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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'
(Please note that all Timeless Classic Books have been carefully formatted manually with full annotation and proper photo and/or illustration placement since our start in 2010/2011. Each cover is designed with paid or public domain artwork that is pertinent to the title. Each and ever cover is unique. None have ever been used twice.)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891-92) brings together the first twelve short stories Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Holmes and Watson. These follow Holmes's introduction in the first two novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aeneid'
Library of Liberal Arts title. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aeneid'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aeneid of Virgil'
Paperback (1951) Scribner's Sons [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Armadale'
An innovative novel featuring an astonishingly wicked female villain, Wilkie Collins' "Armadale" was regarded by T.S. Eliot as 'the best of [his] romances'. This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by John Sutherland. When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money - and murder. The character of Lydia Gwilt horrified contemporary critics, with one reviewer describing her as 'One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction'. She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in nineteenth-century literature and the dark heart of this most sensational of Victorian 'sensation novels'. John Sutherland's introduction illustrated how Wilkie Collins drew on scandalous newspaper headlines and on new technology particularly the penny post and the telegraph - to lend extra pace and veracity to his tale. This edition also contains notes, further reading and an appendix on stage dramatisations of "Armadale". Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was born in London in 1824, the eldest son of the landscape painter William Collins. In 1846 he was entered to read for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he gained the knowledge that was to give him much of the material for his writing. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens, who produced and acted in two melodramas written by Collins, "The Lighthouse" and "The Frozen Deep". Of his novels, Collins is best remembered for "The Woman in White" (1859), "No Name" (1862), "Armadale" (1866) and "The Moonstone" (1868). If you enjoyed "Armadale", you might like Collins' "No Name", also available in "Penguin Classics". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Babbitt'
"The equal of any novel written in English in the present century."
Virginia Woolf in The Saturday Review
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beautiful and Damned'
F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel, first published in 1922. It chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux riches and New York's nightlife of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. (from back cover) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beowulf'
A verse translation of the first great narrative poem in the English language that captures the feeling and tone of the original.
[via]› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Beauty'
A horse is a horse of course unless of course the horse is Black Beauty. Animal-loving children have been devoted to Black Beauty throughout this century, and no doubt will continue through the next. Although Anna Sewell's classic paints a clear picture of turn-of-the-century London, its message is universal and timeless: animals will serve humans well if they are treated with consideration and kindness.
Black Beauty tells the story of the horse's own long and varied life, from a well-born colt in a pleasant meadow to an elegant carriage horse for a gentleman to a painfully overworked cab horse. Throughout, Sewell rails--in a gentle, 19th-century way--against animal maltreatment. Young readers will follow Black Beauty's fortunes, good and bad, with gentle masters as well as cruel. Children can easily make the leap from horse-human relationships to human-human relationships, and begin to understand how their own consideration of others may be a benefit to all. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Bostonians'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, along with Roald Dahl's other tales for younger readers, make him a true star of children's literature. Dahl seems to know just how far to go with his oddball fantasies; in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for example, nasty Violet Beauregarde blows up into a blueberry from sneaking forbidden chewing gum, and bratty Augustus Gloop is carried away on the river of chocolate he wouldn't resist. In fact, all manner of disasters can happen to the most obnoxiously deserving of children because Dahl portrays each incident with such resourcefulness and humor.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a singular delight, crammed with mad fantasy, childhood justice and revenge, and as much candy as you can eat. The book is also available in Spanish (Charlie y la Fabrica de Chocolate). (The suggested age range for this book is 9-12, but nobody this reviewer has met can resist it, including New York City bellhops, flight attendants, and grumpy teenagers.) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cheri and the Last of Cheri'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina: The Troublesome Reign of Tiberius Claudius Caesar, Emperor of the Romans (Born 10 B.C., Died A.D. 54), as Described by Himself, Also His Murder at the Hands of the Notorious Agrippina (Mother of the Emperor...'
Robert Graves begins anew the tumultuous life of the Roman who became emporer in spite of himself. Captures the vitality, splendor, and decadence of the Roman world at the point of its decline.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde'
The Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the only truly complete and authoritative single-volume edition of Oscar Wildes works, and is available in both hardback and this paperback edition.
Continuously in print since 1948, the Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde has long been recognised as the most comprehensive and authoritative single-volume collection of Wildes texts available, containing his only novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters, all in their most authoritative texts.
Illustrated with many fascinating photographs, the book includes introductions to each section by Merlin Holland (Oscars grandson), Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kiberd and Terence Brown.
