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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Around the World in Eighty Days'
The global dash of the intrepid Phileas Fogg is accompanied by lavish illustrations that depict remarkable period scenes that evince for younger readers such cultures as Victorian England and the American Wild West. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'At Home in Mitford'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Best of Friends'
Joanna TrollopeJoanna Trollope is a secret pleasure--but she's not going to be a secret for long. She writes sparkling novels of domestic life--the kind of books women readers hoard for vacation, curl up with on a Sunday afternoon, and tell their friends about. She's a #1 bestseller in England, and her legions of fans have begun to create overflow crowds at bookstores around America. Together, Viking and Berkley launch a major new campaign to make Trollope a household name. Trollope writes grown-up books about grown-up people. The Best of Friends is the rich and complex story of Gina and Laurence, friends since their teens but never in love. Now, however, Gina's exquisitely tasteful husband has found his wife and daughter no longer to his liking, and in her loss, Gina turns to her dearest friend for comfort--sending both of their marriages to the brink of betrayal. Trollope understands the complexities and dilemmas of everyday life better than almost anyone. As The Wall Street Journal said, her books are readable without being trivial, accessible without being pat, psychologically astute without being labored. The Best of Friends is an irresistible, must-have book that readers are going to be talking about all summer long. [via]
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› 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]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blood Acre'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Buddha of Suburbia'
There's quite a bit of activity in Buddha of Suburbia. A bureaucrat becomes a suburban guru who marries a follower with a son who's a punk rocker named Charlie Hero. Consequently, the guru's son is propelled from his bland life into a series of erotic experiences in London. All the while, Hanif Kureishi keeps the tone lively with wry wit. On the description of suburban life: "We were proud of never learning anything except the names of footballers, the personnel of rock groups and the lyrics to 'I Am the Walrus.'" He also bends cultures, classes and genders while blasting the racism of British life in this 1990 Whitbread Prize winner. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Captain and the Enemy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Charles Dickens' a Tale of Two Cities'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cloning of Joanna May'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Coal Run'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collected Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collected Fictions'
Although Jorge Luis Borges published his first book in 1923--doling out his own money for a limited edition of Fervor de Buenos Aires--he remained in Argentinian obscurity for almost three decades. In 1951, however, Ficciones appeared in French, followed soon after by an English translation. This collection, which included the cream of the author's short fictions, made it clear that Borges was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist--a brilliant, lyrical miniaturist, who could pose the great questions of existence on the head of pin. And by 1961, when he shared the French Prix Formentor with Samuel Beckett, he seemed suddenly to tower over a half-dozen literary cultures, the very exemplar of modernism with a human face.
By the time of his death in 1986, Borges had been granted old master status by almost everybody (except, alas, the gentlemen of the Swedish Academy). Yet his work remained dispersed among a half-dozen different collections, some of them increasingly hard to find. Andrew Hurley has done readers a great service, then, by collecting all the stories in a single, meticulously translated volume. It's a pleasure to be reminded that Borges's style--poetic, dreamlike, and compounded of innumerable small surprises--was already in place by 1935, when he published A Universal History of Iniquity: "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." (Incidentally, the thrifty author later recycled the second of these aphorisms in his classic bit of bookish metaphysics, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Teris.") The glories of his middle period, of course, have hardly aged a day. "The Garden of the Forking Paths" remains the best deconstruction of the detective story ever written, even in the post-Auster era, and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" puts the so-called death of the author in pointed, hilarious perspective.
