[[Category:Humour|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Humour]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreview|title=The Bojeffries Saga|author=Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse|rating=5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=A very truncated history of comics will start with the idea that they should be funny strips – one jape then you're out; then that they should have more – perhaps a superhero; then that you can have so much more than just a superhero – witness the works of [[:Category:Alan Moore|Alan Moore]]. But you mustn't be too surprised to see the whole thing come around in a full cycle. Because Alan Moore has, with this volume, concluded his own funny strip japery, and whatever history or greater opinions about the canon of comix might say, it's just about his best ever book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662318</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Reverend Adam SmallboneJen Beagin|title=The Rev DiariesBig Swiss
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour|summary=Adam Smallbone wasn’t always a vicarI found the premise of this book totally original and addictive. He used Greta possesses the power to work for know the Bristol Housing Departmentpopulation of Hudson, enabling his father-in-law New York's darkest secrets, their intimate lives, their fetishes and fears. How? Her job is to tell everyone he worked transcribe their sex therapy sessions. Sure, there's a confidentiality agreement, as the sex coach who calls himself Om keeps reminding her, but that just makes it more exciting. Like we've all probably wished for at some point in property'life, Greta can exist passively, placidly, as a fly on the wall. From thereThat is, his initial calling was until Greta decides to unglue her fly-feet from the safety of the wall and buzz far too close to a rural church the sun. The sun in Suffolk which did nothing to prepare him for this, his current London inner city parish. Indeed, heanalogy is the sex coach's not prepared for Adoha (the Nigerian parishioner with 19 grandchildren and newest patient, who Greta dubs 'the bottom of GodBig Swiss') or Colin, and who, like the homeless alcoholic who has adopted Adam sun, is bright, blonde and beautiful - and his wife Alex (Mrs Vicarage irresistible to Colin)Greta. But then Alex also has a lot Suddenly, the confidentiality agreement, the ethics of her professional position, her loyalties to get used to; after allOm, she didnfly out of the window. She't actually marry a vicars in too deep.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718178394</amazonuk>0571378579
}}
{{newreview|title=Look Who's Back|author=Timur Vermes|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Hitler Youth Ronaldo! Which way to the street?'' With these words a very misguided Nazi Fuhrer asks for his first directions in the Berlin of 2011. Mistakenly believing the lad to be a party junior member with his own name on his football shirt, he also thinks for a while it is still 1945. He's soon informed of the truth, but still makes some unfortunate conclusions – that the street kiosks selling Turkish language newspapers are a sign of a Soviet-beating alliance between the two countries, that people eat granola bars because the war still leads to a bread shortage, and that people making an ironic speech bubble with their fingers in the air is all that is left of the Hitler salute. But yes, after a long hiatus neither he nor our author is particularly concerned with explaining, ''that man'' is back – and if he has his way he's going to be just as popular this time round…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052926</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RuckDean Koontz|title=The Bluffer's Guide to Golf (Bluffer's Guides)Bad Weather Friend
|rating=4.5
|genre=SportParanormal|summary=The fly leaf suggests that this BlufferBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to his home, and it's Guide possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the way very last person to instantly acquire deserve all the knowledge which you need to pass as an expert in the ''arcane and labyrinthine'' world of golfthis bad luck. There's quite He is a bit there nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that I'd agree on - the rules (and delivery to an unfortunate extent the ''attitudes'') are arcane and they seem to take his house is a new friend, a lifetime bad weather friend called Spike, who has been sent to master, but there's help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a surprising amount of information tucked away inside this little bookgood person. What I might quibble with Spike is whether or not you would ''pass as an expert'going to take care of Benny, and will certainly take care of Benny' s enemies, if he, Benny, and Harper (which suggests that you're something of a con man): therewaitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's enough detail here to give you a solid grounding without needing to bluffwild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909365327</amazonuk>1662500491
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1529153050|title=The Collected Works of A J FikryBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Gabrielle ZevinTim Benson
|rating=4
|genre=General FictionHumour|summary=A J Fikry Seeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is not having a good time. He's lost his wife coming to a car crashseem more and more like an adrenaline sport, and heI was nudged towards ''s not making that much money. The book store he runs, stuck out on a limb on a quiet island community, is too remote to turn a profit year-round, and he has just dismissed the latest publisherBritain's rep to turn up at his door, partly because her previous counterpart, an inconsequential part Best Political Cartoons of A J2022's life when all is said and done, had died and he didn't know about it. But his bad time is about to get a lot worse, as Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the one thing he owns worth year: the most – a rare book, more valuable than his house, his business, anything – is about cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to vanish31 August 2022. Which bizarrely Who can imagine what there will cause several major changes be to his one-person household…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408704617</amazonuk>come in the 2023 edition?
