The nearest Wodehouse ever came to a serious story, The Coming of Bill is a fascinating blend of social comment and light comedy. It concerns the offspring of Ruth, a spoilt heiress, and Kirk, an impecunious artist of perfect physique, brought together by Ruth’s aunt, a believer in eugenics. The young couple are eventually successful in retrieving their child and their marriage from the influence of overbearing Mrs Poter, but only after a series of comic mishaps in a book which features a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters, including the bossy aunt, a tetchy millionaire, a good-natured ex-boxer and an orotund English butler.

Set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless debate. Among these guests are figures recognizable to Peacock’s contemporaries, including characters based on Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Glowry’s son Scythrop (also modeled on a famous Romantic, Peacock’s friend Percy Bysshe Shelley) locks himself up in a tower where he reads German tragedies and transcendental philosophy and develops a “passion for reforming the world.” Disappointed in love, a sorrowful Scythrop decides the only thing to do is to commit suicide, but circumstances persuade him to instead follow his father in a love of misanthropy and Madeira. Thomas Love Peacock was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other’s work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting — characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.

Penrod is a collection of comic sketches by Booth Tarkington that was first published in 1914. The book follows the misadventures of Penrod Schofield, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in the pre-World War I Midwestern United States, in a similar vein to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In Penrod, Tarkington established characters who appeared in two further books.

The supper room of the Savoy Hotel was all brightness and glitter and gayety. But Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, of the United Kingdom, looked round about him through the smoke of his cigarette, and felt moodily that this was a flat world, despite the geographers, and that he was very much alone in it. He felt old. If it is ever allowable for a young man of twenty-six to give himself up to melancholy reflections, Jimmy Pitt might have been excused for doing so, at that moment. Nine years ago he had dropped out, or, to put it more exactly, had been kicked out, and had ceased to belong to London. And now he had returned to find himself in a strange city.

Another great work of humor from P. G. Wodehouse. At Beckford College, where the pupils seem to be spending most of their time playing cricket, Gethryn is faced with this younger uncle arriving at the school.

The Wodehouse collection continues with more sparkling classics from the master of hijinks and social comedy P. G. Wodehouse is recognized as the greatest English comic writers of the twentieth century, rightly admired throughout the world and translated into more than thirty languages. Launched on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, this series presents each Overlook Wodehouse as the finest edition of the master’s work ever published―beautifully designed and faithful to the original.  This season, Overlook is pleased to offer the latest two hilarious volumes. Louder and Funnier is a collection of articles written for Vanity Fair, with subjects ranging from Shakespeare and divorce to income tax and ocean liners. The Prince and Betty is an engrossing, hilarious story of an unscrupulous millionaire and his plans to build a casino in the Mediterranean. Revised by Wodehouse after the initial publication, it features the master’s signature reflections on the rich in one of his classic novels.

It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and affected to sneer at Hadleyburg\'s pride in it and call it vanity; but all the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek for responsible employment.

The maid of the title is red-haired, dog-loving Wilhelmina "Billie" Bennett, and the three men are: Bream Mortimer, a long-time friend and suitor of Billie Eustace Hignett, a shy poet who is engaged to Billie at the opening of the tale Sam Marlowe, Eustace\'s dashing cousin, who falls in love with Billie "at first sight" The four of them find themselves together on an ocean liner sailing for England. Also on board is a capable young woman, Jane Hubbard, who is in love with Eustace. Wodehousian funny stuff ensues, with happy endings for all except Bream Mortimer.