But Hurley's omnibus also brings home exactly how consistent Borges remained in his concerns. As late as 1975, in "Avelino Arredondo," he was still asking (and occasionally even answering) the same riddles about time and its human repository, memory: "For the man in prison, or the blind man, time flows downstream as though down a slight decline. As he reached the midpoint of his reclusion, Arredondo more than once achieved that virtually timeless time. In the first patio there was a wellhead, and at the bottom, a cistern where a toad lived; it never occurred to Arredondo that it was the toad's time, bordering on eternity, that he sought." Throughout, Hurley's translation is crisp and assured (although this reader will always have a soft spot for "Funes, the Memorious" rather than "Funes, His Memory.") And thanks to his efforts, Borgesians will find no better--and no more pleasurable--rebuttal of the author's description of himself as "a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories." --James Marcus [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Just So Stories'
Presents twelve familiar stories--including the tale of the elephant child with the 'satiable curiosity who journeyed to the Limpopo river--along with two lesser-known pieces. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cunning Man'
"Canada's leading man of letters and literary virtuoso" (Chicago Tribune) crowns an astonishing literary career with a new novel in the spirit of hi s bestselling What's Bred in the Bone. A mysterious death prologues a rich and meaty saga, narrated by Dr. Jonathan Hullah, which looks back over a long life punctuated by the dazzling intellectual highjinks and compassionate philosophies of Hullah and his circle. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death in Venice and Other Tales'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Diversity and Depth in Fiction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dubious Legacy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Echoes'
"It was sometimes called the echo cave, and if you shouted your question loud enough in the right direction, you got an answer instead of an echo..."
Clare and David--divided as children by a rigid social code that branded her as shanty Irish and him as gentry...brought together as adults by a desire that knew no class, no barriers, only the urgent hunger of two people destined to love--and ready to defy a world determined to keep them apart.
Even at fifteen, David Power knew the echo would answer eleven-year-old Clare O'Brien's dearest wish, to win a school prize. But it was years before Dr. Power's cherished only son saw in the huckster's daughter the answer to his own heart's desire. Here in Castlebay, perched precariously on the seaside cliffs, the lines between them were clearly drawn. Clare's only hope is to leave the town where time stopped, propelled by scholarships to Dublin, fueled by her own drive and brilliance, far from the insular, gossipy world of Castlebay and those in its thrall... Angela O'Hara, beautiful, insolated, a teacher trapped in the convent school, who risks everything to help Clare escape... Gerry Doyle, the town charmer who finds in Clare the woman he vows to have at any price... Caroline Nolan, the beautiful, rich outsider who comes to plunder...
For Clare, that was before the wild freedom of Dublin, and love. And David. Before fate drove them back to Castlebay, and the past... [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fairy Tales Of Hans Christian Andersen'
A new collection of beloved tales that have been popular for more than a century features twelve favorite stories, including ""Thumbelina,"" ""The Princess and the Pea,"" and ""The Ugly Duckling."" [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fall into Darkness'
Anne McFarland is dead, and her best friend, Sharon McKay, stands accused even though no body has been found. Nevertheless, the prosecution is almost certain of victory, and Sharon must prove that her friend committed suicide--and unravel the vengeful scheme of an obsessed teenager. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'
A simplified retelling of ten-year-old Mary coming to live in a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors and discovering an invalid cousin and the mysteries of a locked garden. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frankenstein'
Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image & but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Gates of Ivory'
One of England's most ferociously perceptive writers now widens her creative canvas to bring forth a novel that ranks with her classics The Ice Age and Realms of Gold. A London psychiatrist blessed with all the comforts of the modern world receives a cryptic package and is drawn into a horrific world of mystery and tragedy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ghost Road'
Based on a mix of real and imagined characters and events, this book concentrates on Sarah, a young woman working in a munitions factory, and on Wilfred Owen. The position of women has been a sub-theme throughout the books and here it moves to the forefront. The 1995 Booker Prize winner. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heather Blazing'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Henry James' the Portrait of a Lady'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Iliad'
This groundbreaking English version by Robert Fagles is the most important recent translation of Homer's great epic poem. The verse translation has been hailed by scholars as the new standard, providing an Iliad that delights modern sensibility and aesthetic without sacrificing the grandeur and particular genius of Homer's own style and language. The Iliad is one of the two great epics of Homer, and is typically described as one of the greatest war stories of all time, but to say the Iliad is a war story does not begin to describe the emotional sweep of its action and characters: Achilles, Helen, Hector, and other heroes of Greek myth and history in the tenth and final year of the Greek siege of Troy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Iliad and Odyssey Gift Set'
This is a boxed gift edition of Fagles's two widely acclaimed translations of Homer.
