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› Find signed collectible books: 'Against a Dark Background'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Second volume in James Herriot's classic autobiographical renditions of life as a country veterinarian. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ancient and Rightful Customs: A History of the English Customs Service'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beowulf and Other Old English Poems'
Unique and beautiful, Beowulf brings to life a society of violence and honor, fierce warriors and bloody battles, deadly monsters and famous swords. Written by an unknown poet in about the eighth century, this masterpiece of Anglo-Saxton literature transforms legends, myth, history, and ancient songs into the richly colored tale of the hero Beowulf, the loathsome man-eater Grendel, his vengeful water-hag mother, and a treasure-hoarding dragon. The earliest surviving epic poem in any modern European language. Beowulf is a stirring portrait of a heroic worldsomber, vast, and magnificent. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Big Boys' Rules: The Secret Struggle against the IRA'
Explores covert operations against the IRA from 1976 to 1987. Drawing on interviews with people who have served at the heart of intelligence and special operations in Ulster, as well as with members of paramilitary groups, this book examines the roles of the Army, the police, MI5 and MI6. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Big Four: A Hercule Poirot Mystery'
A mystery featuring Hercule Poirot, in which at the scene of a murder a piece of paper is found with the number four scribbled on it over and over again. Poirot risks his life to uncover the significance of the number four. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brazen Chariots: An Account of tank warefare in the Western Desert, November-December 1941'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cabal : An Aurelio Zen Mystery'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Canterbury Tales'
They set off on an April morning with the rain dripping from the branches. Even with the rain, they were glad to be on their way--priests, nuns, tradesmen, men from the city, all pilgrims on the road to Canterbury.
To pass the long journey they told each other stories: of magic and trickery, of animals with blazing eyes, of people with their pants on fire, of two thousand men battling before smoking walls, stories of love and death and the devil. There were written down by Geoffrey Chaucer, and he called them The Canterbury Tales.
Geraldine McCaughrean retells The Canterbury Tales for children in a lively and humorous style which captures the original flair of Chaucer himself. She introduces us to the characters who told these tales: the shy, battle-hardened Knight, the Summoner whose breath smells of onions, the angry Miller with his read beard, and the Widow of Bath who likes a happy ending.
The stories and the characters are vividly brought to life by Victor Ambrus, with pictures of wild chases, exciting battles, and the April countryside through which the pilgrims travel. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Choir'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Commodore Hornblower'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Consider Phlebas'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Comtemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis'
Explore current and emerging political ideologies--offering a comparative analysis of nationalism, the varieties of democracy, Marxism, and political Islam, as well as an effective introduction to the lesser-known ideologies surrounding anarchism, fascism and national socialism, environmentalism, feminism, and liberation theology with CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS. You'll find a balanced presentation of the ideologies covered in the text, and to objectively discuss the way that ideology functions today. Includes a discussion of terrorism. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Reader'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Conundrum'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'David Copperfield'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead of Jericho'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'
From the Back Cover: "Robert Louis Stevenson originally wrote 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' as a 'shilling shocker.' He then burned the draft, and, upon his wife's advice, rewrote it as the darkly complex tale it is today. Stark, skillfully woven, this fascinating novel explores the curious turnings of human character through the strange case of Dr. Jekyll, a kindly scientist who by night takes on his stunted evil self. Mr. Hyde. Anticipating modern psychology, 'Jekyll and Hyde' is a brilliantly original study of man's dual nature - as well as an immortal tale of suspense and terror..." [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Dracula'
One of the most popular stories ever told, dracula (1897) has been re-created for the stage and screen hundreds of times in the last century. Yet it is essentially a victorian saga, an awesome tale of thrillingly bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal atrocities reflect the dark underside of a supremely moralistic age. Above all, dracula is a quintessential story of suspense and horror, boasting one of the most terrifying characters in literature: centuries-old count dracula, whose diabolical passions prey upon the innocent, the helpless, the beautiful. Bram stoker, who was also the manager of the famous actor sir henry irving, wrote seventeen novels. Dracula remains his most celebrated and enduring work -- even today this gothic masterpiece has lost none of the spine-tingling impact that makes it a classic of the genre [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Empty Cradles'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Eye in the Door'
