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› Find signed collectible books: '20,000 Streets Under the Sky'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alias Grace'
In 1843, a 16-year-old Canadian housemaid named Grace Marks was tried for the murder of her employer and his mistress. The sensationalistic trial made headlines throughout the world, and the jury delivered a guilty verdict. Yet opinion remained fiercely divided about Marks--was she a spurned woman who had taken out her rage on two innocent victims, or was she an unwilling victim herself, caught up in a crime she was too young to understand? Such doubts persuaded the judges to commute her sentence to life imprisonment, and Marks spent the next 30 years in an assortment of jails and asylums, where she was often exhibited as a star attraction. In Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood reconstructs Marks's story in fictional form. Her portraits of 19th-century prison and asylum life are chilling in their detail. The author also introduces Dr. Simon Jordan, who listens to the prisoner's tale with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief. In his effort to uncover the truth, Jordan uses the tools of the then rudimentary science of psychology. But the last word belongs to the book's narrator--Grace herself. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of Avonlea'
This delightful Charming Classics book and charm set includes a paperback edition of Anne of Green Gables, the heartwarming story of a talkative, redheaded, freckle-faced orphan named Anne Shirley, and a gold-tone necklace with a heart-shaped locket. Rediscover L.M. Montgomery's classic novel and the irrepressible Anne in this gem of a package.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of Green Gables'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of Ingleside'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne of the Island'
New adventures lie ahead as Anne Shirley packs her bags, waves good-bye to childhood, and heads for Redmond College. With old friend Prissy Grant waiting in the bustling city of Kingsport and frivolous new pal Philippa Gordon at her side, Anne tucks her memories of rural Avonlea away and discovers life on her own terms, filled with surprises...including a marriage proposal from the worst fellow imaginable, the sale of her very first story, and a tragedy that teaches her a painful lesson. But tears turn to laughter when Anne and her friends move into an old cottage and an ornery black cat steals her heart. Little does Anne know that handsome Gilbert Blythe wants to win her heart, too. Suddenly Anne must decide if she's ready for love... [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Babbitt'
General FictionLarge Print EditionBabbitt is a total conformist, loyal to whoever serves his need of the moment an opportunist in his business and personal life. Outwardly he conforms. Inwardly, his soul is empty. Filled with rationalizations and sentimentality, he doesnt see his own corruption. With his portrait of George F. Babbitt, the conniving, rich real estate man from Zenith, Sinclair Lewis created one of the ugliest, yet most convincing figures in American literature. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bridget Jones's Diary'
In the course of the year recorded in Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget confides her hopes, her dreams, and her monstrously fluctuating poundage, not to mention her consumption of 5277 cigarettes and "Fat units 3457 (approx.) (hideous in every way)." In 365 days, she gains 74 pounds. On the other hand, she loses 72! There is also the unspoken New Year's resolution--the quest for the right man. Alas, here Bridget goes severely off course when she has an affair with her charming cad of a boss. But who would be without their e-mail flirtation focused on a short black skirt? The boss even contends that it is so short as to be nonexistent.
At the beginning of Helen Fielding's exceptionally funny second novel, the thirtyish publishing puffette is suffering from postholiday stress syndrome but determined to find Inner Peace and poise. Bridget will, for instance, "get up straight away when wake up in mornings." Now if only she can survive the party her mother has tricked her into--a suburban fest full of "Smug Marrieds" professing concern for her and her fellow "Singletons"--she'll have made a good start. As far as she's concerned, "We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, 'How's your marriage going? Still having sex?'"