Like much of G. K. Chesterton\'s fiction, The Ball and the Cross is both witty and profound, cloaking serious religious and philosophical inquiry in sparkling humor and whimsy. Serialized in the British publication The Commonwealth in 1905-06, Chesterton\'s second novel first appeared in book form in America in 1909, delighting and challenging readers with its heady mixture of fantasy, farce, and theology.The plot of The Ball and the Cross chronicles a hot dispute between two Scotsmen, one a devout but naive Roman Catholic, the other a zealous but naive atheist. Their fanatically held opinions—leading to a duel that is proposed but never fought—inspire a host of comic adventures whose allegorical levels vigorously explore the debate between theism and atheism.Martin Gardner\'s superb introduction to The Ball and the Cross reveals the real-life debate between Chesterton and a famous atheist that provided inspiration for the story, and it explores some of the novel\'s possible allegorical meanings. Appraising the book\'s many intriguing philosophical qualities, Mr. Gardner alerts readers as well to the pleasures of its "colorful style . . . amusing puns and clever paradoxes . . . and the humor and melodrama of its crazy plot."

Mike is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

When a seed-merchant of cautious disposition and an eye to the main chance receives from an eminent firm of jam-manufacturers an extremely large order for clover-seed, his emotions are mixed. Joy may be said to predominate, but with the joy comes also uncertainty. Are these people, he asks himself, proposing to set up as farmers of a large scale, or do they merely want the seed to give verisimilitude to their otherwise bald and unconvincing raspberry jam? On the solution of this problem depends the important matter of price, for, obviously, you can charge a fraudulent jam disseminator in a manner which an honest farmer would resent. This was the problem which was furrowing the brow of Mr. Julian Fineberg, of Bury St. Edwards, one sunny morning when Roland Bleke knocked at his door; and such was its difficulty that only at the nineteenth knock did Mr. Fineberg raise his head. "Come in—that dashed woodpecker out there!" he shouted, for it was his habit to express himself with a generous strength towards the junior members of his staff. The young man who entered looked exactly like a second clerk in a provincial seed-merchant\'s office—which, strangely enough, he chanced to be. His chief characteristic was an intense ordinariness. He was a young man; and when you had said that of him you had said everything. There was nothing which you would have noticed about him, except the fact that there was nothing to notice. His age was twenty-two and his name was Roland Bleke. "Please, sir, it\'s about my salary." Mr. Fineberg, at the word, drew himself together much as a British square at Waterloo must have drawn itself together at the sight of a squadron of cuirassiers. "Salary?" he cried. "What about it? What\'s the matter with it? You get it, don\'t you?" "Yes, sir, but--" "Well? Don\'t stand there like an idiot. What is it?" "It\'s too much." Mr. Fineberg\'s brain reeled. It was improbable that the millennium could have arrived with a jerk; on the other hand, he had distinctly heard one of his clerks complain that his salary was too large. He pinched himself. "Say that again," he said. "If you could see your way to reduce it, sir--" It occurred to Mr. Fineberg for one instant that his subordinate was endeavoring to be humorous, but a glance at Roland\'s face dispelled that idea. "Why do you want it reduced?" "Please, sir, I\'m going to be married." "What the deuce do you mean?" "When my salary reaches a hundred and fifty, sir. And it\'s a hundred and forty now, so if you could see your way to knocking off ten pounds--" Mr. Fineberg saw light. He was a married man himself. "My boy," he said genially, "I quite understand. But I can do you better than that. It\'s no use doing this sort of thing in a small way. From now on your salary is a hundred and ten. No, no, don\'t thank me. You\'re an excellent clerk, and it\'s a pleasure to me to reward merit when I find it. Close the door after you." And Mr. Fineberg returned with a lighter heart to the great clover-seed problem. The circumstances which had led Roland to approach his employer may be briefly recounted. Since joining the staff of Mr. Fineberg, he had lodged at the house of a Mr. Coppin, in honorable employment as porter at the local railway-station. The Coppin family, excluding domestic pets, consisted of Mr. Coppin, a kindly and garrulous gentleman of sixty, Mrs. Coppin, a somewhat negative personality, most of whose life was devoted to cooking and washing up in her underground lair, Brothers Frank and Percy, gentleman of leisure, popularly supposed to be engaged in the mysterious occupation known as "lookin\' about for somethin\'," and, lastly, Muriel.

