History BlackComedy / Literature

* The entire premise of ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents''. Let us put it this way: the series starts with the main characters parents getting killed in a fire that destroys their home, then getting forced by an extremely incompetent banker to live with a monster of person who only interest is getting their inheritance by any means necessary, including wedding one the main characters under the guise of a stage play, all the while the narrator is begging the reader to stop, because it always gets worse...

* Everything written by Creator/TimDorsey. His novels center around a [[OnlyInFlorida Floridian]] SerialKiller who's dedicated to protecting his beloved home state by killing off {{Asshole Victim}}s in the most elaborate, violently creative ways possible, and it is ''hilarious''.

* ''Ranklechick'' by Rikki Simons is about ghouls in a zoo around Jupiter that fly through space in ships powered by particles that insult physics and then get beaten up. It's a touching story of Christmas and insanity.

* ''The Late Hector Kipling'' by David Thewlis. Throughout all the tragedy that the main character has to deal with, he finds himself unable to respond "properly" to it, to be sad and grieve like any other person would, which leads to bizarre situations and conversations. A large chunk of the book is actually about his hope that someone close to him would die already.

* Creator/CliveBarker's ''Mister B. Gone'': Filled with the darkest of humor, as can be expected from Clive Barker. There's a scene where the demon villain protagonist [[BloodBath bathes in a tub full of blood from dead babies]]. The townspeople are hot on his trail, since there was a hole in his baby bag, and he left a trail of children, like bread crumbs, on his way back to his hovel. He complains how difficult it was to keep them alive so the bath would be warm when he emptied their blood into the tub.

* Everything Creator/TomSharpe ever wrote, especially ''The Throwback''.
* Creator/MatthewWaterhouse's novels ''Fates, Flowers'' and ''Vanitas'' revel in black comedy to the event where it becomes a selling point.

* ''Tik-Tok'' by Creator/JohnSladek (not the one from the ''Literature/LandOfOz'').

* In ''The Cat Who Sang for the Birds'' from ''Literature/TheCatWhoSeries'', main protagonist James Qwilleran is out exploring a cemetery with a local old-timer. They come across a pair of graves, those for a husband and wife, that the old-timer describes as "the ultimate his and hers." The wife's reads "Shot by her dear husband." The husband's reads "Hanged for killing his dear wife."

* ''Literature/UnderHeaven'': Shen Tai ends up finding out har hard it is to regift [[spoiler:250]] Sardian "Heavenly Horses" (aka 'dragon horses'); in doing so, either the person tels him why it's politically inconvenient to accept, and/or informing him that if they though there was ''any'' chance a rival would end up with the horses instead, then it would almost be worth it to kill Tai to deprive the rival a chance at the horses.
** Tai ends up with the horses as a gift, after spending almost two years tending a battlefield buy burying soldiers from both sides. When a newly arrive soldie- from what was the opposing side- first shows up, he accuses Tai of disrespecting his side's dead. Tai immediately asks, "Could you point out which ones are yours, so I can start disrespecting them properly?" (His commanding officer, for his part, just decides to chew out the glory-seeking idiot.)