WARNING: although the publisher is Simon & Schuster, the copy I bought is a print-on-demand Amazon book and is bad quality, so much so you cannot read some of the captions in the illustrations, and is pixelated. (It even claims to be a 2006 first edition, but that information is clearly false).
However, an entertaining collection of cartoons from the creator of the Addams Family, mainly depicting devious dark-humour ways to murder your spouse. ( )

This compilation of Charles Addams' cartoons contains many that were previously published in the New Yorker and some that were never published at all. They span several decades - the 1930s through the 1980s.

Most of them are darkly humorous. There were a couple that were laugh out loud funny to me. Mainly I was entranced by the fact that the majority of the cartoons cover ways for wives to kill their husbands and husbands to kill their wives. That made me wonder - was Chas Addams unhappily married? Looking at the bio in the book, his first two marriages seem as though they were beds of thorns, not beds of roses. (Now I'm thinking about Morticia, but this book of cartoons only has one "Addams Family" cartoon in it.)

I loved the fact they were written so long ago. I looked at the illustrations of rooms and houses and cars and clothes, once so commonplace but now distracting enough that they took preeminence over the jokes. For example, in one cartoon, a wife is rigging up wires to electrocute her husband at breakfast. What I find fascinating, though, is the fact that the toaster, the coffee maker, and the waffle iron are all plugged into the light fixture overhead. I've heard this is what they did in old houses prior to outlets being required on every wall. Very interesting to see pictured. And the fur coats and hats the ladies wore to go out! The old cars, the old stoves, the social tea parties, the apartments that look like The Honeymooners. . . .

I'll be checking out more of his work. I'm reading a Ray Bradbury novel for Halloween - From the Dust Returned. I seem to recall when I listened to this book many years ago, he mentioned Chas Addams. I felt I needed to go and look at Addams' pictures. Just getting in the mood for October. . . . ( )

A compilation of previously published and unpublished cartoons. Since it focuses only on dysfunctional relationship cartoons, this is grimmer than most Addams compilations. I would only recommend it to the hardcore Charles Addams fan.

Having grown up with the Addams family, I have always found Charles Addams cartoons irresistible. One thing that surprises me with every anthology I purchase is how much he did that had nothing to do with the family at all. This book is full of cartoons about couples. Since it's Addams it's mostly about people finding ingenious ways to rid themselves of an unwanted spouse. Let your "loved one" read it at your own risk ( )