Showing results for "The Laughter" in Literary Fiction

Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.

Laughter is unique to man. This delightful anthology presents some of the funniest extracts in English literature. It opens with Anglo-Saxon riddles and continues with medieval memories, Tudor comic turns, and Restoration buffoonery.

""An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous."" —Newsweek ""The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part...

Writer (and sometime housecleaner) Jennifer is twenty-three when her beloved father, Wallace, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. This catastrophic discovery sets off Anne Lamott's unexpectedly sweet and funny first novel, which is made dramatic not so much by Wallace's illness as by the emotional...

In this acclaimed collection of short stories, Pulitzer Prizewinning author Stephen Millhauser shares the dark suspense and humor that have gained him a cult following. Millhauser’s imagination and creativity are on full display with stories featuring artists gone mad, egomaniacal architects, and a historical society that’s given up its chronicling of history. Characterized by “phenomenal clarity and rapacious movement” each story “focuses on the misery wrought by misdirected human desire and ambition.” ( Publishers Weekly)

A lost literary gem of Hollywood in the 1930s, I Lost My Girlish Laughter is a thinly veiled send-up of the actors, producers, writers, and directors of the Golden Age of the studio system.

Margaret Stuart, the proud wife of a prosperous Iowa farmer, sets high standards for herself and others. Happy in her marriage, she tries to look the other way when her genial husband, Alec, takes to the bottle. When Elspeth, Margaret’s sister, comes to live with them, the young woman is immediately captivated by the beauty and vitality of the farm and by the affection she receives from those around her.

""After Farewell Waltz there cannot be any doubt. Kundera is a master of contemporary literature. This novel is both an an example of virtuosity and a descent into the human soul."" —L'Unite Set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with...