The Iliad is typically described as one of the greatest war stories of all time, but to call it a war story does not begin to describe the emotional sweep of its action and characters: Achilles, Helen, Hector, and other heroes of Greek myth and history in the 10th and final year of the Greek siege of Troy. The Odyssey is, quite simply, the story of Odysseus, who wants to go home. But Poseidon, god of oceans, doesn't want him to make it back across the wine-dark sea to his wife, Penelope, son, Telemachus, and their high-roofed home at Ithaca. The story is told in easy-going, beautiful poetry; the characters speak naturally, the action happens briskly. Even the gods come across as real people, despite the divine powers they exercise constantly. Both works have been hailed by scholars and the public for the powerful language that brings clashing, pulsing life to these ancient masterpieces. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jackson's Dilemma'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Just So Stories'
Kipling began these stories in Vermont, to amuse his daughter when they were living in his wife's home town. The comic explanations, such as "how the camel got his hump" and "how the whale got his throat", are complemented by the author's illustrations, with their extensive and ridiculous captions. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Landing on the Sun'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Libra'
In his ninth novel, DeLillo (White Noise) gives the American psyche what it has been awaiting for 25 years--an eerily convincing fictional speculation on the events leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Light in the Window'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Long Way Down'
Narrated in turns by a dowdy, middle-aged woman, a half-crazed adolescent, a disgraced breakfast TV presenter and an American rock star cum pizza delivery boy, A Long Way Down is the story of the Toppers House Four, aka Maureen, Jess, Martin and JJ. A low-rent crowd with absolutely nothing in common - save where they end up that New Year's Eve night. And what they do next, of course. Funny, sad, and wonderfully humane, Nick Hornby's new novel asks some of the big questions: about life and death, strangers and friendship, love and pain, and whether a slice of pizza can really see you through a long, dark night of the soul. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lyre of Orpheus'
A magnificent, new novel from a masterful writer--the conclusion to the trilogy that began with The Rebel Angels and continued in the bestselling What's Bred in the Bone. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mao II'
Don DeLillo's follow-up to Libra, his brilliant fictionalization of the Kennedy assassination, Mao II is a series of elusive set-pieces built around the themes of mass psychology, individualism vs. the mob, the power of imagery and the search for meaning in a blasted, post-modern world. Bill Gray, the world's most famous reclusive novelist, has been working for many years on a stalled masterpiece when he gets the chance to aid a hostage trapped in a basement in war-torn Beirut. Gray sets out on a doomed, quixotic journey, and his disappearance disrupts the cloistered lives of his obsessed assistant and the assistant's companion, a former Moonie who has also become Bill's lover. This haunting, masterful novel won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1992. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Monarch Notes on Warren's All the King's Men'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Money: A Suicide Note'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Murther & Walking Spirits'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A New Song'
As if being a priest in this day and age isn't difficult enough, try shepherding two parishes, located hundreds of miles apart, at the same time. A predicament of biblical proportions indeed, but one the indomitable Father Tim Kavanaugh and his cheerful wife, Cynthia, can handle, with a little help from the Lord--not to mention their friends--in Jan Karon's A New Song, the fifth installment in her much-loved Mitford series. When asked to act as interim minister for a tiny island parish in North Carolina's Outer Banks, the recently retired Father heeds the call, all the while trusting in a divine master plan: "He had prayed that God would send him wherever He pleased, and when his bishop presented the idea of Whitecap, he knew it wasn't his bishop's bright idea at all, but God's."
