Humorous fiction

When Koot Parganas accidently breaks a plaster statue venerated by his parents, he unwittingly unleashes the ghost of Thomas Alva Edison, leading to an alternately terrifying and hilarious adventure in the strange underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles.

A comedy set in a town where hundreds of inhabitants are on anti-depressants, prescribed by Dr. Valerie Riordan. After a patient dies she asks the druggist to substitute placebos. Freed of drugs, the town comes alive with wine and song, so loud it even awakens a sea monster.

An unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master.

Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his art-historian wife are asked to assess three dusty paintings blocking the draught from the chimney. But hiding beneath the soot is nothing less--Martin believes--than a lost work by Bruegel. So begins a hilarious trail of lies and concealments, desperate schemes and soaring hopes as Martin, betting all that he owns and much that he doesn't, embarks on a quest to prove his hunch, win his wife over, and separate the painting from its owner.

Vangie Nepper and her husband search for love outside the home and gossip about their neighbors in a sharp, humorous portrayal of life in a friendly but strait-laced Louisiana town in the fifties.

A semi-autobiographical first novel by an eighty-five-year-old retirement home resident, this charmer chronicles the lives of the retirees at Fair Acres Home. Told in journal form, the entries are touching, funny, and always entertaining.