29 Best Humorous, Fiction Books

What happens in Vegas, slays in Vegas.

With a show to produce and my career as an actress on the line, I really don’t have time to die–especially violently. However, while that might not be on my agenda, it seems to be on other’s.

Awesome.

Instead of acting in my latest endeavor, I’m playing the real-life role of Reluctant Demon Who Has To Save The World–or at the very least, the hot hero.

Fine. I’m always up for a plot twist or a re-write.

Scene One–Save Abaddon from the evil clutches of the hideous Pandora.Scene Two–Don’t die.Scene Three–Avoid Pandora like the plague. I understand she has an evil box …Scene Four–Do not die.Scene Five–Possibly meet my mom, the woman who abandoned me as a baby.Scene Six–Do Not Freaking Die.Scene Seven–Go back to my non-deadly life and win a damn Emmy for Ass The World Turns.

Even though I’m living on the edge of evil, half insanity, half upheaval, I’m a pro and the show must go on.

As the saying goes, a bad dress rehearsal means I don’t get dismembered on opening night. Or something like that.

It’s showtime, folks.

Just as Bertie Wooster is a member of the Drones Club, Jeeves has a club of his own, the Junior Ganymede, exclusively for butlers and gentlemen’s gentlemen. In its inner sanctum is kept the Book of Revelations, where the less than perfect habits of their employers are lovingly recorded. The book is, of course, pure dynamite. So what happens when it disappears into potentially hostile hands?

Tossed about in the resulting whirlwind you’ll find lots of Wodehouse’s favourite characters–and a welcome return to Market Snodsbury, in the middle of one of the most chaotic elections of modern times.

Anyone who involves himself with Roberta Wickham is asking for trouble, so naturally Bertie Wooster finds himself in just that situation when he goes to stay with his Aunt Dahlia at Brinkley Court. So much is obvious. Why celebrated loony-doctor, Sir Roderick Glossop, should be there too, masquerading as a butler, is less clear. As for Bertie’s former headmaster, the ghastly Aubrey Upjohn, and the dreadful novelist, Mrs. Homer Cream, with her eccentric son, Wilbert–their presence is entirely perplexing.

And now someone has stolen Uncle Tom’s antique silver cow-creamer–again. Suspicions fall on Wilbert Cream, believed to be a wealthy American practical joker and kleptomaniac known as Broadway Willie. But the incident only marks the beginning of Bertie Wooster’s problems.

It is only by a stroke of rare–very rare–genius that Bertie Wooster finds a solution. He calls on Jeeves, his incomparable manservant from his annual holiday at Herne Bay, to sort out everybody and everything in his usual inimitable style.

What does a forty-year-old former child star do when she finds out she’s a Demon?

A sitcom, of course.

Age is just a number unless you’re an actress of a certain age trying to make a comeback in La La Land. Back in the day, I was the child star of the hit show Camp Bites. Today, I’m still living it down.

After a disastrous soap opera audition and getting fired from a TV show for not having a bodacious enough backside, one would think I’d be smart enough to go into real estate.

Nope.

Just found out from the rudest, meanest, and hottest guy alive that I’m a Demon. The jerk, also a Demon, goes by the name Abaddon–Abe to his friends.

I call him Dick.

He’s come from the Underworld to protect me–insert laugh track–since there’s a bounty on my head. Dick is not a welcome addition to my midlife madness. However, he won’t go away, and now he’s my new boss.

Fine. Whatever. All I ever wanted to do in my life was pretend. I can pretend to get along with Dick. I can pretend that I’m not wildly attracted to him. Not sure I can pretend I’m human anymore, or that a supernatural assassin isn’t trying to cancel me, but I’m going to fake it until I make it. Or I get killed.

As the Underworld turns upside down, so have the days of my life.

This rollicking semi-autobiographical novel weaves a tale of Wodehouse’s early days as a writer, romance gone awry, and the colorful characters he encountered.

James Orlebar Cloyster, in order to marry his true love, embarks on a scheme of such clever deception that he very nearly manages to ruin both his romance and his career.

Told from multiple viewpoints—that of James, his fiancée, and friends—Not George Washington lampoons London society, literary pretension, the West End stage, playwrights, playgoers, bohemian life, and the newspapers of the day.

