Steve Allen Books in Order

This early collection offers fourteen short stories from Allen’s fiction writing. The pieces show his interest in comic setups, unexpected turns, and the strange behavior that can emerge when ordinary people are under pressure.

A collection of short stories that moves between humor, social observation, and darker surprises. Allen uses fictional situations to poke at prejudice, celebrity, everyday hypocrisy, and the ways people misunderstand one another.

Allen studies the work and styles of sixteen major comedians, from radio and vaudeville to television. It is a comic’s-eye look at why performers such as Fred Allen and Jack Benny made audiences laugh.

A collection of poems that brings Allen’s wit to shorter, more reflective forms. The verses range through comic observations and personal thoughts, showing another outlet for his restless, joke-ready imagination.

A short-story collection that mixes comic scenes with sharper social observations. Allen’s characters face desire, loneliness, ambition, and awkward encounters, often with an ending designed to shift the reader’s expectations.

Allen’s autobiography follows his childhood, early broadcasting work, television rise, creative habits, and family life. He writes frankly about the strange demands of celebrity and the machinery behind live television.

Drawing on Allen’s memories of an unsettled childhood around vaudeville, this semi-autobiographical novel looks at family, performance, and loss. It brings a more serious, personal side of his writing into view.

This playful illustrated book turns Allen’s comic attention toward curses, bad luck, and the urge to outsmart trouble. Expect wordplay, odd situations, and a deliberately silly approach to life’s small frustrations.

A collection of Allen’s comedy material, including monologues, television sketches, ad-libs, commercials, and offstage bits. It captures the loose, mischievous spirit of his work from television, stage, and dinner-table conversation.

Allen talks with and profiles working comedians, including Mel Brooks, Lily Tomlin, Billy Crystal, and others. The book is part interview collection and part insider’s look at how different funny people build a career.

Allen examines his son Brian’s decision to join the Love Family religious commune in Seattle. Part family account and part wider inquiry, the book considers faith, cults, parental fear, and the difficulty of staying connected.

A follow-up to *Funny People*, this book continues Allen’s exploration of comedians and comic craft. It offers more encounters, observations, and backstage perspective from someone who spent decades making audiences laugh.

When a rock star appears to be murdered on live television, the shock is only the start. A string of killings tied to the talk-show circuit sends Steve Allen into a dangerous search for a killer who wants an audience.

Allen offers practical advice for planning, writing, and delivering speeches without sounding stiff. His guidance focuses on clear ideas, audience awareness, timing, and the useful role that a well-placed laugh can play.

A friendly guide to joke telling, ad-libbing, comic writing, performing, emceeing, and everyday conversation. Allen and Jane Wollman encourage readers to find the kind of humor that fits their own voice.

A murder draws fictional Steve Allen into Hollywood’s crowded world of performers, producers, and private grudges. To find the culprit, he has to look past the polished stories everyone is paid to tell.

Allen argues that Americans need to think more carefully about education and public life. Mixing criticism with proposed fixes, he lays out eighty-one ways he believes the country could become smarter.

This four-volume set collects material from Allen’s historical discussion series *Meeting of Minds*. Famous figures from different eras are imagined around the same table, debating ideas, values, politics, and the problems of human behavior.

Filling in for a late-night host seems easy until Steve Allen’s guest dies after drinking poisoned vodka on air. With suspicion circling the show, Steve must discover who was really meant to die.

Steve Allen heads to Manhattan, where a murder opens up a case among people with money, influence, and reasons to hide the truth. The city’s nonstop pace leaves little room for a safe mistake.

Allen brings his skeptical, plainspoken style to questions about scripture, organized religion, ethics, and belief. The essays invite readers to examine inherited ideas rather than accept them without argument.

While rehearsing with legendary crooner Buddy Hamilton in Las Vegas, Steve finds Buddy’s young wife strangled in a sauna. Amid the casinos and showroom glamour, Steve and Jayne follow a case built on jealousy and secrets.

Allen looks back on his television life, from live-broadcast mishaps to encounters with performers and colleagues. The memoir is packed with stories about the unpredictable, often absurd work of making television on the fly.

This companion volume continues Allen’s discussions of religion, the Bible, and moral responsibility. He approaches big questions with skepticism, humor, and a willingness to challenge familiar answers.

Allen follows his comedy guide with more practical thoughts on making people laugh. The book looks at comic timing, material, performance, and the everyday observation that can become the start of a joke.

A network revives an old television quiz show, and Jayne Meadows joins its returning celebrity panel. When the stars begin dying for real, Steve and Jayne must stop a killer whose crimes are boosting the ratings.

Allen gathers down-to-earth thoughts on public issues and private behavior, including family, religion, war, crime, and civic life. It shows the serious, argumentative side that often sat beneath his comic persona.

A piano, vocal, and guitar collection of songs associated with Steve Allen. Musicians can explore his work as a songwriter, including tunes shaped for performance as well as the page.

Steve and Jayne join the maiden voyage of a billionaire’s luxury liner, expecting a starry celebration. Then a body appears in a lifeboat, and more deaths turn the isolated ship into a floating crime scene.

Thirty-one short stories bring together comic invention and serious concerns about prejudice, religion, racism, and public behavior. Allen moves from whimsical premises to pointed social satire, usually leaving room for an unexpected turn.

A wide-ranging collection of Allen’s articles, speeches, letters, forewords, and excerpts. He takes on politics, culture, race, public responsibility, and the people who shaped his thinking, with humor still close at hand.

Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows find another deadly puzzle waiting behind the bright surface of television entertainment. As the danger closes in, their easy banter has to share space with careful, urgent detective work.

A killing disrupts the show-business world that Steve Allen knows so well. With humor, nerve, and a growing list of suspects, Steve and Jayne work to expose the person turning entertainment into something lethal.

Steve and Jayne travel to Honolulu to appear in a television series with actor Billy Markham, the son of old friends. When Markham is stalked and two drownings follow, the visit becomes a dangerous investigation.

Allen opens his storehouse of jokes, anecdotes, one-liners, and quotations. It is built for browsing, whether readers want comic material, a quick laugh, or a glimpse of how a lifelong performer collected ideas.

A poetry collection that balances performance-minded rhythm with comic and reflective observations. The poems use everyday experience, wordplay, and a direct speaking voice to explore desire, memory, and the oddness of modern life.