From the more routine duties of settling into a new church to dealing with a number of deeper domestic issues--including a single mother's spiral into depression and a reclusive next door neighbor in need of kindness--Father Tim's new parish presents a welcome challenge. All the while, of course, the folks back home keep him informed of goings-on in Mitford--the biggest being the recent arrest of Dooley Barlowe, a mountain boy whom Father Tim had taken into his home and heart five years earlier. As in past Mitford episodes, things have a way of working themselves out, but not before Father Tim and his accompanying cast learn a few more valuable lessons about life. Full of the homey atmosphere and heartwarming truths--not to mention the endearingly quirky characters--that are Karon's trademark, A New Song is a delightful celebration of the communal ties that bind. --Stefanie Hargreaves [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Not Wanted on the Voyage'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Odd Girl Out'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'
Plot synopsis of this classic is made meaningful with analysis and quotes by noted literary critics, summaries of the work's main themes and characters, a sketch of the author's life and times, a bibliography, suggested test questions, and ideas for essays and term papers. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Orient Express'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Other People'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Other People's Children'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Out of This World'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Peacock Spring'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pearl Buck's the Good Earth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Period of Adjustment'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portable Bernard Shaw'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Portrait of a Lady'
Alluring, high-spirited heiress Isabel is in Europe to seek her own destiny. Love, intrigue, and betrayal make this timeless American novel a profound and moving mirror of the human condition. Henry Jemes's masterpiece is captured afresh in this beautifully produced official tie-in edition to the fall 1996 movie starring Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pride and Prejudice'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Private Parts'
The #1 bestseller and fastest selling autobiography of all time, "Private Parts, " will be released on March 14 as a major motion picture from Paramount Pictures and Rysher Entertainment. This is the event Stern's millions of fans have been waiting for. Yes, The King of All Media is back, letting it all hang out in his outrageous new movie. And here is the book that tracks the odyssey. In "Private Parts" Stern spills his life story, from his dysfunctional beginnings to his unlikely, turbulent rise to super stardom. In the process, he shares his views on everything from foreign policy to fatherhood and Madonna to masturbation, with lots of lesbians in between. No matter whose side you're on -- Cher's "I hate him. He's just a creep, " or Stallone's "I love him. I really love him" -- Stern's brutally frank "Don't ask, I'll tell" tome spares no group or institution.
Studded throughout with Howard's favorite photos, pickings from the Hate-Mailbag and illustrations, this is the original, in-your-face manifesto complete with movie art that will once again have fans storming the bookstores...and everyone else running for cover. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Public Burning'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rain'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rebel Angels'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Red Badge of Courage'
BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP
The story of a young soldier's quest for manhood during the American Civil War.
" A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
" A chronology of the author's life and work
" A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
" An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
" Detailed explanatory notes
" Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
" Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
" A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience
SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Regeneration'
Regeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear -- the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing -- it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Restoration'
The award-winning Restoration is one of Rose Tremains most popular works, and showcases her remarkable talent for capturing historical settings and personalities. Set during the English Restoration in the decadent court of King Charles II, the novel weaves a story of corrupted innocence, betrayal, love and hope against a fascinating historical backdrop. Written in the first person, the fortunes of the fallible but charismatic courtier Robert Merivel are utterly compelling. Restoration lyrically evokes the rich tapestry of seventeenth-century London life. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rotters' Club'
This novel captures a fateful moment in British politics during the 1970s - the collapse of "Old Labour" - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager: a world in which a lost pair of swimming trunks can be just as devastating as an IRA bomb. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rumpole a LA Carte'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rumpole and the Angel of Death'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rumpole and the Primrose Path'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rumpole on Trial'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Runaways'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sea, the Sea'
The titles in the "Textplus" series, designed to reflect the changing nature of English Literature at advanced post-GCSE level, offer the complete text with a specially commissioned introduction and compact background notes placing the work in historical and critical context. Together, these components are intended to open up the text for students, allowing them to plot their own course of study, to plan extended projects, to compare writers' perspectives on similar themes and to relate works to key social and historical phenomena. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Second Rumpole Omnibus'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Selected Non-Fictions'
Jorge Luis Borges was our century's greatest miniaturist, perpetually cramming entire universes onto the head of a pin. Yet his splendid economy, along the wafer-thin proportions of such classic volumes as Ficciones and Labyrinths, has given readers the impression that Borges was miserly with his prose. In fact, he was something of a verbal spendthrift. His collected stories alone run to nearly 1,000 pages. And his nonfiction output was even more staggering: the young Borges cranked out hundreds of essays, book notes, cultural polemics, and movie reviews, and even after he lost his sight in 1955, he continued to dictate short pieces by the dozens. Eliot Weinberger has assembled just a fraction of this outpouring in Selected Non-Fictions, and the result is a 559-page Borgesian blowout, in which the Argentinean fabulist takes on being and nothingness, James Joyce and Lana Turner, and (surprisingly) racial hatred and the rise of Nazism. So much for our image of the mandarin bookworm! The very engagé author of this book seems more like a subequatorial Camus, with a dash of Siskel and Ebert on the side.