This is only the first of many disgraces Bridget will suffer in her year of performance anxiety (at work and at play, though less often in bed) and living through other people's "emotional fuckwittage." Her twin-set-wearing suburban mother, for instance, suddenly becomes a chat-show hostess and unrepentant adulteress, while our heroine herself spends half the time overdosing on Chardonnay and feeling like "a tragic freak." Bridget Jones's Diary began as a column in the London Independent and struck a chord with readers of all sexes and sizes. In strokes simultaneously broad and subtle, Helen Fielding reveals the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession, and also satirizes everything from self-help books (they don't sound half as sensible to Bridget when she's sober) to feng shui, Cosmopolitan-style. She is the Nancy Mitford of the 1990s, and it's impossible not to root for her endearing heroine. On the other hand, one can only hope that Bridget will continue to screw up and tell us all about it for years and books to come. --Kerry Fried [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Coast of Utopia'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cold Mountain'
The hero of Charles Frazier's beautifully written and deeply-imagined first novel is Inman, a disillusioned Confederate soldier who has failed to die as expected after being seriously wounded in battle during the last days of the Civil War. Rather than waiting to be redeployed to the front, the soul-sick Inman deserts, and embarks on a dangerous and lonely odyssey through the devastated South, heading home to North Carolina, and seeking only to be reunited with his beloved, Ada, who has herself been struggling to maintain the family farm she inherited. Cold Mountain is an unforgettable addition to the literature of one of the most important and transformational periods in American history. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Short Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death Comes for the Archbishop'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dispossessed'
The ideas of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the anarchist world of Anarres are being stifled by jealous colleagues. So he goes to the hell-planet Urras, seeking a different kind of freedom - and finds himself embroiled in deadly intrigue and bloody revoulution. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Essential Phantom Of The Opera'
The Essential Phantom of the Opera is the most comprehensive edition ever produced of the classic 1911 novel of romance, mystery, and psychological suspense, fully annotated with thousands of fascinating facts and legends. Here is the complete, authoritative edition of literature's most bizarre tale of love, obsession, and aberration-a story that has held an irresistible fascination for audiences and readers for nearly a century. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ficciones'
Reading Jorge Luis Borges is an experience akin to having the top of one's head removed for repairs. First comes the unfamiliar breeze tickling your cerebral cortex; then disorientation, even mild discomfort; and finally, the sense that the world has been irrevocably altered--and in this case, rendered infinitely more complex. First published in 1945, his Ficciones compressed several centuries' worth of philosophy and poetry into 17 tiny, unclassifiable pieces of prose. He offered up diabolical tigers, imaginary encyclopedias, ontological detective stories, and scholarly commentaries on nonexistent books, and in the process exploded all previous notions of genre. Would any of David Foster Wallace's famous footnotes be possible without Borges? Or, for that matter, the syntactical games of Perec, the metafictional pastiche of Calvino? For good or for ill, the blind Argentinian paved the way for a generation's worth of postmodern monkey business--and fiction will never be simply "fiction" again.
Its enormous influence on writers aside, Ficciones has also--perhaps more importantly--changed the way that we read. Borges's Pierre Menard, for instance, undertakes the most audacious project imaginable: to create not a contemporary version of Cervantes's most famous work but the Quixote itself, word for word. This second text is "verbally identical" to the original, yet, because of its new associations, "infinitely richer"; every time we read, he suggests, we are in effect creating an entirely new text, simply by viewing it through the distorting lens of history. "A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships," Borges once wrote in an essay about George Bernard Shaw. "All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare," he tells us in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." In this spirit, Borges is not above impersonating, even quoting, himself.
It is hard, exactly, to say what all of this means, at least in any of the usual ways. Borges wrote not with an ideological agenda, but with a kind of radical philosophical playfulness. Labyrinths, libraries, lotteries, doubles, dreams, mirrors, heresiarchs: these are the tokens with which he plays his ontological games. In the end, ideas themselves are less important to him than their aesthetic and imaginative possibilities. Like the idealist philosophers of Tlön, Borges does not "seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding"; for him as for them, "metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature." --Mary Park [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fictions'
Reading Jorge Luis Borges is an experience akin to having the top of one's head removed for repairs. First comes the unfamiliar breeze tickling your cerebral cortex; then disorientation, even mild discomfort; and finally, the sense that the world has been irrevocably altered--and in this case, rendered infinitely more complex. First published in 1945, his Ficciones compressed several centuries' worth of philosophy and poetry into 17 tiny, unclassifiable pieces of prose. He offered up diabolical tigers, imaginary encyclopedias, ontological detective stories, and scholarly commentaries on nonexistent books, and in the process exploded all previous notions of genre. Would any of David Foster Wallace's famous footnotes be possible without Borges? Or, for that matter, the syntactical games of Perec, the metafictional pastiche of Calvino? For good or for ill, the blind Argentinian paved the way for a generation's worth of postmodern monkey business--and fiction will never be simply "fiction" again.
