More like Zorphwar!
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- Good Omens
series2 books1990
similar byhumorcontemporary
Good Omens is Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's 1990 comic fantasy novel in which an angel and a demon, both grown fond of life on Earth, try to head off an apocalypse foretold in a seventeenth-century witch's uncannily accurate prophecies, complicated by the fact that no one can find the misplaced Antichrist. Paired with it here is The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens: Script Book, a companion volume collecting the screenplay for the television adaptation rather than a second novel.
- Dirk Gently
series3 books1987
completed
part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Universe
similar byhumorcontemporary
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) introduces Douglas Adams's eccentric investigator, whose approach treats all events and objects as ultimately connected however implausibly, as a case involving time travel, a ghost, and a Cambridge murder tangles into one plot. Adams completed one further full novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), before his death; The Salmon of Doubt (2002) later collected his unfinished notes toward a third book alongside essays and other writing, rather than completing the story.
- Captain Underpants
series15 books1989
similar byhumorcontemporary
Captain Underpants is an American illustrated children's novel series and multimedia franchise created by author and illustrator Dav Pilkey. The series revolves around two fourth graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, living in Piqua, Ohio, and Captain Underpants, an aptly named superhero from one of the boys' homemade comic books, who accidentally becomes real when George and Harold hypnotize their cruel, bossy, and ill-tempered principal, Mr. Krupp.
- Nursery Crimes
series2 books2005
similar bycontemporary+1 more
In an alternate Reading, England, where nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale characters live as ordinary if eccentric citizens, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division investigates cases that keep colliding with their source material. The Big Over Easy turns Humpty Dumpty's fall into a murder investigation; The Fourth Bear follows with the Gingerbread Man as a serial killer. Jasper Fforde plays the premise for satire and wordplay as much as plot, in the same absurdist vein as his Thursday Next novels.
- Callahan
series33 books1973
similar bycontemporary+1 more
Spider Robinson's Callahan series centers on Callahan's Place, a bar run by Mike Callahan where the regulars - among them a talking dog, stranded aliens, time travelers, an ethical vampire, and Irish mythological beings - trade shaggy-dog puns and help each other through crises both cosmic and personal. Narrated largely by patron Jake Stonebender, the series runs from the original 1977 story collection through further novels and a later spinoff strand centered on Lady Sally McGee's establishment, continuing into the 2000s. It reads as a loosely connected sequence of tall tales more than a single continuous plot.
- Pine Cove
series3 books1992
similar byhumorcontemporary
Pine Cove gathers three loosely connected comic novels — Practical Demonkeeping, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, The Stupidest Angel — that Christopher Moore set in the same fictional small town on the California coast, recycling some of the same eccentric residents even as each book follows its own standalone plot (the first centers on a drifter's demon and the reluctant wizard trying to control it). It's part of the larger shared world Moore uses across most of his comic novels, rather than a continuing story arc.
- John and Dave
series4 books2007
similar byhumorcontemporary
Jason Pargin, writing as David Wong, began the John Dies at the End series as a free horror-comedy webserial in 2001 before print publication turned it into a franchise. The Lovecraftian adventures of narrator John and his friend Dave continue across This Book Is Full of Spiders, What the Hell Did I Just Read, and If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe, and the original novel was adapted into a 2012 film.
- Highfire
Eoin Colferstandalone novel2020
similar byhumorcontemporary
Wyvern, Lord Highfire of the Highfire Eyrie, is the last dragon on Earth and is hiding out in a Louisiana swamp. He strikes a deal with Cajun swamp rat Squib: Squib will keep him company and fetch supplies for him and Vern will protect Squib from the dirty cop that is chasing him. However, there will be soon be a firery reckoning, in which dragons wither finally become extinct or Ver's glory days are back.
- The Mouse That Roared
series6 books1955
completed
similar byhumor
The Mouse That Roared launches Leonard Wibberley's satirical series about the tiny fictional Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a European microstate whose leaders declare war on the United States purely to lose quickly and collect the postwar reconstruction aid given to defeated nations. The 1955 novel uses Fenwick's mismatched ambitions to poke fun at Cold War politics and the nuclear arms race, and Wibberley kept the joke going across four more novels into the 1970s. Later entries send the duchy into further absurd confrontations with the wider world, including a race to the Moon and a scheme on Wall Street.