I’m a professional chickenblocker. Except “chicken” is a euphemism. I get paid to follow a womanizing troglodyte who thinks rules are for other people and that my pants are the next pair he’s getting into. Dream on. Bet your first professional job didn’t involve babysitting an extremely hot, muscle-bound Scottish Highlander with an ego the size of a kilt and a libido bigger than his…well… Chicken. Keeping Scottish football (that’s ‘soccer” to us Americans) player Hamish McCormick away from inappropriate scandals while he does product endorsement campaigns is my mission. No problem. Until Hamish decides I’m his next scandal. And maybe more…. Shopping for a Highlander is an enemies-to-lovers, slow burn romance that opens with a surprise kiss and ends with a happily ever after. This sports comedy in the New York Times bestselling Shopping for a Billionaire world contains no actual chickens, but it has plenty of locker room scenes, a fake relationship, very real banter, and more. You do not have to have read the previous books in this world, though after you read about Amy and Hamish, you’ll want to. 😉

Oops, I did it again…

Leave it to me, Lexi Carmichael, to become a target for an elite organization of cyber criminals simply by being in the wrong place at the right time. As if I weren’t already freaking out about planning my best friend’s bachelorette party, I now have to keep my eyes peeled for people trying to kill me.

After accidentally intercepting a dangerous hack into the NSA and discovering the involvement of a foreign country in said hack, things begin to get seriously complicated. Diplomats, danger and spies, oh, my!

With Slash and my loyal friends by my side, I’m in a race against time to stop a team of sophisticated hackers on a deadly mission. My team of geeks is brilliant…but derailing an international plot for revenge will take everything we’ve got.

Going to Hell has never been on my bucket list … until now.

The fact that I can speak that sentence without laughing or losing my mind is absurd. However, my life has veered into a very tricky tale that rivals any of my books.

The villain has been banished. I’ve written her right into an infernal doom. Unfortunately, a few of my very dear friends, fictional and real, have been caught up in the horror story and they’ve taken the trip down under as well.

It’s my fault and I can only see one way out … a plot twist of epic proportions. The fairy tale is imploding and my imagination has taken flight.

The ending is murky and the stakes are up to me. There is no other alternative.

If I don’t get this ending right, my happy ever after might become a happy never after.

Trouble follows me, Lexi Carmichael, like a little black cloud. At least according to my boyfriend, Slash: brilliant hacker, national treasure and vault of secrets. Even I have to admit he could be right.

After a series of high-profile cases at my cyberintelligence firm, I was looking forward to a simple job. All I had to do was personally deliver a revolutionary microchip to a manufacturing plant in Indonesia. Easy, right? Wrong.

Someone else wants the design and is willing to kill to get it. A failed hijacking attempt lands me, my best friend Basia, and our boss, Finn, in the middle of the jungle. Our mission is clear: protect the microchip design from the hijackers on our tail…and survive. But how can a geek girl like me survive without access to my beloved technology?

I’m about to find out. And this time, there’s no room for error.

An ancient secret is no match for amateur sleuth and professional trouble magnet Lexi Carmichael!

My work as a computer geek has me traveling around the world, solving mysteries and fighting bad guys. Sometimes with my friends, but always with trouble by my side. So you’d think I would’ve expected to be plagued by danger when I headed to Egypt with my best friend, Elvis Zimmerman, and boyfriend, Slash, to help track down Elvis’s missing and estranged father. Nope.

Genius runs in the family, and we quickly discovered Elvis’s father is hot on the trail of an ancient and elusive artifact…one that people are willing to kill to find. Tombs, tablets, and code come together as we follow a set of clues that has been waiting millennia to be discovered.

Cracking code is my specialty, but I never expected to tackle one from fifteen hundred years before the advent of written language. The sands of time are running out. If the artifact falls into the wrong hands, we won’t be able to rewrite history. So, it’s up to us to find and safeguard the secret to ensure no living soul ever encounters it…again.

A forty-something Werewolf supermodel, five supernaturally screwed up bridesmaids, and a demonic mother of the groom determined to ruin the wedding.

Awesome … not.

How has my life come to this? Not sure who I screwed over in a past life to end up with a heinous mother-in-law who thinks my wedding is for her. If I didn’t love Chance more than myself–which is a lot–I’d rethink the entire hot mess.

Problem–I’ve been instructed to show up in Hell on my wedding day with six bridesmaids. I have exactly two friends in total. The punishment for failure? Electrocution–which would suck.

Problem Solve–Go to a supernatural plasticware party at the community center and blackmail a few gals into being bridesmaids.

New Problem–The gals I coerced bring their own brand of crazy to the party.

Whatever. Chance is the Demon of my dreams. He loves me fur and all. One night of Hell for a lifetime of happiness is a good trade. I hope …

Move over, Bridezilla. I’ve got this covered.