In Mike and Psmith, Mike, due to take over as cricket captain at Wrykyn, is withdrawn from the school by his father and sent to a lesser school, called Sedleigh. On arrival at Sedleigh, he meets the eccentric Rupert Psmith, another new arrival from the superior school of Eton. Becoming fast friends, the two eschew cricket and indulge in all manner of high-jinks and adventures.

The story begins with Psmith accompanying his fellow Cambridge student Mike to New York on a cricketing tour. Through high spirits and force of personality, Psmith takes charge of a minor periodical, and becomes imbroiled in a scandal involving slum landlords, boxers and gangsters - the story displays a strong social conscience, rare in Wodehouse\'s generally light-hearted works.

Oakes smiled. "As the medical evidence proved, he died of the bite of a cobra. It was a small cobra which came from Java." "Did you see the snake?" Oakes shook his head. "Then, how in heaven's name --" "I have enough evidence to make a jury convict Mr. Snake without leaving the box." Oaks had the evidence, all right. The problem with it was, Oaks was just plain wrong.

THE COMPLETE NOVELS OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (Special Kindle Edition) FULL COLOR ILLUSTRATED VERSION: All Thackeray\'s Unabridged Novels in a Single Volume! Including Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon, Catherine, Pendennis, NewcomesKindle Edition (COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION)EVERY SINGLE NOVEL BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY ESPECIALLY CREATED FOR AMAZON KINDLE DECIVE: ILLUSTRATED IN FULL COLOR![Illustrated]PARTIAL TABLE OF CONTENTS• CATHERINE• THE HISTORY OF SAMUEL TITMARSH AND THE GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND• THE MEMOIRES OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ.• VANITY FAIR• THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS, HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES, HIS FRIENDS AND HIS GREATEST ENEMY• THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ.• THE NEWCOMES, MEMOIRS OF A MOST RESPECTABLE FAMILY• THE VIRGINIANS, A TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY• THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD SHEWING WHO ROBBED HIM, WHO HELPED HIM, AND WHO PASSED HIM BYEXCERPT"For some time George strove to keep the liaison a secret. There was a woman in the case, that he admitted. “And not the first either,” said Ensign Spooney to Ensign Stubble. “That Osborne’s a devil of a fellow. There was a judge’s daughter at Demerara went almost mad about him; then there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss Pye, at St. Vincent’s, you know; and since he’s been home, they say he’s a regular Don Giovanni, by Jove.”Stubble and Spooney thought that to be a “regular Don Giovanni, by Jove” was one of the finest qualities a man could possess, and Osborne’s reputation was prodigious amongst the young men of the regiment. He was famous in field-sports, famous at a song, famous on parade; free with his money, which was bountifully supplied by his father. His coats were better made than any man’s in the regiment, and he had more of them. He was adored by the men. He could drink more than any officer of the whole mess, including old Heavytop, the colonel. He could spar better than Knuckles, the private (who would have been a corporal but for his drunkenness, and who had been in the prize-ring); and was the best batter and bowler, out and out, of the regimental club. He rode his own horse, Greased Lightning, and won the Garrison cup at Quebec races. There were other people besides Amelia who worshipped him."- Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace ThackerayWHY BUY BOOKS FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION FOR KINDLE EDITION?1. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books are priced as low as possible in order to offer unbelievable value and hours of reading pleasure for Kindle readers. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books bring together ALL the complete works of a classic literary author, character or series in a single, extremely low priced volume in a single download, thereby freeing up valuable space and visual clutter on your Kindle device.2. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books are painstakingly formatted especially for Kindle and come with a FULLY INTERACTIVE table of contents DIRECTLY ACCESSIBLE FROM THE KINDLE MENU, Kindle MasterLink (tm) technology, Kindle text-to-speech Audiobook technology, and Kindle Free Lending Technology.3. All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books come with additional material including photo(s) of the author, and/or critical commentary, and/or biographical or historical background.