Selected Non-Fictions demonstrates just how quickly Borges began wrestling with such brainteasers as identity, time, and infinity. Indeed, the very first piece in the collection, "The Nothingness of Personality" (1922), already finds him fiddling with the self: "I, as I write this, am only a certainty that seeks out the words that are most apt to compel your attention. That proposition and a few muscular sensations, and the sight of the limpid branches that the trees place outside my window, constitute my current I." There are many such meditations here, including "A History of Eternity" (in which Borges maps out his own, disarmingly empty version of the eternal, "without a God or even a co-proprietor, and entirely devoid of archetypes"). But it's more fun--and more revelatory--to see the author venturing beyond his metaphysical stomping grounds. Borges on King Kong is a hoot, and a cornball masterpiece such as The Petrified Forest elicits this terrific nugget: "Death works in this film like hypnosis or alcohol: it brings the recesses of the soul into the light of day." His capsule biographies are a delight, his critiques of Nazi propaganda are memorably stringent, and nobody should miss him on the tango. True, the sheer variety and mind-boggling erudition of Selected Non-Fictions can be a little forbidding. But, taken as a whole, the collection surely meets the specifications that Borges laid out in a 1927 essay on literary pleasure: "If only some eternal book existed, primed for our enjoyment and whims, no less inventive in the populous morning as in the secluded night, oriented toward all hours of the world." Oh, but it does. --James Marcus [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Separate Peace'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'She's Come Undone'
Oprah Book Club® Selection, January 1997: "Mine is a story of craving; an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered." So begins the story of Dolores Price, the unconventional heroine of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn't she be? She's suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender's most loathsome creatures. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivaled only by Henry VIII. Hers is a dysfunctional Wonder Years, where growing up in the golden era was anything but ideal. While most kids her age were dealing with the monumental importance of the latest Beatles single and how college turned an older sibling into a long-haired hippie, Dolores was grappling with such issues as divorce, rape, and mental illness. Whether you're disgusted by her antics or moved by her pathetic ploys, you'll be drawn into Dolores's warped, hilarious, Mallomar-munching world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Skin and Other Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sons and Lovers'
Sons and Lovers was the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mother's love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's young protagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. In his 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him all his life--for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, and for his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrence's own account, a book aimed at depicting this woman's grasp: "as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers--first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother--urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives."
Of course, Mrs. Morel takes neither of her two elder sons (the first of whom dies early, which further intensifies her grip on Paul) as a literal lover, but nonetheless her psychological snare is immense. She loathes Paul's Miriam from the start, understanding that the girl's deep love of her son will oust her: "She's not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him." Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable of committing himself in either direction: "Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?... And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated her--and he easily hated her." Soon thereafter he even confesses to his mother: "I really don't love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you."
The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette, Clara Dawes, who fulfills the sexual component of his ascent to manhood but leaves him, as ever, without a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. As Paul voyages from the working-class mining world to the spheres of commerce and art (he has fair success as a painter), he accepts that his own achievements must be equally his mother's. "There was so much to come out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled... All his work was hers."