Welcome to my big fat hairy wedding.

A refreshingly modern fairy tale and instant New York Times bestseller that Love Hypothesis author Ali Hazelwood hails as “an uplifting, feel-good, romantic read.

After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s ten years younger than her and as casual as they come–the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. And yet their chemistry is undeniable.

While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere” ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

“Abby Jimenez’s words are like fairy dust… they sprinkled humor and warmth all over my life. Pick up Part of Your World if you’re looking for an uplifting, feel-good, romantic read–and for a beautiful reminder that we should always try to live the life that makes us the happiest.” –Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis

Now a major motion picture A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks!

#1 New York Times bestseller–more than 3 million copies sold!

Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon–the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.

Fredrik Backman’s beloved first novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. “If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’ this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down” (Booklist, starred review).

Anty Boisjoly tackles the strange case of a war hero who visits his old friends on Christmas morning–after being murdered on Christmas Eve.

In The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, Wodehousian clubman, flaneur, idler, and sleuth Anty Boisjoly pits his sardonic wits against another pair of impossible murders. This time, Anty Boisjoly’s Aunty Boisjoly is the only possible suspect when a murder victim stands his old friends a farewell drink at the local, hours after being murdered.

Like The Case of the Canterfell Codicil, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning fits the narrow literary needs of those who feel that Lord Peter Wimsey isn’t frivolous enough or that Blandings Castle could stand a few more baffling murders.

I don’t understand Americans. Or, as we say in Scotland, I dinna understand ye eedjits. And I definitely dinna understand the crazy mother-in-law of my cousin Declan. Who in their right mind names a wee dog Chuffy? I’m stuck in New York after ma agent makes a bloody mess of an otherwise good endorsement contract for a sports towel company, and this crazy American holiday – Thanksgiving – is in two days. The invitation to spend it in Mendon, Massachusetts with the Jacoby family is about as appealing as rotten haggis. As far as I can tell, Thanksgiving is about stuffing yerself silly, watching pathetic American “football”, while fighting with relatives ye only see once a year. If I wanted that last one, I’d head back to Scotland, where we dinna need a holiday to be salty to each other. Ma firm answer is nae. Until I remember Amy is part of the family. Suddenly, I’m available. Eager, even. Perhaps she’ll pull ma wishbone. I hear that’s part of the Turkey Day festivities, aye? What I canna admit, though, is how she pulls ma heartstrings, too. Which shouldna feel better than the wishbone, but it does. And here comes Amy’s mother with another holiday tradition, this one a bit early. A sprig o’ mistletoe, dangling right above Amy’s bonnie head. Shopping for a Turkey features Scottish football player Hamish McCormick and Amy Jacoby as they navigate unusual cultural norms, new traditions, and the undeniable attraction between these two characters, who have appeared as supporting players in Julia Kent’s New York Times best-selling Shopping series. It’s their turn to have their own all-new spin-off series. And to pull the wishbone. 😉

After a decade apart, childhood sweethearts reconnect by chance in New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren’s touching, romantic novel Love and Other Words…how many words will it take for them to figure out where it all went wrong?

The story of the heart can never be unwritten.

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.

But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos–the first and only love of her life–the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world–growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother…only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.

Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more–spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

In this latest installment in the beloved No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Grace Makutsi encounters a pair of quandaries that will require all of her and Mma Ramotswe’s insight and intuition to resolve.

Grace Makutsi’s husband, Phuti Radiphuti, is in a bind. An international firm is attempting to undercut his prices in the office furniture market. Phuti has always been concerned with quality and comfort, but this firm seems interested only in
profits. To make matters worse, they have a slick new advertising campaign that seems hard to beat.

Meanwhile, Grace is approached by an old friend who has a troubled son. She and Phuti agree to take Patience and Modise in and lend a hand, but things don’t work out quite as intended, and the situation proves difficult for them to handle. It will
require not only all of their persistence and dedication but also help from an unexpected quarter to find a solution that will make everyone happy.

Faced with more than her fair share of delicate dilemmas, Mma Makutsi deals with it all with her usual graciousness. This–along with the kindness, generosity, and good sense for which the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is known–assures
us that, in the end, each of these matters will be set right.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Violet Parker has one request on her list for Santa—to make it home to her kids. Unfortunately, “home” is also the lair of her lifelong nemesis, her sister Susan, a.k.a. the devil’s concubine.