Its enormous influence on writers aside, Ficciones has also--perhaps more importantly--changed the way that we read. Borges's Pierre Menard, for instance, undertakes the most audacious project imaginable: to create not a contemporary version of Cervantes's most famous work but the Quixote itself, word for word. This second text is "verbally identical" to the original, yet, because of its new associations, "infinitely richer"; every time we read, he suggests, we are in effect creating an entirely new text, simply by viewing it through the distorting lens of history. "A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships," Borges once wrote in an essay about George Bernard Shaw. "All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare," he tells us in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." In this spirit, Borges is not above impersonating, even quoting, himself.
It is hard, exactly, to say what all of this means, at least in any of the usual ways. Borges wrote not with an ideological agenda, but with a kind of radical philosophical playfulness. Labyrinths, libraries, lotteries, doubles, dreams, mirrors, heresiarchs: these are the tokens with which he plays his ontological games. In the end, ideas themselves are less important to him than their aesthetic and imaginative possibilities. Like the idealist philosophers of Tlön, Borges does not "seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding"; for him as for them, "metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature." --Mary Park [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Frances Hodgson Burnett's the Secret Garden'
Children's Books [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Giver'
In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of Brave New World, in this 1994 Newbery Medal winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'God of Small Things'
In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good Soldier'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Cassette Travel Bag is a complete and unabridged reading by Stephen Fry on six cassettes, contained in a travel box. A CD travel bag is also available.
Just when it seems that there cannot possibly be another twist to the Harry Potter tale, Stephen Fry dons his haughtiest and naughtiest tones to bring Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to vibrant life on audio. Harry Potter has spent the first 10 years of his life at the mercy of the dreadful Dursleys--the aunt, uncle and fat, spoilt brat of a cousin who reluctantly gave him a home after the death of his mother and father. But on his 11th birthday Harry discovers that he is no ordinary boy, and despite the best efforts of his hideous relatives he escapes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to begin his new life as a trainee wizard. And the rest, as they say, is history...
As Harry battles against the evils thrown in his path, Stephen Fry injects the proceedings with a wry, dry and extremely contagious humour that perfectly suits the tale, wringing out the best in Harry and his cohorts as they get to grips with their new lives at the sharp end of Hogwarts. Fry's innate upper-class drone is perfectly suited to the telling of this most magical tale, cracking into the high-pitched squawking of Hermione the swat, or the gentle tones of the firm but fair Dumbledore, or the evil sniping of slimey Snape at precisely the right moments.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a fine story and much has been written about its success, but until you have heard Fry's cracking reading of this most magical of stories then you simply haven't lived. As with any audio book, this one is perfect for car journeys and an ideal way of introducing reluctant readers to the magic that is Harry Potter. (Ages 9 and over) --Susan Harrison
Running time: 8 hrs 25 mins [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Cassette Travel Bag is a complete and unabridged reading by Stephen Fry on six cassettes, contained in a travel box. A CD travel bag is also available.
Just when it seems that there cannot possibly be another twist to the Harry Potter tale, Stephen Fry dons his haughtiest and naughtiest tones to bring Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to vibrant life on audio. Harry Potter has spent the first 10 years of his life at the mercy of the dreadful Dursleys--the aunt, uncle and fat, spoilt brat of a cousin who reluctantly gave him a home after the death of his mother and father. But on his 11th birthday Harry discovers that he is no ordinary boy, and despite the best efforts of his hideous relatives he escapes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to begin his new life as a trainee wizard. And the rest, as they say, is history...