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{{newreview|author=William Hanson|title=The Bluffer's Guide to Etiquette (Bluffer's Guides)Frontpage|ratingisbn=5|genre=Lifestyle|summary=If you ask people what they fear most in any social situation most will tell you that it's not knowing how to behave. They'll be fine about the basics, but it's those little niceties - how to introduce yourself, what to ask for as an aperitif, how to address someone, for instance which can suddenly reveal you as a parvenu. William Hanson gives us a quick trip through the essentials in a book which is very readable and - in places - hilariously funny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909937002</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1785633074|title=Horrid Henry's Biggest and Best Ever Joke Book - 3-in-1Staggering Hubris|author=Francesca Simon and Tony RossJosh Berry
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=It Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country is easy to see why Horrid Henry remains such an enduring and wellrun by politicians, headed by the Prime minister -liked children’s character. The adventures the ''primus inter pares'' (that's for those of this cheeky, irreverent schoolboy you who are Eton and a cast of extreme characters including Miss Battle Axe, The Demon Dinner Lady, Rabid Rebecca and archOxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime'' movers are the special advisers - the SPADS -nemesis Moody Margaret who are the driving force behind the government. We are incredibly funny and a perfect way in the privileged position of having access to encourage reluctant young readers to cultivate a love the memoirs of reading. It is no surprise thenRafe Hubris, that the series has spawned a set man who was behind the skilful control of three spin-off joke books, the Covid crisis which have was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now been combined but he will certainly be the man to create a single volume: ''Horrid Henry’s Biggest and Best Ever Joke Book''watch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144401174X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571365884|title=Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Mess is a Bit of Life and Other Musings: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Ron BurgundyGeorgia Pritchett
|rating=4
|genre=HumourAutobiography|summary=''This book is Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a testament child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of life where if she had nothing to my giant ballsworry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far between.'' But On a visit to a therapist, as an adult, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her itwas suggested that she should write it down and ''s also My Mess is a lot more. The story we've never been able to discern from either Bit of the a Life: Adventures in Anxiety''Anchorman'' films is the result - or so we are given to believe.}}{{Frontpage|author=John Boyne|title=The Echo Chamber|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of surprising hardship, unsurprising hardness, and great hairthe few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record". ItHe starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three children, who are a ragssad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants tosave the world's homeless with out-riches taleof-date food, as Ron Burgundy comes from and a Hicksville town fit young lad doing the gay hustle thing. Add in the middle of the outskirts of somewhere the arse end of nowhere (a town perpetually on fire due few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to the accidents in the mines underneath) his life, and struggles against all you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the odds – and many of modern world. What suggests the evens in farcical approach even more, however, is the shape of women's legs – to get where he fact this is today, thrusting himself and his news at us nightlybloody funny.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780892241</amazonuk>0857526219
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Outraged of Tunbridge Wells: Original Complaints from Middle EnglandStephen Clarke|authortitle=Nigel CawthorneThe Spy Who Inspired Me
|rating=4
|genre=HumourGeneral Fiction|summary=It was ever thus… This is a spoof spy story, that isn't about James Bond. cyclists go too fast, without using Or Ian Fleming. But it features a hooter or lights; there are hoodlums everywhere one looksman called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and no public conveniences; people pretend to have qualifications 'likes the ladies' and degrees they haven't rightfully earned; buses are too busy with shopping women who should be indoors alreadyworks for the secret service, cooking for their working menfolk… but in the planning side of things more than the active service. It's Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a very clever idea to show exactly what is behind the 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' tagfemale spy called Margaux, and as a book to be shelved alongside those with the wackier letters sent to the ''Daily Telegraph''pair end up stranded in Normandy, these selections from the Royal town's press itself make with Margaux on a great eye-opener desperate mission to unearth traitors in the complaints resistance network, and complainants of Kent.Lemming desperately trying to keep up with her!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908096918</amazonuk>2952163855
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charlie HillAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=BooksKokoschka's Doll|rating=42.5|genre=HumourLiterary Fiction|summary=Neurology professor Lauren Furrows witnesses Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the sudden untimelydeath get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of two tourists in a bar while on holidayit. Birmingham bookshop ownerRichard Anger happens I found things to be potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the same bar so together our single holidaymakers decide to team up middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the 20,000s, letters used as an investigatory force to be reckoned with.(Wellnarrative form, Lauren teams up for thatand so on. Richard's reasons are more physical thanintellectual to begin It intrigued with.) The murders seem to emanate from author GarySayles, the subterranean voice a legend man hears in his own mind andwartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, apparently, fatal to readtoo. Elsewherehippy exhibitionists (in an over-18 way) Zeke and PippaBut you've seen the star rating that comes with this review, are planning theart installation to end all art installations andcan tell that if love was on these pages, are determined to makeGary the centrepiece, whether he realises it or was notactually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781251630</amazonuk>1529402697
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08KKQ85FN
|title=But Never For Lunch
|author=Sandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''If a woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a Rottweiler in lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the company of carrion crows or, more to the point, about to discover the real world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills.''
