Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Comedy & Humour

While sifting through closets of junk in the mansion they have rented, Qwill and Koko uncover a mystery involving the suicide of the former owner and the murder of a potato farmer. By the author of The Cat Who Wasn't There.

The Expo begins with a literal bang: a bomb wrecks the hotel, killing a housekeeper and causing extensive damage. Luckily for Pickax, Qwill is on the scene, his moustache twitching with suspicions that this bomb was intended as something stronger than a warning to someone. His evidence: Koko and Yum Yum's new interest in cheese, especially Gruyere, Brie and Feta. Qwill and the Siamese are on a case that will demand all their feline intuition and mustachioed insight!

Imagine this: When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you, an ambitious broker, not overly successful or ethical, know you're facing the Weekend from Hell. With only 72 hours to scheme and scramble your way out of this nightmare, you find yourself confronted with a 300-pound psychic, a tattooed stranger, African rituals, legendary amphibians, outer space, and your own sexuality.

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

Author Douglas Adams kidnapped an audience and held them hostage for 90 minutes at London's Almeida Theatre. The audience members were subjected to extremely hot August temperatures and Adams's dramatic solo performances of excerpts and scenes from his wildly funny Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy.

In this seventh installment of the Jeeves series, the unflappable butler once again must apply his cleverness to rescue Bertie Wooster—this time from being arrested, lynched, and engaged by mistake! Chaos ensues when Aunt Dahlia demands that Bertie help dupe an antique dealer into selling her an 18th-century cow creamer. Complications grow as Bertie's pal Gussie Fink-Nottle is more interested in studying the effects of a full moon on the love life of newts rather than marrying Madeline Bassett.

Here are the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale — a young film star and drug addict — who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands. 

This laugh-out-loud memoir takes listeners backstage and inside the writers’ room of one of America’s best-loved shows. With more than 17 million viewers and more than 70 Emmy nominations—including two wins for best comedy—Everybody Loves Raymond reigned supreme in television comedy for almost a decade. 

At the age of 44, renowned comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm regular Richard Lewis found himself on a gurney in the ER, toxic with alcohol and hallucinating from excess cocaine use. The same neuroses and dysfunctions that had been the basis for his successful stage persona and inspired his best material had, it seemed, turned on him.

"This book offers the absolutely incomparable experience of knowing what it would be like to have Carl Reiner as a friend and without the exorbitant costs of trying to book him on a regular basis" (Jerry Seinfeld). "You can't define genius, but it stands up and shouts from the pages of Carl Reiner's My Anecdotal Life" (Mary Tyler Moore). "Mr. Reiner's stories allow us to have his whole life flash before our eyes. Happily, he is a delightful storyteller and a very gifted flasher" (Larry Gelbart).

Without bothering to get approval from the President, the State Department, or even the FTC, Dave Barry's publishers sent him to Tokyo. You'd think they would have known better. Now the word is Barry has set back our diplomatic relations with the whole Pacific Rim by a couple of decades. Japanese culture, dining, sport, and industry all come under Barry's relentless scrutiny.

Debuting at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in 1991, Catskills of Broadway was a critically acclaimed show that played to sold-out houses for more than a year, followed by a national tour. This audio recording captures the hilarity provided by comedians Dick Capri, Louise Duart, Mal Z. Lawrence, and Freddie Roman.

Imagine this: When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you — an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker — are convinced that you're facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you must scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there's no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300-pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born-again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses. 

From the fragility of life almost gone in an instant at a crosswalk, to avoiding the shoals of adolescence, to cell phones driving us to distraction (as we drive!) to turning the tables on telemarketers, to the Iraq War coming home to a small town in Pennsylvania, these pieces are filled with insight and sensitivity, laced with humor and understanding. In his own very unique way, John Grogan makes all of us feel more connected to each other and less like strangers living in a strange land.

Sebastian Zollner's failure as a journalist is matched only by his personal failures: his girlfriend is moving a new lover in before Sebastian even knows he's been dumped. Searching for the break that will redeem him in the eyes of his peers, he heads off on a wild-goose chase into the mountains to interview the eccentric, legendary painter Manuel Kaminski with the hope of writing his biography. Kaminski is going blind and is living in seclusion with his daughter.

Moe Moskowitz is back! And this time, he's joined by NPR's Bob Edwards, Alex Chadwick, Terry Gross, Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Robert Siegel, Carl Kasell, Frank Tavares, and an outstanding array of people. The Punsters join him to perform the funniest songs and nonsense that NPR has to offer.

He's a grand guy, that Guy Grand—billionaire by birth, entrepreneur by avocation, and thoroughly unpredictable. He "keeps his hand in", buying into and revolutionizing industries ranging from championship boxing to African safaris. Is he a crackpot, or an eccentric, or perhaps a visionary with a goal of social redemption? Grand's greatest project, his tour de force, the cruise ship Magic Christian, sets sail on Easter Sunday, fully renovated into the most luxurious vessel ever to sail the seas.

In high dudgeon, Bertie disappears to the country as a guest of his chum Lord "Chuffy" Chuffnell, who naturally employs the services of the recently resigned Jeeves. Along the way, we meet a memorable cast of characters including Bertie's ex-fiancee Pauline, her formidable father, and the eminet looney-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop. When Chuffy falls in love with Pauline, chaos ensues...until Jeeves step in to save the day.

If the Watergate scandal was a national nightmare, then maybe the Clinton scandal was a national wet dream, and who better to narrate it than the screenwriter Joe Eszterhas? In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas, whose credits include Basic Instinct and Showgirls, takes us through the events that threatened to topple a president. From scandalmongers Matt Drudge and Ken Starr, to his final, unimpeachable witness, Willard - none other than President Clinton's talking penis - Eszterhas gives us the goods.

Shipwrecked on an unknown island, Lemuel Gulliver finds himself not merely a fish out of water, but a very big fish in a small pond. He awakens to find himself tied to the ground by the natives of Lilliput—tiny people small enough to fit in his pocket and play hide and seek in his hair!