The nights have drawn in, it's cold, summer's a distant memory, there's a bitter chill in the wind- the best thing to do is laugh. And you can with these 10 novels that have made us laugh. From the curiously absurd to the classically wry to the best book set in Russia about penguins and the mafia, this list is guaranteed to warm your cockles with hearty laughs and paroxysms of guffaws.

  • A Confederacy of Dunces

    By John Kennedy Toole

    Ignatius is a testament to sloth, rage and contempt, a behemoth of fat, flatulence and furious suspicion of anything modern, a horrible man, a noble crusader against a world of dunces.
    Read our review of A Confederacy of Dunces

  • Blue Heaven

    By Joe Keenan

    Keenan, known for his multi-layered episodes of Frasier, constructs a tale that hinges on pomp, circumstance and coincidence
    Read our review of Blue Heaven

  • Bridget Jones' Diary

    By Helen Fielding

    Bridget Jones wants to have it all - and once she's given up smoking and got down to 8st 7 she will.
    Read our review of Bridget Jones' Diary

  • The Collector Collector

    By Tibor Fischer

    A hypochondriac millionaire art collector, Marius, who carries fire extinguishers with him wherever he goes; the sultry and parasitic kleptomaniac, Nikki, master of the imaginative lie; and owner Rosa, the uncomfortably-single art appraiser who just happens to be holding a lonely hearts' columnist hostage at the bottom of an unused well.
    Read our review of The Collector Collector

  • Death and the Penguin

    By Andrey Kurkov

    Set in post-Soviet Ukraine, this little gem of a novel follows the fortunes of Viktor, an aspiring short story writer, and his pet penguin Misha.
    Read our review of Death and the Penguin

  • High Fidelity

    By Nick Hornby

    The arcane dissections of obscure pop facts, the one-upmanship on the most trivial of answers and knowledge titbits are not only painfully familiar but searing in their deconstruction of modern man.
    Read our review of High Fidelity

  • Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    By Douglas Adams

    ...hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed with the big, friendly words: DON’T PANIC.
    Read our review of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

  • The Rotters' Club

    By Jonathan Coe

    Jonathan Coe’s warm and heartening look back at the 1970s and its fashions and tastes is a zesty comedy full of acute observations about growing up and being an awkward teenager at school.
    Read our review of The Rotters' Club

  • Sag Harbor

    By Colson Whitehead

    Benji's a Converse-wearing, Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favourite Star Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo
    Read our review of Sag Harbor

  • Then We Came to an End

    By Joshua Ferris

    Nothing, not even TV series The Office, comes close to this book in describing modern office life.
    Read our review of Then We Came to an End