The cycles of Paul's relationships with these three women are terrifying at times, and Lawrence does nothing to dim their intensity. Nor does he shirk in his vivid, sensuous descriptions of the landscape that offers up its blossoms and beasts and "shimmeriness" to Paul's sensitive spirit. Sons and Lovers lays fully bare the souls of men and earth. Few books tell such whole, complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. It's nothing short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Star Called Henry'
A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Barrytown Trilogy and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
When Roddy Doyle introduced a lively ten-year-old hero from north Dublin named Paddy Clarke, he captivated reviewers and audiences around the world. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha captured the 1993 Booker Prize, garnered passionate reviews, and became a phenomenal bestseller. Carolyn See of The Washington Post, called it "one of the great modern Irish novels." Doyle followed that success with The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, a unanimously and ecstatically acclaimed novel with a narrator critics compared to Joyce's Molly Bloom. Now the finest Irish writer of his generation enchants us once again with his most prodigious novel to date--A Star Called Henry.
With his trademark sharp-edged wit and breathtaking prose, Roddy Doyle introduces Henry Smart--adventurer, IRA assassin, and lover. Narrated by its protagonist, A Star Called Henry takes us through Henry's early years of reckless heroism and adventure, from the courtship of his young mother and one-legged father to his own celebrated birth and his childhood on the streets of Dublin; from his role as a valiant soldier fighting in the 1916 Easter Rising to that of a young father and rebel.
At once an epic, a love story, and a portrait of Irish history, both past and present, A Star Called Henry is a tour de force told in a voice that is both quintessentially Irish and inimitably Roddy Doyle's. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Staring at the Light'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tale of Two Cities'
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." So begins this ageless tale of heroism, love, and adventure in the terrible and hopeful days of the French Revolution. With its unforgettable characters -- valiant Sydney Carton, antic Jerry Cruncher, brave Lucie Manette -- and the grit and grandeur of two great cities, Paris and London, in an era of momentous change, A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens' geatest triumphs. Marked by Dickens' unmatched powers of observation, his sway over the emotions, and his incomparable gift for exciting storytelling, it displays in every aspect why his works are beloved by millions.
Washington Square Press' Enriched Classics present the world's greatest literature in timeless editions designed for modern readers. Special features include a lively introduction with essential biographical and historical background, critical perspectives, and a unique visual essay composed of authentic period illustrations and photographs that help bring every word to life. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taxi Drivers Daughter'
The touching and wonderfully engaging second novel from the author of CROCODILE SOUP. It is late December and fifteen year old Caris is trying to hang an angel on a Christmas tree in a terraced street in Newcastle upon Tyne. She is interrupted by the arrival of the police who have come to the house to announce that her mother, Louise, has been caught stealing shoes in a department store in town. Caris's father Mac, a taxi driver, struggles to keep the family together as Christmas looks set for disaster, especially when Louise's drunken, dishevelled mother moves in. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Gun for Hire'
"More than an entertainment and more than a detective thriller, "This Gun for Hire" is a harrowing exploration of the twisted and tortured psyche of the hardened criminal." [from the front flap] [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Year of Wonders : A Novel of the Plague'
Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? The lord of the manor and his family pack up and leave. The rector, Michael Mompellion, argues forcefully that the villagers should stay put, isolate themselves from neighboring towns and villages, and prevent the contagion from spreading. His oratory wins the day and the village turns in on itself. Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, its inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. The narrator, the young widow Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds. With Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, she tends to the dying and battles to prevent her fellow villagers from descending into drink, violence, and superstition. All is complicated by the intense, inexpressible feelings she develops for both the rector and his wife. Year of Wonders sometimes seems anachronistic as historical fiction; Anna and Mompellion occasionally appear to be modern sensibilities unaccountably transferred to 17th-century Derbyshire. However, there is no mistaking the power of Brooks's imagination or the skill with which she constructs her story of ordinary people struggling to cope with extraordinary circumstances. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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