Also included is a comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Oscar Wilde, and a chronological table of his life and work.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete Works of Oscar Wilde'
Wilde's works are suffused with his aestheticism, brilliant craftsmanship, legendary wit and, ultimately, his tragic muse. He wrote tender fairy stories for children employing all his grace, artistry and wit, of which the best-known is The Happy Prince. Counterpoints to this were his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which shocked and outraged many readers of his day, and his stories for adults which exhibited his fascination with the relations between serene art and decadent life. Wilde took London by storm with his plays, particularly his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest. His essays - in particular De Profundis- and his Ballad of Reading Gaol, both written after his release from prison, strikingly break the bounds of his usual expressive range. His other essays and poems are all included in this comprehensive collection of the works of one of the most exciting writers of the late nineteenth century. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Confederacy of Dunces'
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs."
Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.
Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Lana Lee and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'
Describing the surreal hallucinations, insomnia and nightmarish visions, he experienced while consuming daily large amounts of laudanum, Thomas De Quincey's legendary account of the pleasures and pains of opium forged a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, and paved the way for later generations of literary drug-takers from Baudelaire to Burroughs. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cousin Bette'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dahl Diary, 1992'
Each month kicks off with some of Roald Dahl's own diary jottings, in which he tells all sorts of facts about his life, as well as a lot of detailed nature notes for each month of the year. The pages are also full of favourite characters from his books. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Wortle's School'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Eustace Diamonds'
The central plot of "The Eustace Diamonds" (1872) involves the theft and ultimate discovery of a diamond necklace - the Eustace family heirloom. A splendid sense of the absurd permeates the novel and allows Trollope to examine "truth" in may contexts and at many levels of seriousness. Lizzie's unscrupulous lies do not prevent her final exposure, and it is, as Stephen Gill says in his Introduction, "this honesty, this clarity of vision that places Trollope with the greatest social novelists of the nineteenth century, with Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Go-Between'
"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there", begins L. P. Hartley's tale of nostalgia, the reawakening of lost memories, and the sexual awareness of an adolescent boy. It is 1952. Leo, now in his sixties, comes upon an old diary and is drawn back to the hot summer of 1900, when he visited Brandham Hall. He has managed to forget serving during his stay as a messenger between a young woman and her lover -- and to forget also the devastating events that ensued and destroyed his beliefs and his hopes for the future. As his memories begin to unfold and Leo recalls the lost era of Victorian country gentry, he finds he must reinterpret his newly discovered past in terms of his present life. This first annotated edition of Hartley's 1953 classic contains a number of corrections based on the surviving handwritten manuscript. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Go-Between'
An invitation to a friend's house changes an adolescent boy's life. Discovering an old diary, Leo, now in his sixties, is drawn back to the summer of 1900 and his visit to Brandham Hall. The past comes to life as Leo recalls the events and devastating outcome that destroyed his beliefs and future hopes. From the author of NIGHT FEARS. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Green Hills of Africa'
"There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave."-- ERNEST HEMINGWAY
In the winter of 1933, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline set out on a two-month safari in the big-game country of East Africa, camping out on the great Serengeti Plain at the foot of magnificent Mount Kilimanjaro. "I had quite a trip," the author told his friend Philip Percival, with characteristic understatement.
Green Hills of Africa is Hemingway's account of that expedition, of what it taught him about Africa and himself. Richly evocative of the region's natural beauty, tremendously alive to its character, culture, and customs, and pregnant with a hard-won wisdom gained from the extraordinary situations it describes, it is widely held to be one of the twentieth century's classic travelogues. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'
With a full-cast dramatization, realistic sound effects, and composed music, this collection includes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel & Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin and The Fisherman & His Wife. 4 cassettes. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hand Of Ethelberta'
Adventuress and opportunist, Ethelberta reinvents herself to disguise her humble origins, launching a brilliant career as a society poet in London with her family acting incognito as her servants. Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage, she happily exploits the attentions of four very different suitors. Will she bestow her hand upon the richest of them, or on the man she loves? Ethelberta Petherwin, alias Berta Chickerel, moves with easy grace between her multiple identities, cleverly managing a tissue of lies to aid her meteoric rise. In "The Hand of Ethelberta" (1876), Hardy drew on conventions of popular romances, illustrated weeklies, plays, fashion plates and even his wife's diary in this comic story of a woman in control of her destiny. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Inheritance'
Louisa May Alcott, who spent much of her childhood amid an intellectual circle that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, embarked on her own literary efforts at an early age. Her recently discovered first novel, The Inheritance, written when Alcott was just 17, offers readers a fascinating look at the birth of a remarkable career.