{{newreview|title=You don't get many better opening sentences than that, do you? We first met His Excellency and The Facebook DietAmbassador's Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: 50 Funny Signs of Facebook Addiction Ambassadress and Ways to Unplug With a Digital DetoxBeagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|author=Gemini Adams|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=Everywhere you look Sorting the Priorities]] and question this book, it is a success – more or less. Does it do we learned what it purports was like to – show evidence be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the time has come for HE to retires and for Sandra Aragona to become The Wife of a Facebook addiction and provide a dietary way out? Yes, more or lessFormer Ambassador... Does it engage with its combination of cartoon images They have left The Career and captions? Yes, more or lesssettled in Rome. Does it have some cult Internet pedigree to make it a hit gift book for Well 'settled' rather overstates the techie? Yessituation and their dog, Beagle, more or less – it might not have been borne from a webpage somewhere onlinehas no intention of slowing down any time soon, but the Kindle version was launched several months before the paperback. Is it then a worthwhile addition to your comedy book shelves? Yes – more or lessdespite being sixteen and deaf.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095546563X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B08GFSK2WZ|title=Sad MonstersThe Karma Trap|author=Frank LesserLisette Boyd
|rating=4
|genre=HumourWomen's Fiction|summary=If you thought you had it bad… Here George Jackson is the chupacabra writing thirty-three years old, absolutely gorgeous to the newspapers look at - and single. She's not had sex for better press – notices that doneight months and she't universally mention his goat-sucking habits before his chess-playing, dancing or debating record. Here is a banshee struggling with high school life, knowing s stuck in the end karma trap: an awful lot of everyone that comes across her path. Here bad luck is King Kong, being defended in court by visited on her and she has a lawyer real talent for attracting drama. Her life's chaotic: she dealt with a revelation the leak from the shower by putting something down at the bottom of the stairs to absorb the water - then the shower fell through the jury about his bipolarity roof whilst she was in it and how wrong it was left her, stark naked, staring at the pervy postman. She only has to take her mother's dog out for a walk for her to get his hopes end up with dog poo spattered across her face - and a Broadway show in a strange cityphoto being taken by someone who shares it around the office. Did you honestly think Godzilla enjoyed the way his life ended up?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0285642324</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael CameronDavid C Mason|title=The BrinkmeyersPandora's Gardener|rating=53|genre=HumourCrime|summary=Hymie Brinkmeyer, New Yorker transplanted in the UK John Cranston is 50 years old ''on a good day''. He lives with his wife Maggie and teenage children Kevin and Karrie. Hymie thinks Kevin is greatgardener, while given thatalthough what he did before he became a gardener, if he gets picked up for drug possession once moreclaims, Hymie will have to admit that Kevin may have a problemis classified. Karrie, a burgeoning poet, That is also wonderful in her dad's eyes and just as well because he is about to give birth to her second child outside be caught up in a relationship. It's her body so she has criminal / spy / terrorist plot, where only he can save the right... hasn't she? Everything is fine and life is great. Ok, Kevin's plotting to kill his mother and Hymie's leather-clad secretary seems to have a crush on her boss and Hymie seems to have a lump somewhere delicately crucial but everything's just fineday.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0957319134</amazonuk>0956180523
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Dedicated to...: The Forgotten Friendships, Hidden Stories and Lost Loves found in Second-hand BooksJester_Forever|authortitle=W B Gooderham|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=I have found many strange and unusual things in second-hand bookshops. I have done one or two strange and unusual things in them as well, but that's a different story. Twice now I have managed to find a second-hand book, completely signed and dedicated by the author, yet discarded by the recipient, and have been able to present the author with the edition at hand and get it re-dedicated. (If I'm not mistaken, the discarders were Forever After: a neighbouring babysitter, and a teacher of the author's children.) I'll admit that's rarefied, however, and on the whole the scribble you find in second-hand books is from the person who bought it, and gave it as a gift, not the person who wrote it. But even so, the dedication of the donor can be immensely fascinating and open to all kinds of interpretation, as these examples show perfectly clear.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593072847</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Wallace and Gromit - The Complete Newspaper Strips - Volume 1dark comedy|author=Nick ParkDavid Jester
|rating=4