Standing in Violet’s way is Old Man Winter, who slammed the Black Hills with a show-stopping blizzard. However, a little snow isn’t going to ground her sleigh, not with family counting on her to deliver Santa’s goods.

Trying to keep Christmas from turning into a candy cane calamity, Violet battles her demons and struggles through the chaos storming around her. Can she make it through the holiday without cracking anyone’s nut?

“Keep your fingers crossed this whole holiday doesn’t blow up in our faces.” —Violet Parker

The living cannot be allowed to infect the dead.

Adam Binder has lost what matters most to him. Having finally learned the true identity of the warlock preying on his family, what was supposed to be a final confrontation with the fiend instead became a trap that sent Adam’s beloved Vicente into the realm of the dead, where none living are meant to be.

Bound by debt, oath, and love, Adam blazes his own trail into the underworld to get Vicente back, and to end the threat of the warlock once and for all. But the road to hell is paved with far more than good intentions. Demons are hungry, and ghosts are relentless, and what awaits Adam in the underworld is nothing he is prepared to face.

If that weren’t enough, Adam has one more thing he must do if he and Vicente are to return to the world of the living: find the lost heart of Death herself.

New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews first introduced us to Meg Langslow as a crime-solving bridesmaid. In her 31st mystery, Round Up the Usual Peacocks, Meg returns to her roots, juggling cold cases and wedding guests.

Kevin, Meg’s cyber-savvy nephew who lives in the basement, comes to her with a problem. He’s become involved as the techie for a true-crime podcast, one that focuses on Virginia cold cases and unsolved crimes. And he thinks their podcast has hit a nerve with someone . . . one of the podcast team has had a brush with death that Kevin thinks was an attempted murder, not an accident.

Kevin rather sheepishly asks for Meg’s help in checking out the people involved in a couple of the cases. “Given your ability to find out stuff online, why do you need MY help?” she asks. “Um . . . because I’ve already done everything I can online. This’ll take going around and TALKING to people,” he exclaims, with visible horror. “In person!” Not his thing. And no, it can’t wait until after the wedding, because he’s afraid whoever’s after them might take advantage of the chaos of the wedding at Trinity or the reception at Meg and Michael’s house to strike again.

So on top of everything she’s doing to round up vendors and supplies and take care of demanding out-of-town guests, Meg must hunt down the surviving suspects from three relatively local cold cases so she can figure out if they have it in for the podcasters. Could there be a connection to a musician on the brink of stardom who disappeared two decades ago and hasn’t been seen since?

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books

Witty and surreal tales that transcend rationality and illuminate our world, from America’s most original writer

Welcome to the world of Droll Tales, in which reality is a mutually agreed-upon illusion and life is painful, paradoxical, beautiful, and brief. With an oddball cast of characters who reappear in various guises throughout these interrelated stories, Smyles reveals an off-kilter world overlapping this one. And in giving us a tour of this enchanted, sometimes absurd place, with its own workings and ways of expression, she gives us a new way to understand our own.

A young suburban woman runs away to Europe to become a living statue; Mallarme is at long last translated into pig Latin; a house full of surrealists compete for love on a reality TV show; a list of fortune-cookie messages reveals the inner world of the young man employed to write them; and a story of love and betrayal is told through the sentence diagrams on a fifth grader’s grammar test.

Romantic, dark, and ironic, Droll Tales is a book like none you have read. It is a joyful interrogation of the paradoxes underpinning life, a cabinet of curiosities, a philosophical vaudeville, a puzzle in fourteen pieces, and a tragicomic riddle articulated in Smyles’s singular style, with the mystery of the human heart at its center.

BURYING THE PAST IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

Ed Vesser feels trapped by his life – literally. He’s being held prisoner by a would-be world conqueror. All he wants is to escape back to his fiance, assuming she doesn’t dump his ass when she finds out he’s a vampire.

Serena Taylor’s a witch with a knack for technomancy – using her magic to help deliver unreal profit margins. Too bad she’ll need to put in some overtime thanks to long-lost dryads and undead goons breathing down her neck.

Now they’re both stuck deep beneath Boston, exploring the ruins of a former vamp stronghold. She’s looking to walk away with intel on the burgeoning vampire nation. He’s simply hoping to walk away. Neither’s going to be easy, especially once they realize they’re not alone.

When ancient evil stirs, Ed and Serena will discover they have one thing in common – a burning desire … to stay alive as they learn that some secrets were meant to stay buried.