- Bromeliad
series3 books1989
completed
similar bycontemporary+1 more
The Nome Trilogy, also known as The Bromeliad, is a trilogy of children's books by British writer Terry Pratchett, consisting of the books Truckers (1989), Diggers (1990) and Wings (1990). The trilogy tells the story of the Nomes, a race of tiny people from another world who now live hidden among humans. Through the books they struggle to survive in the human world and, once they learn of their history from an artefact known as "The Thing", make plans to return home.
- Gods Behaving Badly
Marie Phillipsstandalone novel2007
similar byhumorcontemporary
Gods Behaving Badly is a novel by the British author Marie Phillips. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in 2007. Set in London, it tells the tale of the twelve gods of Mount Olympus living in a rundown flat as their powers wane. It was selected for The Atlantic's 1book140 Twitter book club's book of the month for August 2011.
- Martians, Go Home
Fredric Brownstandalone novel1955
similar byhumorcontemporary
Martians, Go Home is a science fiction comic novel by American writer Fredric Brown, published in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction in September 1954 and later by E. P. Dutton in 1955. The novel concerns a writer who witnesses an alien invasion of Earth by boorish little green men from Mars.
- Coyote Blue
Christopher Moorestandalone novel1994
similar byhumorcontemporary
Coyote Blue is a novel by American writer Christopher Moore, published in 1994. It has been widely reviewed.
- Flying Dutch
Tom Holtstandalone novel1991
similar byhumorcontemporary
Flying Dutch (ISBN 0-356-20111-2) is the third humorous-fantasy novel by popular British author Tom Holt. First published in the UK in 1991 by Orbit Books.
- Brentford
series9 books1981
similar byhumorcontemporary
Robert Rankin's Brentford novels are set in a surreal, comic version of the London suburb of Brentford, mixing pub-culture farce with conspiracy theories, aliens, time travel, and increasingly absurd apocalyptic threats. The Antipope opens the loosely connected sequence, which follows an overlapping cast of local eccentrics across bar-room schemes that spiral into cosmic-scale nonsense. It began in 1981 and continued, on and off, for nearly three decades.
- Bimbos of the Death Sun
series2 books1987
similar by+2 more
Bimbos of the Death Sun is a satirical mystery set at a science-fiction convention, where an engineering professor moonlighting as a fantasy novelist gets entangled in a murder investigation amid costumed fans, gaming tournaments, and convention politics. Sharyn McCrumb's send-up of fandom culture won the Edgar Award and was followed by a loosely connected sequel, Zombies of the Gene Pool, set at a different fan gathering. Both novels were later republished together.
- Love Story
series3 books1995
similar byhumorcontemporary
Christopher Moore's Love Story trilogy opens with Bloodsucking Fiends, a comic horror-romance about a young San Francisco woman turned into a vampire. You Suck and Bite Me continue the story across the following two novels, keeping Moore's irreverent, comedic take on vampire fiction.
- Horrid Henry
series10 books2008
similar byhumorcontemporary
Horrid Henry follows a mischievous, rule-breaking schoolboy whose antics repeatedly clash with his more well-behaved younger brother, Perfect Peter, and the adults around them. Francesca Simon's long-running children's series, illustrated by Tony Ross, follows Henry through school, family, and holiday misadventures across dozens of short, comic entries.
- Professor Branestawm
series24 books1933
completed
similar byhumor+1 more
Professor Branestawm is a series of thirteen children's books written by the English author Norman Hunter. Professor Theophilus Branestawm is depicted throughout the books as the archetypal absent-minded professor and his name is a variant of the word "brainstorm". The first two books in the series were first published in the 1930s, but the other 11 appeared much later, from 1970 onwards.
- J. W. Wells & Co.
series8 books2003
similar byhumorcontemporary
J. W. Wells & Co. is Tom Holt's comic fantasy series about a London firm of "family sorcerers" (a name borrowed from Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Sorcerer), beginning with The Portable Door (2003) and running across eight novels to The Eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse. Each book follows the firm's hapless junior staff stumbling into magical bureaucracy, ancient rivalries and office-comedy chaos in roughly equal measure. The books are loosely connected workplace capers rather than one continuous plot.