|genre=HumourHorror|summary=One Michael Holland is a cocky and brash young man who dies and gets made the offer of his dog never had such lifetime; immortality. We follow Michael, a famous theme tune. ''One Man grim reaper and His Dog'' had his friends, Chip (a piddly little melody, but the triumphal, old-fashioned and charming parp of the theme tune to Wallace stoner tooth fairy) and Gromit has resounded out for decades now. While Aardman moved away from the near-silent classic animations the series first gave us, the plasticine creations mutated into incredibly popular characters, which included Naff (a daily strip stoner in the nation's biggest-selling tabloid. Here is the first lump of them, 312 daily doses of tomfoolery, collected for everyone to enjoy. Even if you thought the franchise had travelled its course records department) as they grapple with their long lives and finding a long time ago…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782760326</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Demon Dentist|author=David Walliams|rating=4.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=He ought clean surface to have realised she was evil from the start. After all, how many dentists do you know who love — yes, really love — rotten teeth? Brown, yellow, cracked, full of cavities, diseased, covered sit on in plaque . . . you get the picturetheir flat. And for Alfie, a boy who loathes dentists from the bottom of his heart and whose teeth are so rotten they ought to be a tourist attraction, danger definitely looms. You can practically hear the background music when the two meet at a school assembly: dum-dum-DUUUUMMMMMM!!!!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007453566</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Peas and Queues: The Minefield of Modern Manners|author=Sandi Toksvig|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Dear Sandi You are my all time favourite celebrity lesbadyke, and one of the reasons I’m so very excited to be heading to Denmark this coming weekend (are all people there like you? Please say yes). For this alone, I had to get my mitts on your latest offering. I wasn’t that fussed about obtaining a book on manners previously, having always thought mine were quite ok, but I knew your take on the matter would be suitably hilarious and well worth a read. I was not wrong.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781250324</amazonuk>}} {{newreview1683691172|title=Deaf at Spiral ParkWilliam Shakespeare's Much Ado About Mean Girls|author=Kieran DevaneyIan Doescher
|rating=2.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=''Deaf at Spiral Park'' is A long time ago, in a bizarre take on galaxy far away, all the philosophy of what it is to be humanStar Wars films were crunched up against Shakespeare, attempted through and the portrayal of a bear who shaves of his fur to appear as marriage seemed a humanperfectly suitable one. The story combines philosophy with comedy using a range of stock So much so – so easily did the plots and characters including a clown converse in Shakespearean dialogue, and a farmer behave with Shakespearean stage directions – that the producers tried again, with [[William Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to show the world of Future! by Ian Doescher|Back to the bear and to consider how his humanity may be more than Future]] no less. And that of worked. But simultaneously they put a real test out. A film I can't even really remember seeing was transcribed into the humans themselvesoriginal Elizabethan lingo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773169</amazonuk>A cult following I had never followed whatsoever was given the brand new, yet oh so ancient, dressing. Here was the true challenge – would I manage to enjoy this, based on little foreknowledge? Oh damn those shiny gold stars for letting the game away…
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=168369094X|title=Very British Problems: Making Life Awkward for Ourselves, One Rainy Day at a TimeWilliam Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to the Future!|author=Rob TempleIan Doescher|rating=34.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Are you compelled to apologise multiple times A long time ago, in a day – even when you are not at faultpublishing house far away, or even to inanimate objects? Would you subject yourself to great inconvenience rather than confront [[:Category:Ian Doescher|someone who is sitting in your reserved seat on a train? Have you been known ]] thought it wonderfully wacky to commit desperate acts in rewrite the search for your next cup story of tea? If soStar Wars in Shakespearean pentameter, you may be suffering from Very British Problemscolliding two entirely different genres and styles in such a clever way they seemed perfectly suited.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751552593</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Reluctant Cannibals|author=Ian Flitcroft|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Over a truffled turkey at their college Christmas dinner It was then duly repeated for all the other films in 1964the main Star Wars cycle, a group of Oxford dons decide to join their love of fine food and drink with clearly someone's buffing their mutual appreciation quills ready for nineteenth-century French philosopher of food Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (author Episode Nine, the title of which became public knowledge the 1825 classic ''La Physiologie du Goût'', or ''The Physiology of Taste'') by forming a secret dining societyday before I write. Together these fellows of St Jerome's College form In the Shadow Faculty of Gastronomic Sciencehiatus, however, a group that will continue meeting the effort has been made to share new see if the same shtick works with other texts, and daring culinary experiences until Oxford agrees to set up a proper gastronomic school riff on other seemingly unlikely source materials in iambs. And could we have anything more suitably unsuitable-seeming than Back to the Future, with its tales of its own.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909593591<time travel, bullying, and parent/amazonuk>child strife like no other?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)1473669065|title=The Best Book in the WorldQueenie Malone's Paradise Hotel|author=Ruth Hogan