The Eye in the Door is the second installation of Pat Barker's acclaimed and haunting historical fiction trilogy about British soldiers traumatized by World War I trench warfare and the methods used by psychiatrist William Rivers to treat them. As with the other two, the book was recognized with awards, winning the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize. Here, Lieutenant Billy Prior is tormented by figuring out which side of several coins does he live -- coward or hero, crazy or sane, homosexual or heterosexual, upper class or lower. He represents the upheaval in Britain during the war and the severe trauma felt by its soldiers. The writing is sparse yet multilayered; Barker uses the lives of a few to capture an entire society during a tumultuous period. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Farewell in Splendor: The Passing of Queen Victoria and Her Age'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Farewell the Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Firefox Down'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Flying Colors'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Forestwife'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Gathering Storm'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ghost Road'
As World War I winds to a close, two men--Dr. William Rivers, a psychologist whose dedicated healing sends men back to the brutal front, and Billy Prior, a shell-shocked soldier determined to rejoin the final English offensive--are profounded affected by the events of the era. Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings'
Considered one of English literature's first and greatest satirists, Jonathan Swift possessed a timeless genius for pointing out the foibles of human nature that still has the power to provoke, amuse, and, at times, even outrage our modern sensibilities. This representative collection of Swift's major writings includes the complete Gulliver's Travels as well as A Tale of a Tub, "The Battle of the Books," "A Modest Proposal," "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity," "The Bickerstaff Papers," and many more of his brilliantly satirical works. Here too are selections from Swift's poetry and portions of his Journal to Stella. Swift's savage ridicule, corrosive wit, and sparkling humor are fully displayed in this comprehensive collection. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Guns of August'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hamlet'
Undoubtedly the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet remains one of the most enduring but also enigmatic pieces of western literature. The story of Hamlet, the young Prince of Denmark, his tortured relationship with his mother, and his quest to avenge his father's murder at the hand of his brother Claudius has fascinated writers and audiences ever since it was written around 1600.
For many years interest focused on both Hamlet's inability to avenge his father's death, claiming that "the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought", and, according to none other than Freud, his oedipal fixation with his mother. However, more recently critics have turned their attention to Hamlet's bold theatrical self-reflexivity (most famously reflected in the performance of "The Mousetrap"), its fascination with issues of theology and Renaissance humanism, and its dense, complex poetic language. What is so remarkable about the play is the way in which it tends to uncannily reflect the concerns of different epochs. As a result, Hamlet has been at different moments defined as a romantic rebel, an angst-ridden existentialist, a paralysed intellectual and an ambivalent New Man. Whatever subsequent generations make of Hamlet, they are unlikely to exhaust the possibilities of this most extraordinary play. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hard Times'
Softcover little fold on front cover scratch at the rear cover near a corner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer'
Heart Of Darkness. The story of the civilized, enlightened Mr. Kurtz who embarks on a harrowing "night journey" into the savage heart of Africa, only to find his dark and evil soul. The Secret Sharer. The saga of a young, inexperienced skipper forced to decide the fate of a fugitive sailor who killed a man in self-defense. As he faces his first moral test the skipper discovers a terrifying truth -- and comes face to face with the secret itself. Heart Of Darkness and The Secret Sharer draw on actual events and people that Conrad met or heard about during his many far-flung travels. In portraying men whose incredible journeys on land and at sea are also symbolic voyages into their own mysterious depths, these two masterful works give credence to Conrad's acclaim as a major psychological writer. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hornblower and the Atropos'
Hodder Headline Audiobooks presents abridged readings of some of the finest in drama, classic literature, popular fiction, poetry, children's stories, and religious and inspirational works. Among Hodder Headline's outstanding cast of readers and performers are Juliet Stevenson, Anna Massey, Simon Callow, Stephen Fry, and Dame Judi Dench. Each set of cassettes is attractively packaged and shrink-wrapped. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hornblower During the Crisis'
This last-written adventure of Horatio Hornblower finds him still a captain; the Napoleonic Wars rage on. Though the tale was incomplete at Forester's death, it offers a full measure of action at sea. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hundred Years' War'
What do most of us know of the Hundred Years War? The famous victories at Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers, and that it actually went on--intermittently--for a great deal longer than a hundred years. Fortunately, Jonathan Sumption is on hand to remind us that there was a great deal more to this period of medieval history that was instrumental in establishing the national consciousness of both England and France. Trial by Battle is not for the faint-hearted. Its 650 pages cover only the period from the death of Charles IV, the last Capetian King of France, to the surrender of Calais to the English in 1347. At this rate, it will take at least another six volumes to get to the end. But for those who take a deep breath and decide to go for it, Sumption more than repays the effort. He takes a decidedly old-fashioned approach to history, being short on analysis and long on narrative, but there is nothing old-fashioned about his style. He has avoided the academic pitfalls of turgid prose and inaccessibility to produce a work of great readability that challenges many traditional assumptions.