Influenced by the melodrama of the contemporary theater, the sentimental romances she read as a child, and the popular gothic novels of the time, Alcott weaves a tale far removed from the reality of her everyday life in Boston. The Inheritance, set in an English country manor, is the story of Edith Adelon, an Italian orphan brought to England by Lord Hamilton as a companion for his children. With a charm reminiscent of Jane Austen's novels, Alcott's plot sets love and courtesy against depravity and dishonor -- and with the help of a secret inheritance, allows virtue to prevail.
In their Introduction, Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy relate their fortuitous discovery of Alcott's manuscript draft of The Inheritance (preserved at the Houghton Library of Harvard). They explore the forces -- both literary and personal -- that shaped the novel, and study how it foreshadowed Alcott's later work. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Joseph Andrews and Shamela'
Kissing, Joseph, is but a Prologue to a Play. Can I believe a young Fellow of your Age and Complexion will be content with Kissing?
Joseph Andrews, Henry Fieldings first full-length novel, depicts the many colourful and often hilarious adventures of a comically chaste servant. After being sacked for spurning the lascivious Lady Booby, Joseph takes to the road, accompanied by his beloved Fanny Goodwill, a much-put-upon foundling girl, and Parson Adams, a man often duped and humiliated, but still a model of Christian charity. In the boisterous short tale Shamela, a brilliant parody of Richardsons Pamela, the spirited and sexually honest heroine uses coyness and mock modesty to catch herself a rich husband. Together these works anticipate Fieldings great comic epic Tom Jones, with their amiable good humour and pointed social satire.
Judith Hawleys introduction compares the works of Fielding and Richardson, and discusses sex and class relations, and the literary and political world of the time. This volume also includes a chronology and suggestions for further reading.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jungle'
Upton Sinclair's dramatic and deeply moving story exposed the brutal conditions in the Chicago stockyards at the turn of the nineteenth century and brought into sharp moral focus the appalling odds against which immigrants and other working people struggled for their share of the American dream. Denounced by the conservative press as an un-American libel on the meatpacking industry, this book was championed by more progressive thinkers, including then president Theodore Roosevelt, and was a major catalyst to the passing of the Pure Food and Meat Inspection act, which has tremendous impact to this day. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Light in August'
To declare that Light in August is William Faulkner's finest work would be to invoke debate of irreconcilable conclusion. Yet for many followers of Faulkner, this novel showcases many of his best moments and characters. As usual, he mines the rich soil of Mississippi mud to create his subjects, this time in the form of Reverend Gail Hightower, Lena Grove and Joe Christmas. The issue of black and white and rich and poor is prevalent, though to draw lines that clear would be a disservice to Faulkner's immensely layered text and the multicolored beauty of his writing. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'
This is the story of a small, angelic boy from New York who is told he is the heir to an English Earldom and is whisked away to the English countryside where he begins to win over his bad-tempered old grandfather. When the boy's identity is challenged, his old friends from New York come to his rescue. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'
"Are you the Earl?" he said."I'm your grandson, you know ... I'm Lord Fauntleroy."
Young Cedric Errol doesn't know much about Earls, and he certainly never dreamt of becoming one. But when an unexpected visitor arrives to tell him he is to inherit a title and a fortune, he learns quickly what his new position entails. Whisked from the bustling streets of New York to an English country estate, the new Lord Fauntleroy must contend with his grumpy old grandfather and separation from his mother. Yet, despite the challenges of his new life, the little lord proves he has many lessons to teach those around him.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lord of the Rings'
Let's face it--even some adults find Tolkien's mammoth fantasy a daunting mouthful but children now have this special seven-book box set of The Lord of The Rings to make the epic tale just that bit easier to chew on. Split into its seven constituent parts, these slim volumes tell the ageless tale of young Frodo's quest to destroy The Ring and defeat the forces of evil. It's beautifully presented in a black presentation box with the movie logo and an illustration on the side and the spines of the books also form the movie logo. A contemporary look and plenty of "cool appeal" will grab kids' interest and ensure they don't miss out on reading this classic of the genre. --Jonathan Weir [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Magic Mountain'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Manager's Troubleshooter: Pinpointing the Causes and Cures of 125 Tough Day-To-Day Problems'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'
This is Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, a widely acclaimed work based on the actual murder, in 1831, of a progressive mill owner. It follows Mary Barton, daughter of a man implicated in the murder, through her adolescence, when she suffers the advances of the mill owner, and later through love and marriage. Set in Manchester, between 1837-42, it paints a powerful and moving picture of working-class life in Victorian England. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mary Barton'
O Jem, her father wont listen to me, and its you must save Mary! Youre like a brother to her
Mary Barton, the daughter of disillusioned trade unionist, rejects her working-class lover Jem Wilson in the hope of marrying Henry Carson, the mill owners son, and making a better life for herself and her father. But when Henry is shot down in the street and Jem becomes the main suspect, Mary finds herself painfully torn between the two men. Through Marys dilemma, and the moving portrayal of her father, the embittered and courageous activist John Barton, Mary Barton (1848) powerfully dramatizes the class divides of the hungry forties as personal tragedy. In its social and political setting, it looks towards Elizabeth Gaskells great novels of the industrial revolution, in particular North and South.
