stand-up comedy

Confined by high-powered parents, overachieving siblings, and a controlling boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Izzy has learned to keep a low profile and her thoughts to herself. When she accidentally enters a comedy club on open mic night, Izzy performs and meets a new group of aspiring comedians who quickly become her friends. Keeping her newfound activities a secret, Izzy begins a desperate ploy to keep her two lives separate, but must eventually reckon with her suspicious boyfriend and best friend.

"Higashikata and Shijima vow to abandon their comedy dreams if they fail to win the High School Comedy Battle, but the competition is not what they prepared for. With just 30 minutes to spare, will they be able to write an entirely new sketch worthy of first place? Or is this the end for the talented duo?"--Back cover.

"The preliminary round of the Wara-1 Koshien has begun! Azemichi and Taiyo have put their hearts and souls into preparing for the competition, but if they're going to make it to Osaka, that holy land of comedy, first they're going to have to defeat the skilled comedy duo Sprechchor and a mysterious new opponent called Kirameki Confections, aka 'the Stage Crushers.' Will they be able to outdo these competitors and seize their ticket to the finals?"--Back cover.

"Shy Azemichi Shijima has secretly been studying the art of comedy. His outgoing classmate Taiyo Higashikata has big dreams of being funny but no follow-through. When the two team up, they just might take the comedy world by storm! Higashikata ropes Shijima into performing in a comedy duo with him at a school show. Inspired by their guaranteed success, Higashikata asks Shijima to join him in an audacious dream--to rise to the top of Japan's comedy scene by winning major events in both stand-up and sketch comedy!"--Back cover.

A career-ending injury destroys track star Agnes Chan's hopes of a college scholarship, putting her on a journey through the underbelly of Malaysian stand-up comedy, and directly into the path of her archnemesis, the ridiculously wealthy and disgustingly handsome Royce Taslim.

"Shy Azemichi Shijima has secretly been studying the art of comedy. His outgoing classmate Taiyo Higashikata has big dreams of being funny but no follow-through. When the two team up, they just might take the comedy world by storm! Higashikata ropes Shijima into performing in a comedy duo with him at a school show. Inspired by their guaranteed success, Higashikata asks Shijima to join him in an audacious dream--to rise to the top of Japan's comedy scene by winning major events in both stand-up and sketch comedy!"--Back cover.

"You know Haylah Swinton - she's big, bold and funnier than a cat in a onesie playing the bagpipes. She's been busy proving she's as a kick-butt comedian, she's got herself a fab boyfriend called Dylan, the best girl crew in the world totally have her back, her little brother isn't driving her totally nuts, and did she mention she has a boyfriend called Dylan? Yes, THAT Dylan. But this proving-she's-funny thing is kind of tough sometimes"--Amazon.

"You know Haylah Swinton - she's big, bold and funnier than a cat in a onesie playing the bagpipes. She's been busy proving she's as a kick-butt comedian, she's got herself a fab boyfriend called Dylan, the best girl crew in the world totally have her back, her little brother isn't driving her totally nuts, and did she mention she has a boyfriend called Dylan? Yes, THAT Dylan. But this proving-she's-funny thing is kind of tough sometimes. And come to think of it, Dylan isn't acting particularly boyfriendly at the moment. Plus her pathetic excuse for a dad has decided to turn up and make everything confusing. As if real life wasn't complicated enough, when Haylah sets up her own comedy YouTube channel, she finds out that online life can be a whole other can of trolls..." -- Amazon.

In 1938, after the apparently intentional murder of his father, the now-orphaned twelve-year-old Sheldon vows revenge. The fire of his need to get whoever it was who killed his father takes him to Hartford, where he grows up under the buttoned-up watch of Uncle Nate together with his teenage cousins Mirabelle and Abe. World War II takes center stage in everyone's lives soon, and Sheldon, still seeking vengeance, comes to learn that life is largely composed of crimes, whether wrongly or rightly committed.

"Today, women are ascendant in standup comedy, even preeminent. They make headlines, fill arenas, spawn blockbuster movies. But before Amy Schumer slayed, Tiffany Haddish killed, and Ali Wong drew roars, the very idea of a female comedian seemed, to most of America, like a punchline. And it took a special sort of woman-indeed, a parade of them-to break and remake the mold. In on the Joke is the story of a group of unforgettable women who knocked down the doors of standup comedy so other women could get a shot. It spans decades, from Moms Mabley's rise in Black vaudeville between the World Wars, to the roadhouse ribaldry of Belle Barth and Rusty Warren in the '50s and '60s, to Elaine May's co-invention of improv comedy, to Joan Rivers' and Phyllis Diller's ferocious ascent to mainstream stardom"--Provided by publisher.