The Third Policeman, with its proposition that people and their bicycles are exchanging molecules, one slowly becoming the other, now feels like something the mainstream media might be hiding from conspiracy theorists. Choosing the author is no problem: Evelyn Waugh is the supreme master of comedy in modern English literature. Because by apologising to the moisture, I was conveying to Mr Chrysostom, in the most trenchant way possible, my own opinion of his character. Like her stand-up, Jo Caulfield’s caustic wit and razor-sharp observations make her account of life with her sister, even in the worst of times, as entertaining as it is touching and relatable.

Jamie Grimm is a middle schooler on a mission: he wants to become the world's greatest standup comedian–even if he doesn't have a lot to laugh about these days. When I wrote in a letter to my sister in 1983 “We’re ALL reading this Diary”, I was referring to The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend, and for once I wasn’t exaggerating.Bertram’s genius butler, Jeeves, provides him with a steady drip of schemes to navigate this obstacle course, but their deceptions—and the at most intermittent competence with which Bertie executes them—keep getting him in deeper and deeper trouble.

From accidentally auditioning to be a pole-dancer to trying to reach the afterlife in the back of a pub, it feels like Daisy – who found fame writing and starring in hit BBC series This Country with her brother – was born to make us laugh. There is a vibrant, stylish energy to the goofball relationship between the valet Jeeves and the idle Bertie Wooster, and fans of Wodehouse’s escapist novels, including the captivating Right Ho, Jeeves, relish the Edwardian slang – “cove”, “blighter”, “snifter” – that peppers their conversations.

You do not want to come across as a comedian to your reader, especially if you are writing fiction that is supposed to be funny but also tragic and poignant.

Hugely influential, cynical and warm and funny, its the perfect coming-of-age book (or bildungsroman, if you're feeling fancy).

Taylor Kay Phillips’s A Guide to Midwestern Conversation is a wildly entertaining, precisely critical, and lovingly mocking taxonomy of the people of “flyover country. There was Adrian Mole, of course, and Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Monty Python books, Woody Allen’s Without Feathers, Geoffrey Willans’s How to Be Topp, Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall. When falling out with those at the church of St James the Lesser, he joins the congregation of St James the Lesser Still. Consider a plot line you have read before and adjust it or add to it so it becomes fresh and new to readers. My Sister, the Serial Killer moves like a thriller – pacy and punchy – but at the same time it's laced with buckets of dark comic energy.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is in two parts, one about Sedaris’s childhood and family, and the second is about his experience in France as a foreigner. The sense of desolation is deepened by the “humor” genre of commercial publishing, in which comedians and influencers monetize audiences they built on television or social media.

Perhaps the most mercilessly, eyebrow-cockingly dry of the great Jazz Age humourists, there weren't many things Dorothy Parker couldn't sharpen with her witheringly sardonic outlook. Delete At Your Peril is a very, very funny book, and a perfect present for anybody who has a) a sense of humour, and b) gets irritated by internet spammers and their tiresome scams. Jo moved to Edinburgh with her husband in 2013, having fallen in love with the city during numerous Fringe shows.