Patrick F. McManus

Often compared to Garrison Keillor and Mark Twain, Patrick F. McManus maintains just the right balance between baffled innocence and conspiratorial confidence. Since 1979, this humorist has been delighting readers with hilarious stories recounting his childhood in rural Idaho and relating his misadventures in the great outdoors. Whether you're a sportsman or a couch potato, he will have you laughing out loud at his escapades. In this collection of...

Patrick McManus’ national best-seller, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, is a collection of hilarious short pieces about fishing, its exotic equipment, and activities like “gunkholing.” You will learn, for example, that the best way to learn to fish is to build an addition to your house first. It should be big enough to hold all the nifty fishing equipment you will cart home from sporting goods stores and garage sales. McManus cheerfully guides...

Patrick McManus, the bestselling author of such hilarious books as A Fine and Pleasant Misery and Never Sniff a Gift Fish, now offers readers solid thoughts on the qualities that define leadership, beginning with the need to be tall, and much more, in this outrageous collection of short pieces that reveals his tortuous trip along the writer's path.

The first advice I ever received about fishing was passed on by a teenage ranch hand when I was six years old. As often happened in those days, a spontaneous card party had erupted at the main ranch house one Sunday afternoon, and it was decided by the rancher that everyone should stay for dinner that evening. The fact that the ranch larder had little on hand to feed twenty or so people bothered the rancher not at all. He simply turned to one of the...

With over two million copies of his works in print, Patrick McManus is an accomplished humor author. In The Bear in the Attic, he once again invites listeners to peek into his unique perspectives on life and his favorite topic, the great outdoors. Here listeners are treated to amazingly absurd tales of young male hijinks, camping mishaps and neighbor-eating bears! Norman Dietz adds another dimension to McManus' humor with his brilliant comic narration....

Let the world's funniest sportsman tickle your funny bone with quirky homespun stories and whimsical perspectives on life. Patrick F. McManus gently pokes fun at the oddities of sacred institutions like friendship, marriage, and even hunting and fishing. Soon his crazy theories start making sense, and you know you've crossed the border into McManus country, where life is a little lighter-and much more amusing. McManus initiates you into his world...

Bo Tully, sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, has seen his share of small-town crime. Fact is, everyone in the area knows Tully, and knows his Blight Way of doing things. But when he and his deputy hike into the deep woods, tracking a suspected bank robber, little do they realize that they are about to witness a murder?and that, in turn, will lead the sheriff on an intricate trail, a series of twists and turns demanding his utmost attention and keenest...

In the chapters of Never Sniff a Gift Fish, McManus will teach you the wisdom that is usually shared only in the close ranks of modern-day hunters and gatherers. To complete your arsenal, McManus also includes The Hunter's Workout Guide and a special Family Camper's Dictionary. Exercises like the hindquarter shuffle will make you move like a hunter. And phrases like "Yip-yip-yip-Owoooooo!" will help you sound like one, too. Whether he's poking fun...

While leading a would-be killer into the open, Sheriff Bo Tully also pursues a seventy-five-year-old missing persons case in which a pair of gold miners (a two-man drilling team known as a double-jack) mysteriously disappeared just as they hit the mother lode in a remote part of Blight County.