As Harry battles against the evils thrown in his path, Stephen Fry injects the proceedings with a wry, dry and extremely contagious humour that perfectly suits the tale, wringing out the best in Harry and his cohorts as they get to grips with their new lives at the sharp end of Hogwarts. Fry's innate upper-class drone is perfectly suited to the telling of this most magical tale, cracking into the high-pitched squawking of Hermione the swat, or the gentle tones of the firm but fair Dumbledore, or the evil sniping of slimey Snape at precisely the right moments.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a fine story and much has been written about its success, but until you have heard Fry's cracking reading of this most magical of stories then you simply haven't lived. As with any audio book, this one is perfect for car journeys and an ideal way of introducing reluctant readers to the magic that is Harry Potter. (Ages 9 and over) --Susan Harrison
Running time: 8 hrs 25 mins [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of a Dog'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The House of Mirth'
"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hundred Secret Senses'
Amy Tan's latest effort unfolds a series of family secrets that questions the connection between fate, beliefs, and hopes, memory and imagination, and the natural gifts of our hundred secret senses. Years after her Chinese half-sister assails her with ghost stories set in the mysterious world of Yin, a young woman finds herself in China, looking for a way to reconcile the ghosts of her past with the dreams of her future. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull'
"Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight--how to get from shore to food and back again," writes author Richard Bach in this allegory about a unique bird named Jonathan Livingston Seagull. "For most gulls it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight." Flight is indeed the metaphor that makes the story soar. Ultimately this is a fable about the importance of seeking a higher purpose in life, even if your flock, tribe, or neighborhood finds your ambition threatening. (At one point our beloved gull is even banished from his flock.) By not compromising his higher vision, Jonathan gets the ultimate payoff: transcendence. Ultimately, he learns the meaning of love and kindness. The dreamy seagull photographs by Russell Munson provide just the right illustrations--although the overall packaging does seem a bit dated (keep in mind that it was first published in 1970). Nonetheless, this is a spirituality classic, and an especially engaging parable for adolescents. --Gail Hudson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Joy Luck Club'
Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jumpers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'
Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lolly Willowes'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lord Jim'
This compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a literary hero. A classic novel. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lord of the Rings'
The struggle between good and evil in Middle Earth.
The title, J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on J.R.R. Tolkien, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare'
The man who was Thursday is a classic of the spy genre that is equal parts mystery, suspense story, allegory, and farce. Each rereading of G.K. Chesterton's critically acclaimed novel reveals new meanings and nuances, while its jokes never become stale. The hero, Gabriel Syme, is Chesterton's ideal fo the virtuous common man. He must infiltrate and try to thwart an anarchist cell, at whose heart is the ambiguous Sunday, a man whose powers seem almost godlike. Syme's mission leads him through the back ways of Victorian London and on a wild chase through the French countryside, an adventure at once madcap, surreal, and cosmically important. More than just a charming tale full of Dickensian characters and a mysterious man who is supposed to be"Thursday," The Man Who Was Thursday asks the dark question: Will the human race survive? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maskerade'
There are strange goings-on at the Opera House in Ankh-Morpork. A ghost in a white mask is murdering, well, quite a lot of people, and two witches (it really isn't wise to call them "meddling, interfering old baggages"), or perhaps three, take a hand in unraveling the mystery. Fans of the popular Discworld will be happy to see some old friends again in Maskerade, the 18th novel in the series. --Blaise Selby [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'