To read many historians, the Hundred Years War was a glorious period of nobility and chivalry. Sumption gives the lie to this. He shows the war to be venal, savage, and mercenary. Soldiers often gave more thought to their captives than they did for their cause, as huge ransoms could be extracted for their release. We're only talking noble hostages, mind. The ordinary foot soldier had no monetary value and was usually butchered on the spot. The same applied to civilians. This wasn't a war where human life was sanctified and the fighting was restricted to the battlefield. It had all the subtlety of the bombing of Dresden, but as the fighting was almost entirely restricted to mainland France, England created a wave of terror to force the locals into submission. "Not a man or woman of substance dared to wait in the towns and castles or in the country around; wherever our army appeared, they fled away," wrote one English observer. Sumption's readers are likely to have precisely the opposite reaction. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Illustrated Origin of Species'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Search of the Dark Ages'
Accompanying the TV series of the same name, this is Michael Wood's account of what happened in Europe, and especially Britain, during the dark ages: Saxons, Vikings, Boudicea, Offa and Arthur are all covered. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Innkeeper's Diary'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Johnny and the Dead'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Lear'
King Lear stands alongside Hamlet as one of the most profound expressions of tragic drama in literature. Written between 1604 and 1605, it represents Shakespeare at the height of his dramatic power. Drawing on ancient British history, Shakespeare constructs a plot that reads like a fable in its clear-sighted but terrifying simplicity. The ageing King Lear calls his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia to witness that he wishes "to shake all cares and business from our age" and divide his kingdom between his three children. When Cordelia refuses to flatter her father with sycophantic words of love, her banishment leads to chaos and civil war as Lear's disastrous "division of the kingdom" gives free reign to the greed and ambition of his two remaining daughters.
As Lear sinks into rage and madness he is deserted by everyone except his "bitter" Fool, the loyal Kent and the exiled Cordelia. The play descends into a nighmarish theatre of cruelty and absurdity as Lear realises he has "ta'en / Too little care" of the poverty and corruption of his kingdom, and his loyal but foolish friend Gloucester has his eyes gouged out. Metaphors of monstrosity and perversions of nature structure the dramatic action, and the play's ending remains one of the most harrowing in all of Shakespeare. Many see a profound despair and nihilism in King Lear, and would agree with Kent's conclusion that "All's cheerless, dark and deadly". Other writers have identified a radical but pessimistic critique of contemporary conceptions of kingship and absolutist authority, yet it remains a remarkable tragedy of public misjudgement and intensely private grief and anguish. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Richard II: The Life and Death of King Richard the Second the First Folio of 1623 and a Parallel Modern Edition'
One of Shakespeare's finest history plays, Richard II deals with one of the most sensitive and politically explosive issues of its day--the rights and wrongs of deposing a legitimately appointed king. Forerunner to the two parts of Henry IV, the play deals with the abdication of King Richard II in 1399, the subsequent succession of Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV, and Richard's death in the spring of 1400. But the play has been celebrated above and beyond its stature as historical drama. Richard II begins with a portrait of Richard as a pompous, arrogant and self-regarding sovereign, with little sense of his people or his political responsibilities. As he consistently miscalculates in his attempts to destroy Bolingbroke, and watches his own power wane, he becomes a far more appealing, Hamlet-like figure, more interested in "talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs", and "sad stories of the death of kings". Richard's speeches become increasingly lyrical and poetic as his supporters desert him, until he finally takes on the stature of the pilloried Christ in the climax of the play, the deposition scene, one of the most politically risky scenes in all of Shakespeare. The play remains most famous for John of Gaunt's "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle" speech, but historians believe that the play was also performed in the streets of London in 1601 in support of the Earl of Essex's attempt to depose Elizabeth I. Whilst the plot failed, it showed the power of the theatre of the time, and the politically controversial nature of Shakespeare's play. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King Richard III: The Tragedy of'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Land That Thyme Forgot'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Living Isles: A Natural History of Britain and Ireland'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mansfield Park'
Though Jane Austen was writing at a time when Gothic potboilers such as Ann Ward Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto were all the rage, she never got carried away by romance in her own novels. In Austen's ordered world, the passions that ruled Gothic fiction would be horridly out of place; marriage was, first and foremost, a contract, the bedrock of polite society. Certain rules applied to who was eligible and who was not, how one courted and married and what one expected afterwards. To flout these rules was to tear at the basic fabric of society, and the consequences could be terrible. Each of the six novels she completed in her lifetime are, in effect, comic cautionary tales that end happily for those characters who play by the rules and badly for those who don't. In Mansfield Park, for example, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.
Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way. Describing the switch in Edmund's affections from Mary to Fanny, she writes: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." What does not vary is the pleasure with which new generations come to Jane Austen. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'
From its spectacular opening-the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a county fair-to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy's finest and most powerful novels.Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story build into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power-only to suffer a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
Magic, love spells, and an enchanted wood provide the materials for one of Shakespeare's most delightful comedies. When four young lovers, fleeing the Athenian law and their own mismatched rivalries, take to the forest of Athens, their lives become entangled with a feud between the King and Queen of the Fairies. Some Athenian tradesmen, rehearsing a play for the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta, unintentionally add to the hilarity. The result is a marvelous mix-up of desire and enchantment, merriment and farce, all touched by Shakespeare's inimitable vision of the intriguing relationship between art and life, dreams and the waking world.Each Edition Includes: Comprehensive explanatory notes Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Naive and Sentimental Lover'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Night to Remember'
comprehensive telling of the Titanic disaster, including interviews with survivors and two page detail illustration of the ship. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Northanger Abbey'
Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.
Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Of Human Bondage'
A young man struggling for self-realization is caught up in a destructive love affair. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Origin of Species: Library Edition'
It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.
To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.
Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Peoples of the British Isles: A New History From Prehistoric Times to 1688'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Peoples of the British Isles: A New History from 1870 to the Present'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Perfect Spy'
He is Magnus Pym, charming, enigmatic, a star player in "The Great Game" of British intelligence. He is a man of spectacular gifts whose sudden, mysterious disappearance devastates his family, friends, and colleagues, while shattering the fragile foundations of covert spy networks on both sides of the Iron Curtain. John le Carre's brilliant new masterpiece explores the very essence of espionage itself, interweaving the gripping story of a desperate international manhunt with the compelling history of a complex and tortured life. Here is a stunning tale of obligation and betrayal - and of irresistable forces that cruelly play on the human flaws of a perfect spy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Qb VII'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Quilts of the British Isles'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Riddle of the Third Mile'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Screwtape Letters'
This adaptation of C.S. Lewis's biting satire received a 1999 Grammy nomination for best spoken-word performance, and it's easy to see why--the story fits the format perfectly. It's relatively brief (the unabridged reading takes a mere four hours), and contains only one character--the demon Screwtape, who writes letters to his novice nephew Wormwood, instructing him on how to best tempt his "patient" (a wayward soul on earth) into the bosom of "our Lord below."
Obviously, the book wasn't written with former Monty Python John Cleese in mind, but it's hard to imagine a better Screwtape. Cleese's voice provides the perfect vehicle for Lewis's dry, razor-edged wit. His uncanny comic timing and ability to milk each phrase for maximum effect betray an infectious enthusiasm for the story. It's clear that he's having a great time reading, and it's impossible not to laugh along with him. This inspired pairing of two of the 20th century's greatest wits makes for a meditation on the dark side of spiritual guidance that's as relevant and funny today as it was in Lewis's war-torn England. (Running time: 4 hours, 3 cassettes) --Andrew Neiland [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Secret of Annexe 3'
The exceptional talents of Chief Inspector Morse are put to the test when he and his long-suffering subordinate, Sgt. Lewis, are called in to investigate the death of the winner of Hawworth's Hotel's New Year's Eve costume party. From the author of The Dead of Jericho. HC: St. Martin's. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sense And Sensibility'
Though not the first novel she wrote, Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen published. Though she initially called it Elinor and Marianne, Austen jettisoned both the title and the epistolary mode in which it was originally written, but kept the essential theme: the necessity of finding a workable middle ground between passion and reason. The story revolves around the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Whereas the former is a sensible, rational creature, her younger sister is wildly romantic--a characteristic that offers Austen plenty of scope for both satire and compassion. Commenting on Edward Ferrars, a potential suitor for Elinor's hand, Marianne admits that while she "loves him tenderly," she finds him disappointing as a possible lover for her sister:
Oh! Mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!Soon however, Marianne meets a man who measures up to her ideal: Mr. Willoughby, a new neighbor. So swept away by passion is Marianne that her behavior begins to border on the scandalous. Then Willoughby abandons her; meanwhile, Elinor's growing affection for Edward suffers a check when he admits he is secretly engaged to a childhood sweetheart. How each of the sisters reacts to their romantic misfortunes, and the lessons they draw before coming finally to the requisite happy ending forms the heart of the novel. Though Marianne's disregard for social conventions and willingness to consider the world well-lost for love may appeal to modern readers, it is Elinor whom Austen herself most evidently admired; a truly happy marriage, she shows us, exists only where sense and sensibility meet and mix in proper measure. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Service of All the Dead'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Signals of War: The Falklands Conflict of 1982'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stonehenge'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sun Horse, Moon Horse'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tao of Pooh'
Is there such thing as a Western Taoist? Benjamin Hoff says there is, and this Taoist's favorite food is honey. Through brilliant and witty dialogue with the beloved Pooh-bear and his companions, the author of this smash bestseller explains with ease and aplomb that rather than being a distant and mysterious concept, Taoism is as near and practical to us as our morning breakfast bowl. Romp through the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh while soaking up invaluable lessons on simplicity and natural living. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet'
Is there such thing as a Western Taoist? Benjamin Hoff says there is, and this Taoist's favorite food is honey. Through brilliant and witty dialogue with the beloved Pooh-bear and his companions, the author of this smash bestseller explains with ease and aplomb that rather than being a distant and mysterious concept, Taoism is as near and practical to us as our morning breakfast bowl. Romp through the enchanting world of Winnie-the-Pooh while soaking up invaluable lessons on simplicity and natural living. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Taste for Death'
Two bodies, their throats cut, lie in the vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington. One is an alcoholic tramp; the other, Sir Paul Berowne, is a baronet and a recently resigned Minister of the Crown. Adam Dalgliesh, arrives to begin his investigation, one that will expose the darker recesses of the Berowne family history. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Television's Greatest Hits: Every Hit TV Programme Since 1960'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Their Finest Hour'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'This Sceptred Isle - The Dynasties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'
British Secret Service agent George Smiley has a world-class problem: he has discovered a mole--a Soviet double agent who has managed to burrow his way up to the highest level of British Intelligence. Now Smiley must use a lifetime's worth of espionage skills to ferret out a spy who's gotten too close for comfort. **MASS MARKET PAPER** [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tragedy of Julius Caesar'
One of Shakespeare's most political plays, Julius Caesar continued Shakespeare's interest in Roman history, first developed in Titus Andronicus. Drawing on Plutarch, the great historian of Rome, Shakespeare dramatises one of the most crucial moments in Roman history--the assassination of Julius Caesar. Loved by the Roman crowd but increasingly feared by the Senators, Caesar increasingly shows signs of his desire to abolish the Republic and crown himself emperor. A conspiracy is hatched, led by Cassius and Brutus, who murder Caesar on the steps of the Capitol. Mourning over his dead friend's body, Mark Antony gives one of the famous rhetorical speeches in literature, asking "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" to lament Caesar's death, privately vowing to "let slip the dogs of war" against those who have shed Caesar's blood. Antony joins forces with Caesar's son Octavius to defeat Cassius and Brutus in battle, and establish an uneasy alliance whose collapse is dramatised in Shakespeare's later play Antony and Cleopatra. Written at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Julius Caesar has been seen by many as a radically pro-Republican play which sailed close to the political wind of the time. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Use of Weapons'
Called back from early retirement by Special Circumstances, the elite weapon of the Culture's policy of moral espionage, Cheradenine Zakalwe reluctantly returns to work, but his fatal flaw could cost them the battle. Reprint. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Victoria: An Intimate Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Villette: Library Edition'
With her final novel, Villette, Charlotte Bronte reached the height of her artistic power. First published in 1853, Villette is Bronte's most accomplished and deeply felt work, eclipsing even Jane Eyre in critical acclaim. Her narrator, the autobiographical Lucy Snowe, flees England and a tragic past to become an instructor in a French boarding school in the town of Villette. There, she unexpectedly confronts her feelings of love and longing as she witnesses the fitful romance between Dr. John, a handsome young Englishman, and Ginerva Fanshawe, a beautiful coquetter. This first pain brings others, and with them comes the heartache Lucy has tried so long to escape. Yet in spite of adversity and disappointment, Lucy Snowe survives to recount the unstinting vision of a turbulent life's journeya journey that is one of the most insightful fictional studies of a woman's consciousness in English literature. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Voyage Out'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'War in the Peninsula'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Watchers of Time'