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionHumour|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings Tilda returns to Brighton, to tidy away the remains of othersher mother' works are renowneds life after her death. WhyWhilst there, his rendition of ''The Diseases of she returns to the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook Paradise hotel, a haven for Volvo 245''eccentrics and misfits. HoweverA place where people can be themselves, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree let go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her as a combination child, from this place of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categorieswonder. They start work on it With the next day buthelp of Queenie Malone, caring, rather than collaborateand gregarious, each wants Tilda begins to pick apart the lone glorytricky and uncertain relationship she had with her sometimes cruel and distant mother. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1683690346|title=The Complete and Utter History of the World According to Samuel Stewart Aged 9Con Artist|author=Sarah BurtonFred Van Lente
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=Comic-Cons are a place of wonder and sanctuary for many people, and when Comic book artist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-Con, he''Nobody knows where history ends''s looking for both that and sanctuary with other fans and creators, according to plus the cover illustration chance of this little bookmaybe, just maybe reuniting with his ex. However, but if anybody knows what it involves it when his rival is nine year old Samuel Stewart. He captivatingly summarises it all on these pagesfound dead, bringing us Mike is forced to navigate every dark corner of the con in ninety minutes order to clear his name – from the times cavemen didn't write history down as they didn't realise it had started yet, up cosplay flash mobs and intrusive fans to the time of zombie obstacle courses – Mike must prove his birth. That of course is innocence and, in doing so, may just unravel a time that passed most of us by, but heralded the arrival of dark secret behind a very individual, entertaining and amusing voicelegendary industry creator.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721838</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tony Robinson OBE1473669588|title=Freedom from Bosses ForeverFalling Short|author=Lex Coulton
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=When we first meet Canadian businesswoman Leonora Soculitherz (don't struggle - itLex Coulton's pronounced 'so cool it hurts') she's on her way from Manchester Airport to Scarboroughdebut novel is a story about mistakes, failures, and relationships. The main protagonist, Frances Pilgrim, the home of is a sixth form English teacher who has recently fallen out with her agentbest friend Jackson, Tony Robinson OBE. You get a work colleague and is grappling with the measure increasingly eccentric behaviour of the woman straight away as she lets her irritation show about the problems you find in the First Class carriage on the trainmother. (She This relationship is ''so'' right - I was once grateful to spend complicated by the journey perched on a luggage rack.) Her mission is a piece of investigative journalism fact thatFrances's going to introduce her to some very superior people as father disappeared at sea when she searches for information about why people in small businesses don't get the help they needwas five years old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00CE5BKKI</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Merrill1683690133|title=Muddle Your Way Through Being a Grandparent: How to Fool People into Thinking YouMy Lady're a Competent Granny or Grandpas Choosing|author=Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris|rating=34
|genre=Humour
|summary=It seems to be accepted wisdom that being You are a grandparent lass of twenty-eight. Plucky, penniless and in Regency-era London the race is on to find a great deal easier than being a parentsuitable suitor - or else doom yourself to life as an eternal spinster. The trials and tribulations have largely been ignored Along your journey, you'll be accompanied by wrinklies grateful for contact with their children and grandchildren Lady Evangeline Youngblood - a fiesty noble eager to save you from a life alone, and fired by the children who are grateful (or otherwise) a rogueish sense for free childcare - or so Paul Merrill would have us believeadventure. Published for GrandparentsWhen it comes to suitors though, you' Day his book takes us through a series of scientifically-questionable quizzesll have to make the ultimate decision between witty, pretty and wealthy Sir Benedict Granville, wholesome, flow charts (that's often of moneyrugged and caring Captain Angus MacTaggart, by or the way - mad, bad and terrifyingly sexy Lord Garraway Craven. With orphans, werewolves, long lost lovers and you can guess which ancient Egyptian artefacts along the way , it's flowing), checklists and advice from celebrities, some of whom you might even have heard ofclear this isn't going to be an easy decision...