"It's a pretty grim world when I can't even feel superior to a toddler." Welcome to the curious mind of David Sedaris, where dogs outrank children, guitars have breasts, and French toddlers unmask the inadequacies of the American male. Sedaris inhabits this world as a misanthrope chronicling all things petty and small. In Me Talk Pretty One Day Sedaris is as determined as ever to be nobody's hero--he never triumphs, he never conquers--and somehow, with each failure, he inadvertently becomes everybody's favorite underdog. The world's most eloquent malcontent, Sedaris has turned self-deprecation into a celebrated art form--one that is perhaps best experienced in audio. "Go Carolina," his account of "the first battle of my war against the letter s" is particularly poignant. Unable to disguise the lisp that has become his trademark, Sedaris highlights (to hilarious extent) the frustration of reading "childish s-laden texts recounting the adventures of seals or settlers named Sassy or Samuel." Including 23 of the book version's 28 stories, two live performances complete with involuntary laughter, and an uncannily accurate Billie Holiday impersonation, the audio is more than a companion to the text; it stands alone as a performance piece--only without the sock monkeys. (Running time: 5 hours, 4 cassettes) --Daphne Durham [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moo'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Of Human Bondage'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985, which she subsequently adapted into a BBC television drama. It is a bildungsroman about a lesbian girl who grows up in an English Pentecostal community. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oscar and Lucinda'
Oscar Hopkins is a high-strung preacher's kid with hydrophobia and noisy knees. Lucinda Leplastrier is a frizzy-haired heiress who impulsively buys a glass factory with the inheritance forced on her by a well-intentioned adviser. In the early parts of this lushly written book, author Peter Carey renders the seminal turning points in his protagonists' childhoods as exquisite 19th-century set pieces. Young Oscar, denied the heavenly fruit of a Christmas pudding by his cruelly stern father, forever renounces his father's religion in favor of the Anglican Church. "Dear God," Oscar prays, "if it be Thy will that Thy people eat pudding, smite him!" Lucinda's childhood trauma involves a beautiful doll bought by her struggling mother with savings from the jam jar; in a misguided attempt to tame the doll's unruly curls, young Lucinda mutilates her treasure beyond repair. Neither of these coming-of-age stories quite explains how the grownup Oscar and Lucinda each develop a guilty passion for gambling. Oscar plays the horses while at school, and Lucinda, now an orphaned heiress, finds comfort in a game of cards with an odd collection of acquaintances. When the two finally meet, on board a ship bound for New South Wales, they are bound by their affinity for risk, their loneliness, and their awkwardly blossoming (but unexpressed) mutual affection. Their final high-stakes folly--transporting a crystal palace of a church across (literally) godforsaken terrain--strains plausibility, and events turn ghastly as Oscar plays out his bid for Lucinda's heart. Yet even the unconvincing plot turns are made up for by Carey's rich prose and the tale's unpredictable outcome. Although love proves to be the ultimate gamble for Oscar and Lucinda, the story never strays too far from the terrible possibility that even the most thunderstruck lovers can remain isolated in parallel lives. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Out of the Silent Planet'
[MP3CD audiobook format in vinyl case.]
[Read by Geoffrey Howard - aka - Ralph Cosham]
Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel from Lewis's Space Trilogy, (also called the Space Trilogy,the Cosmic Trilogy and the Ransom Trilogy,) considered to be his chief contribution to the science-fiction genre. A planetary romance with elements of medieval mythology, the trilogy concerns Dr. Ransom, a linguist who, like Christ, is offered as a ransom for mankind. On a walking tour of the English countryside, Ransom falls in with some slightly shady characters from his old University and wakes up suddenly to find himself naked in a metal ball in the middle of the light-filled heavens. He learns that he is on his way to a world called Malacandra by its natives, who also call our world Thulcandra...the Silent Planet. The Malacandrans see planets as having a tutelary spirit: those of the other planets are good and accessible, but that of Earth is fallen and twisted. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914'
On December 31, 1999, after nearly a century of rule, the United States officially ceded ownership of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. That nation did not exist when, in the mid-19th century, Europeans first began to explore the possibilities of creating a link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow but mountainous isthmus; Panama was then a remote and overlooked part of Colombia.