Mayhem has broken out at Brinkley Court and there would seem to be a desperate need for Jeeves. But Bertie is fed up with the assumption that he is merely an addendum to his personal attendant. There are more brains in the Wooster household than just Jeeves, you know! Stand back–Bertram Wooster is on the case.

Weaving exotic locale and hairpin twists, author Nick Pirog’s Jungle Up plunges readers into a world where the only thing more dangerous than the gun-toting drug traffickers and the ruthless tribesmen is the jungle itself. A riveting thriller in the bestselling Thomas Prescott series.

“Please find me, Thomas! Please!”

Two years ago, Dr. Gina Brady broke Thomas Prescott’s heart, but now her panic-stricken satellite phone call starts it beating again with a fury. Thugs kidnapped the good doctor from the remote jungle village where she was working, and now the retired homicide detective’s expert skills are desperately needed to save her.

Led by a colorful, but perhaps untrustworthy local guide, Prescott journeys deep into the Bolivian Amazon, plunging into a world where the only thing more dangerous than the gun-toting drug traffickers and the ruthless tribesmen, is the jungle itself.

When Gina’s trail leads to a chance encounter with an archaeological expedition, the search for the missing doctor takes on even deadlier consequences. But Prescott will not relent in this punishing quest until, once again, he holds Gina in his arms.

The books in the Thomas Prescott Series can be enjoyed in any order, so grab Jungle Up and get started today.

From Spencer Quinn, short stories in the New York Times and USA Todaybestselling series that Stephen King calls “without a doubt the most original mystery series currently available.”

This collection of short stories of Chet the dog, “the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction” (Boston Globe), and his human partner, PI Bernie Little includes: “Upper Story,” “The Iggy Papers,” and “The Numbers After Two.”

Here are six delightful tales featuring everyone’s favorite barrister for the defense, Horace Rumpole. Eccentric characters such as his wife, Hilda, otherwise known as “She Who Must Be Obeyed,” and his philandering colleague Claude Erskine-Brown are back as Rumpole visits a snooty restaurant where he engages in a battle of wills over his adored mashed spuds, takes the unaccustomed role of prosecutor, and ventures–unwillingly–onto a ship, where he confronts, of all things, a detective novelist.

Included are “Rumpole +a la Carte,” “Rumpole and the Summer of Discontent,” “Rumpole and the Right to Silence,” “Rumpole at Sea,” “Rumpole and the Quacks,” and “Rumpole for the Prosecution.”

This masterly blend of humor and mystery makes for irresistible listening.

Dashing Through the Snowbirds is the next merry installment of Donna Andrews’s New York Times bestselling Meg Langslow mystery series.

Christmas in Caerphilly is wonderful! Unless you’re a Canadian whose inconsiderate boss is forcing you to spend the holiday there, far from family and friends, with only a slim chance of a white Christmas. Meg already has her hands full, trying to make the season festive for the dozen programmers who are staying with her and Michael while working on a rush project with her brother’s software company. At least it’s an interesting project, since the Canadian company is doing forensic genealogy and DNA analysis.

When the inconsiderate boss is found murdered, there are too many suspects. Even before their Christmas in exile, his own employees had plenty of motives, and the growing number of people suing the company for faulty DNA analysis and invasion of their genetic privacy include at least one notorious murderer. Can Meg crack the case in time to keep the Yuletide bright?

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.

Once upon a time, Tim Luchetti went searching for a daddy and found one in Dean Luchetti. Now it’s time for Tim’s Mommy Quest, and he has the perfect woman picked out: his principal, Stella O’Connell. Unfortunately, Dean and Stella have history…a lot of it. Stella left Gainsville, Illinois right after high school, never planning to come back. But an attack at her Los Angeles school has put her on mandatory leave. When the Gainsville Elementary principal is injured, Stella slides right into her chair. Why does her problem child have to be Dean’s son? In a plot to get Dean and Stella together, Tim misbehaves. He sets his father up on all sorts of terrible dates. The Mommy Quest is in full swing. However, when history rears its ugly head, can Dean and Stella overcome it and find happiness together? Most importantly, can they keep from hurting Tim, who has been hurt enough?

The idyll of Blandings Castle is about to be disturbed, for the Honorable Freddie Threepwood is poised to make his debut as a jewel thief. Freddie, however, is not alone: Blandings is simply brimming with criminals and impostors all intent on stealing Aunt Constance’s twenty-thousand-pound diamond necklace. It is left to the debonair Psmith, with his usual aplomb, to unscramble the passion, problems, and identities, of one and all.