Dead White Male (2003)
Ed Budwieser, an English teacher, comes to believe he is the reincarnation of Shakespeare. His fantasies land him in a hospital and his wife Mildred in a mental institution. He dies but returns to life, where his fantasies are realized, but in unexpected ways.

Benedict XVI (2002)
"This novel flays about everything in the contemporary world that begs to be flayed— politics, the media, and of course religion. The comic hero is Benny Good (a mix of Falstaff and Larry Flynt), whose misadventures lead him from a humble origin as an Amish foundling through turns as a novice evangelist, overland trucker, and radio talk show host to the office that includes the perk of being addressed as Most Holy Father.   ¶Becoming the first American pope, Benny finds, is not difficult. With luck, the will of God, and the help of an agent with her eye on the holdings of the Catholic Church, all he has to do is to allow himself to be reinvented by her think tank and then let his magnetism and verbal skills loose on the world.  ¶Remaining the first American pope is another matter. Once elected, Benny discovers, one must do what popes are paid to do: compose encyclicals and, in his case, keep an outrageous secret hidden and the media at bay. Does he succeed? Beyond his, and the reader’s, wildest expectations." -- from Komos Books

The Church of the Comic Spirit (2001)
One evening Father Alazon Lustlieb appears on "Larry King Live" to announce that he has received a series of revelations. Several God-sent angels, he reports, instructed him to find and translate a set of twelve scrolls, then choose four disciples to help him interpret these scriptures-the Bear Lake Scrolls-and establish The Church of the Comic Spirit.  ¶The Scrolls, the original versions of the old Bible stories, form the centerpiece of what Merle Kessler calls this "cheeky by strangely reverent" novel. They feature a zany menagerie that includes the femme fatale Eve, the schlemiel Abraham, Noah's entrepreneurial wife Elsie, the trickster Moshe, and God, who is not the all-powerful, all-knowing, exacting father he was later made out to be.