All that changed, writes David McCullough in his magisterial history of the Canal, in 1848, when prospectors struck gold in California. A wave of fortune seekers descended on Panama from Europe and the eastern United States, seeking quick passage on California-bound ships in the Pacific, and the Panama Railroad, built to serve that traffic, was soon the highest-priced stock listed on the New York Exchange. To build a 51-mile-long ship canal to replace that railroad seemed an easy matter to some investors. But, as McCullough notes, the construction project came to involve the efforts of thousands of workers from many nations over four decades; eventually those workers, laboring in oppressive heat in a vast malarial swamp, removed enough soil and rock to build a pyramid a mile high. In the early years, they toiled under the direction of French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, who went bankrupt while pursuing his dream of extending France's empire in the Americas. The United States then entered the picture, with President Theodore Roosevelt orchestrating the purchase of the canal--but not before helping foment a revolution that removed Panama from Colombian rule and placed it squarely in the American camp.
The story of the Panama Canal is complex, full of heroes, villains, and victims. McCullough's long, richly detailed, and eminently literate book pays homage to an immense undertaking. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pooh's Library'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Readings on Native Son'
"An anthology of essays by scholars representing various perspectives and interpretation of the novel. The book(s) provides criticism and discussions of meaning, structure, and the historical content...as well as biographical information. It is organized in such a way that will give students a plethora of information in a largely accessible format. Each chapter heading is annotated, giving readers a chance to sample the content of the essays. Furthermore, each selection is introduced with background biographical data on the essay's author alongwith a summary of the content and the particular point of view represented. A reader-friendly and comprehensive resouce for students and teachers of world literature."
-- School Library Journal ( November 2001) (School Library Journal 20011015) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Richard Wright's Native Son'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rilla of Ingleside'
Anne's children are almost grown up, except for pretty, highspirited Rilla. No one can resist her bright hazel eyes and dazzling smile. Rilla, almost fifteen, can't think any further ahead than going to her very first dance at the Four Winds lighthouse and getting her first kiss from handsome Kenneth Ford. But undreamed-of challenges await the irrepressible Rilla when the world of Ingleside is endangered by a far-off war. Her brothers go off to fight, and Rilla brings home an orphaned newborn in a soup tureen. She is swept into a drama that tests her courage and changes her forever. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Second World War'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Secret Garden : A Young Reader's Edition of the Classic Story'
Mistress Mary is quite contrary until she helps her garden grow. Along the way, she manages to cure her sickly cousin Colin, who is every bit as imperious as she. These two are sullen little peas in a pod, closed up in a gloomy old manor on the Yorkshire moors of England, until a locked-up garden captures their imaginations and puts the blush of a wild rose in their cheeks; "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of roses which were so thick, that they matted together.... 'No wonder it is still,' Mary whispered. 'I am the first person who has spoken here for ten years.'" As new life sprouts from the earth, Mary and Colin's sour natures begin to sweeten. For anyone who has ever felt afraid to live and love, The Secret Garden's portrayal of reawakening spirits will thrill and rejuvenate. Frances Hodgson Burnett creates characters so strong and distinct, young readers continue to identify with them even 85 years after they were conceived. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Secret History : A Novel'
Truly deserving of the accolade "Modern Classic", Donna Tartt's novel "The Secret History" is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever. "It takes my breath away". (Ruth Rendell). "Enthralling ...image the plot of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment crossed with the story of Euripides' "Bacchae" set against the backdrop of Bret Easton Ellis' "The Rules of Attraction"...forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled...ferociously well-paced...remarkably powerful". ("The New York Times"). Donna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and educated at the University of Mississippi and Bennington College. She is a novelist, essayist, and critic and author of "The Little Friend". "The Secret History" has been translated into twenty-four languages. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sophie's Choice'
Set in Brooklyn in 1947, this is the story of Sophie, a Polish Catholic immigrant who is haunted by her memories of the concentration camp in wartime Europe, and the terrible choice she was forced to make. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Stone Diaries'
