millicent, wants to marry impecunious secretary, Hugo Carmody; and his nephew, Ronnie Fish, wants to marry chorus girl Sue Brown.

Wickedly narrated by David Stifel, and written in 1729, this satiric essay on how to solve Ireland's chronic poverty is perhaps more shocking today than when it was written. In the 1960s, when Peter O'Toole did a public reading of this piece in Dublin, he very nearly started a riot. Newspapers the following day lambasted O'Toole's "shocking bad taste." Whether shocking satire, or Monty-Pythonesque surrealism, this essay has continually managed to offend people for well over 3 centuries. Enjoy! (and Thank You!)

In the aftermath of World War II, a funeral home mortician by the name of John Cave has a revelation about the nature of death: Death is peace; death is nothing to be feared. This simple concept will evolve into an atheistic religion known as Cavism, which will displace Christianity as the dominant western faith. But Cavism has a dark past, and even more ominous future.

Cakes and Ale is the novel that William Somerset Maugham said he wished to be remembered for. Published in 1930 and written in the first person singular, Maugham's narrator (and alter-ego) Ashenden exposes the disapproving, moral judgement made by conservative society on the character of Rosie Driffield and opines that it is unjustified.

Jill Mariner's life as a London debutante is perfect: she has money, friends, and is engaged to a handsome Member of Parliament. But it all comes crashing down when her unreliable uncle squanders her fortune. Then there is the incident of plucky Jill hitting a man with a stick while he was attacking a parrot. The MP, appalled by her arrest, breaks off the engagement.

P.G. Wodehouse's first full-length Jeeves and Wooster book is a sparkling collection of linked stories, in which Bertie Wooster is harried by his fearsome Aunt Agatha, determined to marry him off; snootered by his anarchic cousins, the twins Claude and Eustace, the curse of the human race; and lugged into every romantic misadventure of his warm-hearted boyhood friend young Bingo Little. But through all his tribulations - give or take the occasional difference over purple socks or Old Etonian spats - the ever-faithful Jeeves stands ready to haul Bertie out of the soup.

Exiled by his uncle to England, and a job with Lord Tilbury's Mammoth Publishing Company, spirited young American Sam Shotter resolves to pursue the girl of his dreams—who, unfortunately, he knows only from a single photograph, torn from a magazine and pinned by some unknown hand to the wall of a remote Canadian fishing cabin. A night of misadventures in London brings Sam to the very house—in the quiet suburb of Valley Fields—where the girl lives, and Sam instantly moves into the vacant house next door. But unfortunately his stay there is not to be a peaceful one...

We're back with Bertie Wooster and his devoted man, Jeeves, in Carry On, Jeeves, the second collection of P.G. Wodehouse's much-loved series. There are trips to America, scandalous books and articles to tend with, near misses in love, and schemes aplenty, all under the watchful eye of Jeeves, who always finds a way to make things just right.

Where There’s a Will is Mary Roberts Rinehart’s hilarious comedy involving a health spa, an heir, a would-be princess, and an impostor. The story is told by Minnie, who has essentially run the spa for years and inherited the care of its famous spring from her father. When the old doctor dies and leaves the Hope Springs Spa to his near-do-well grandson with the stipulation that he live on premises for two months in order to inherit, the grandson is nowhere to be found. So Minnie tries to save the spa by enlisting the help of family and friends to trick the lawyer....

When Mike Jackson's father suffers a serious financial setback, all Mike's hopes of "Varsity Blue" and a career playing his beloved cricket are dashed. Instead, he must go out and earn his living - in the alien world of the New Asiatic Bank, under the management of his nemesis Mr. John Bickersdyke. At first, all seems black; but then Mike finds that he has an ally, in the immaculate form of the irrepressible Psmith, who is likewise sentenced to a career in commerce. And Psmith has plans for the reform of Mr Bickersdyke....

Entries A-J. The Devil's Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881 and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. The author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed: enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor, and clean English to slang.