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909609404</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan CoeStibbe_Xmas|title=Expo 58An Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=It's 1958 Christmas – the time of traditional trauma. You only have to think about the turkey for that – once upon a time it was leaving it sat on the downstairs loo to defrost overnight, and Thomas Foley works for if that failed the British Government Central Office of Information but feels an outsiderhair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. HeNowadays it's exall having to make sure it's suitably free-grammar school rather than establishment public school range and his mother is Belgian (organic – but not too organic that's foreign you know) so there are definite impediments can go and visit it, and get too friendly with it to his promotionwant to eat it. Thomas Christmas, though, is therefore thrilled when chosen to oversee one of Britaincourse also a time of great boons. It's exhibits at the big, exciting international Expo cash in Belgium. So bring on the experience… hand for a lot of plump people who can hire red suits and beards, it was always a little brush godsend for postmen with espionage… all the thank-you letters to aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, and some beautiful women. (Sylvia is a little less thrilledas for the makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, being his wife did they even try and all.)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670923710</amazonuk>sell them any other time of the year?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael RollDoescher_Will|title=Save Our ShopWilliam Shakespeare's the Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh|author=Ian Doescher|rating=34.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=William Bridge A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a talented artist - just a little too talentedman called William Shakespeare, as it turned out because the sub-editor could see ''exactly'' who the cartoon character was meant able to be create a series of dramatic histories full of machinations most foul, rulers most evil and that was why he ceased to be a journalist rather suddenlyrebellious heroes and heroines most sturdy. He wasnYou may or may not have noticed the cinematic version of his original stage play for 't 'The Force Doth Awaken'exactly'' spoiled for choice when it came to his next employment and that was how he found himself helping his Uncle Albert in the village shop, but there were pluses and minuses about here at last we get the job. The biggest plus was that he met and fell actual script, complete with annoying-in love with Sally-different-ways-to-before droids anew, who was also helping Uncle Albert. The first of the minuses was that there was more than a little opposition to the match returning heroes from Sally's stepmotherelsewhere in his oeuvre, and people keeping it in the redoubtable Lady Courtneyfamily til it hurts. And then there was the armed robberyif you need further encouragement, don't forget his audience only demanded three parts of Henry VI – here the arrival of Albertseries is so popular we's brother Neil who for urgent and perfectly valid reasons needed re on to be known part seven – surely making this over twice as Aunt Isabel, the American security expert and his daughter whose expertise was in an entirely different area and some dodgy dealings about the future of the shop. No real problems there, then.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1291387382</amazonuk>good…
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{{newreview|title=Straight White Male|author=John Niven|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=In Kill Your Friends, John Niven delivered a scathing and hugely entertaining satire Move on the music industry. In Straight White Male he's turned his attention to Hollywood and academia with similarly impressive results.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434022861</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Unfaithfully Yours|author=Nigel Williams|rating=4|genre=General [[Newest LGBT Fiction|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to the best-seller list, a couple of decades ago, it was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more in the same series, and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick pony, and could never be sure how much of the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read more. Flash forward, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putney. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so on. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears it is one built from letters. It is the blatant two-and-fro timing of the narrative, and the succinctness that characters are formed with, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many more.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jonathan Evison|title=The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Ben hasn't worked for a while and so, deciding on a career change, trains to become a caregiver. His first client is Trev, a 20 year old Duchene Muscular Dystrophy sufferer who hasn't the sunniest of dispositions. In fact Trev is angry, self-centred and goes through caregivers like a knife through milk. However, Ben, needing a job, holds on tight and tries to encourage Trev to live a little. Eventually Trev complies and dictates a way forward: a road trip. A road trip with a housebound, ill, angry person is not what Ben had in mind at all. Meanwhile it gradually becomes clear to us that Trev isn't the only one who has to learn to live a little differently.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781851751</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Krister Jones|title=The Satanic Diaries|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=We travel with Satan through a morose time in his lengthy existence. His wife has divorced him and his Chief of Security (Himmler) seems to be going even madder. To top it off, his therapist is insisting that his anger issues need to be dealt with and is forcing him to keep a diary. Following a disastrous holiday and an even worse attempt to get back into dating, he takes the diary with him as he goes on the lam in disguise and lives for a while paycheck to paycheck as a security guard for a cash and carry.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909224340</amazonuk>}}Reviews]]