In his introduction Maconald Daly discusses Elizabeth Gaskells first novel as a pioneering book that made public the great division between rich and poor a theme that inspired much of her finest work.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Old Goriot'
A witty and reflective study of the bourgeoisie after the French Revolution, and the two great human obsessions - love and money - Honore de Balzac's "Old Goriot" is part of the immortal "La Comedie humaine", translated from the French with an introduction by Marion Ayton Crawford in "Penguin Classics". Eugene wants to get on in the world. So he has come to Paris, where the streets teem with chancers, criminals and social climbers - and everyone is out for what they can get. When he finds a place to stay at a shabby boarding house, he sees a potential plan to make a fortune: the two beautiful, aristocratic women who mysteriously come at night to visit the lonely old lodger Goriot. Could they bring him the status and acceptance he craves? In the city nothing is as it seems though. Soon Eugene gets out of his depth in a world of greed and obsession that he could never have imagined - one that can only end in terrible tragedy. Marion Ayton Crawford's sparkling translation is accompanied by an introduction exploring Balzac's ability to create distinctive characters from all levels of societyas the new, ambitious middle classes replaced France's old imperial ways. Honore De Balzac (1799-1850) failed at being a lawyer, publisher, printer, businessman, critic and politician before, at the age of thirty, turning his hand to writing. His life's work, "La Comedie humaine", is a series of ninety novels and short stories which offer a magnificent panorama of nineteenth-century life after the French Revolution. Balzac was an influence on innumerable writers who followed him, including Marcel Proust, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. If you enjoyed "Old Goriot", you might like Balzac's "Cousin Bette", also available in "Penguin Classics". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Our Man in Havana'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Pair of Blue Eyes'
Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Phineas Finn'
Second in the series of six Palliser novels, this book charts the progress of Trollope's talented and ambitious hero from his first steps on the ladder of a career in British politics. Success brings choices and temptations for Phineas. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Phineas Redux'
'since the day on which he had accepted place and retired from London, his very soul had sighed for the lost glories of Westminster and Douning Street'
After the death of his Irish wife, Phineas Finn returns to London and to the House of Commons. But though drawn back apparently irresistibly, he never approaches politics with the zest of earlier days. What Trollope describes, in some of his most powerful writing, is a sad, at times almost sombre, progress towards maturity and self-wisdom.
Although Phineas survives an attempt on his life by the half-crazed and jealous Robert Kennedy, his involvement in this ugly scandal irreversibly damages his reputation. Not even the influential Duchess of Omnium can conjure an appointment for him. His trial for the murder of the hated Mr. Bonteen provides the final disenchantment and, through choice, he never again enters the charmed inner circle of power.
"Phineas Redux" (1874) is the fourth of the six Palliser novels, pubished between 1864 and 1880. As a group they provide us with the most extensive and telling expose' of British life during the period of its greatest prestige. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Plain Tales from the Hills'
Originally written for the "Lahore Civil and Military Gazette", the stories were intended for a provincial readership familiar with the pleasures and miseries of colonial life. For the subsequent English edition, Kipling revised the tales so as to recreate as vividly as possible the sights and smells of India for those at home. Yet far from being a celebration of Empire, Kipling's stories tell of 'heat and bewilderment and wasted effort and broken faith'. He writes brilliantly and hauntingly about the barriers between the races, the classes and the sexes; and about innocence, not transformed into experience but implacably crushed. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Power and the Glory'
How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.