The Stone Diaries was a prizewinner among prizewinners for Canadian novelist Carol Shields, garnering her the Governor General's Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In this fictional autobiography of eightysomething Daisy Goodwill, Shields includes a variety of other documents and perspectives--letters that Daisy received over the years, a list of her bridal trousseau, an occasional reminiscence by a son, daughter, or family friend, an objective third-person description of a house, and a wonderful collection of photos that supposedly come from the Goodwill family--which give us the sense that this is more than just fiction. Here we have a rare glimpse into the nooks and crannies of an ordinary life as we watch Daisy cope with love, marriage, children, gardening, old age, and death. The book serves as a diary of the last century as well, ripe with details that make readers feel they're witnessing the passage of time. Shields renders with loving care, genuine affection, and acute insight the world Daisy Goodwill makes her own. The Stone Diaries lingers in the memory, an extraordinary achievement by an extraordinary writer. --Jeffrey Canton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot'
A classic of modern theatre and perennial favorite of colleges and high schools. "One of the most noble and moving plays of our generation . . . suffused with tenderness for the whole human perplexity . . . like a sharp stab of beauty and pain".--The London Times. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Timebends: A Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Virgin in the Garden'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Waiting for Godot'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in 2 Acts'
A seminal work of twentieth-century drama, Waiting for Godot was Samuel Beckett's first professionally produced play. It opened in Paris in 1953 at the tiny Left Bank Theatre de Babylone, and has since become a cornerstone of twentieth-century theater. The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone-or something-named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett's language pioneered an expressionistic minimalism that captured the existentialism of post-World War II Europe. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Waiting for Godot/Coles Notes'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Watership Down'
Watership Down has been a staple of high-school English classes for years. Despite the fact that it's often a hard sell at first (what teenager wouldn't cringe at the thought of 400-plus pages of talking rabbits?), Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic rarely fails to win the love and respect of anyone who reads it, regardless of age. Like most great novels, Watership Down is a rich story that can be read (and reread) on many different levels. The book is often praised as an allegory, with its analogs between human and rabbit culture (a fact sometimes used to goad skeptical teens, who resent the challenge that they won't "get" it, into reading it), but it's equally praiseworthy as just a corking good adventure.
The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese). As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates, Watership Down will continue to make the transition from classroom desk to bedside table for many generations to come. --Paul Hughes [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?'
George, a disillusioned academic, and Martha, his caustic wife, have just come home from a faculty party. When a handsome young professor and his mousy wife stop by for a nightcap, an innocent night of fun and games quickly turns dark and dangerous. Long-buried resentment and rage are unleashed as George and Martha turn their rapier-sharp wits against each other, using their guests as pawns in their verbal sparring. By night's end, the secrets of both couples are uncovered and the lies they cling to are exposed. Considered by many to be Albee's masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a "brilliantly original work of art -- an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire" (Newsweek). [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wide Sargasso Sea'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wild Swans'
In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China'
In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind in the Willows'
With a half-turn of the wheel Toad sent the car crashing through the low roadside hedge. One mighty bound, a violent shock, and the wheels of the car were churning up the thick mud of a horse-pond. Toad found himself flying through the air with the delicate curve of a swallow. He liked the motion, and was just beginning to wonder whether he would develop wings when he landed with a thump, in the rich soft grass of a meadow.This presentation of the well-loved children's story is in every way a classic, but it also retains a wonderful sense of fun.
Abridged and illustrated by Inga Moore, this hardback edition could charm any reader with its sheer quality, its thick pages and incredibly beautiful illustrations.
A breathtaking book, and a gift which would be endlessly appreciated. --Rachel Ediss [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wind in the Willows'
"[Mole] thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before--this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again." Such is the cautious, agreeable Mole's first introduction to the river and the Life Adventurous. Emerging from his home at Mole End one spring, his whole world changes when he hooks up with the good-natured, boat-loving Water Rat, the boastful Toad of Toad Hall, the society- hating Badger who lives in the frightening Wild Wood, and countless other mostly well-meaning creatures. Michael Hague's exquisitely detailed, breathtaking color illustrations on almost every generous spread--along with Kenneth Grahame's elegant, delightfully old-fashioned characterizations of the animals--make this book a wonderful read-aloud. Grahame's The Wind in the Willows has enchanted readers for four generations, and this lavishly illustrated gift edition is perhaps the finest around. (All ages, or 9 to 12) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wise Children'
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