On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"
As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Library Edition'
The classic bestselling bookthe subject of a play, a movie, and a songthat tells the darkly fascinating story of a young, unorthodox teacher and her special, and ultimately dangerous, relationship with six of her students. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince and the Pauper'
Tom Canty and Edward Tudor look alike, but their lives could hardly be more different. For Edward is Prince (and heir to the throne), whilst Tom is a miserable pauper. Until one day fate intervenes, and for a while each must see how the other lives. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner'
Robert Colwan, a clergyman's son, is so confident of his salvation as one of the Lord's elect that he comes to look on himself as a man apart, unhindered by considerations of mere earthly law. Through Robert's own unforgettable account, we follow the strange and sinful life into which he is led by a devilish doppelganger - a life that will finally lead him to murder. Steeped in the folkloric superstitions and theological traditions of eighteenth-century Scotland, this macabre and haunting novel is a devastating portrayal of the stages by which the human spirit can descend into darkness. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Quiet American'
Against the intrigue and violence of Vietnam during the French war with the Vietminh, Alden Pyle, an idealistic young American, is sent to promote democracy, as his friend, Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, looks on. Fowlers mistress, a beautiful native girl creates a catalyst for jealousy and competition between the men and a cultural clash resulting in bloodshed and deep misgivings. Written in 1955 prior to the Vietnam conflict, The Quiet American foreshadows the events leading up to the Vietnam conflict. Questions surrounding the moral ambiguity of the involvement of the United States in foreign countries are as relevant today as they were fifty years ago. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Quo Vadis'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'
Roald Dahl's much-loved story about how Charlie Bucket wins a ticket to visit Willy Wonka's amazing chocolate factory is turned into a play for children to act. With tips about scenery, props and lighting, the play is easy to stage and there are lots of parts for everyone. Roald Dahl, the best-loved of children's writers, died in 1990 but his books continue to be bestsellers. Richard George was an elementary school teacher in New York when he wrote this stage adaptation of Roald Dahl's bestselling story - and Roald Dahl himself recommended that it should be published. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Roderick Random'
Roderick is combative, often violent, but capable of great affection and generosity. His father had been disinherited and has left Scotland leaving his son penniless. After a brief apprenticeship to a surgeon, the innocent Roderick travels to London where he encounters various rogues. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Romola'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Secret Agent'
One one of the great detective novels of all time, "The Secret Conrad", written in 1903, is a magisterial thriller of terrorists and police in London in the early years of the 20th century. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Siddhartha'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales from the Thousand and One Nights'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trumpet-Major'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Trumpet-Major and Robert His Brother'
In Wessex, during the Napoleonic Wars, two brothers, John and Robert Loveday, become rivals for the hand of Anne Garland. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'
When The Unbearable Lightness of Being was first published in English, it was hailed as "a work of the boldest mastery, originality, and richness" by critic Elizabeth Hardwick and named one of the best books of 1984 by the New York Times Book Review. It went on to win the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and quickly became an international bestseller. Twenty years later, the novel has established itself as a modern classic. To commemorate the anniversary of its first English-language publication, HarperCollins is proud to offer a special hardcover edition.
A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel.
Controlled by day, Tereza's jealousy awakens by night, transformed into ineffably sad death-dreams, while Tomas, a successful surgeon, alternates loving devotion to the dependent Tereza with the ardent pursuit of other women. Sabina, an independent, free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals -- of parents, husband, country, love itself -- whereas her lover, the intellectual Franz, loses all because of his earnest goodness and fidelity.
In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel, says the novelist, "the unbearable lightness of being" -- not only as the consequence of our private acts but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.
This magnificent novel encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, and embraces, it seems, all aspects of human existence. It juxtaposes geographically distant places (Prague, Geneva, Paris, Thailand, the United States, a forlorn Bohemian village); brilliant and playful reflections (on "eternal return," on kitsch, on man and animals -- Tomas and Tereza have a beloved doe named Karenin); and a variety of styles (from the farcical to the elegiac) to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world's truly great writers.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Way of All Flesh'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Winesburg, Ohio'
A collection of short stories dealing with a small town in Ohio. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wings of the Dove'
The Wings of the Dove is a classic example of Henry James's morality tales that play off the naiveté of an American protagonist abroad. In early-20th-century London, Kate Croy and Merton Densher are engaged in a passionate, clandestine love affair. Croy is desperately in love with Densher, who has all the qualities of a potentially excellent husband: he's handsome, witty, and idealistic--the one thing he lacks is money, which ultimately renders him unsuitable as a mate. By chance, Croy befriends a young American heiress, Milly Theale. When Croy discovers that Theale suffers from a mysterious and fatal malady, she hatches a plan that can give all three characters something that they want--at a price. Croy and Densher plan to accompany the young woman to Venice where Densher, according to Croy's design, will seduce the ailing heiress. The two hope that Theale will find love and happiness in her last days and--when she dies--will leave her fortune to Densher, so that he and Croy can live happily ever after. The scheme that at first develops as planned begins to founder when Theale discovers the pair's true motives shortly before her death. Densher struggles with unanticipated feelings of love for his new paramour, and his guilt may obstruct his ability to avail himself of Theale's gift. James deftly navigates the complexities and irony of such moral treachery in this stirring novel. [via]
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