Antiquities & Oddities

//Antiquities & Oddities
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  • Warne's Star Series. This volume also appears under the titles of The Percys; A Mother's Influence and Ever Heavenward. (Not to be confused with Stepping Heavenward.) First published in 1870, we learn that Mr. Percy has decided to send his older children to school hours away in New York City, resulting in many changes to his whole family. Mrs. Percy is broken-hearted but agrees to let them go, as her husband is convinced that the trials and temptations of school will help the children grow in their Christian faith. Through personal letters, we learn about life at boarding school and its challenges, as well as events back at home. With realism and humor, the author draws the reader into to this loving family and makes one feel at home among them. They are not without their struggles andtroubles but comic relief is provided by twin brothers Rio and Lio and the clumsy Daisy. Mrs. Percy is the real hero of the story, as she guides her flock, teaching them love for God above all.
  • There was just the three of them now that Father had died:  Mother, Jane and Jeremy.  They had left their Tasmanian home to drive across the Nullabor to Lantern Light, the remote homestead of Uncle Bill, Jane's only relative. For Jane was adopted and although she had been very happy with her foster family, the prospect of meeting her relative made every dusty mile worth it.  But Uncle Bill in the flesh - and Lantern Light were both very different to Jane's dreams of a family and home. This is not a only a children's or young adults story; the reader also gets the perspective of events from the adults - Uncle Bill, his friend Andrew, Mother and Eve Burton, the schoolteacher at Lantern Light.  A story for anyone.
  • Here is a veritable tossed salad of resort guests: old, young, eccentric, snobbish, pleasant and revolting and a good mix of employees  to create a real microcosm of human nature.  There's Miss Dukemer, the worldly wise cashier; Purcell, the Assistant Manager who likes ladies and liquor; the rich Mellott sisters who share their suite with a Siamese cat; the wealthy couple who order one small breakfast between them; the elevator boy who has a hair fetish; the newly weds who aren't sure what goes where and many more memorable and eccentric characters.
  • Nigel Molesworth - St. Kustards - offers a guide to survival for the 20th century with advice on how to obtain More Culture and a Cleaner Brane; The Peason-Molesworth atommic pile; End of term marks; The Molesworth Report on Masters and a discourse on the topic that all books which boys hav to read are wrong. Illustrated by Ronald Searle. All misspellings contained herein are Nigel's own.
  • Funny people, sportsmen...in more ways than one! From the sublimely amusing to the ridiculous, the sporting arena - be it a circket field, a gold course or a billiard table - sees them all. Sport can be a very serious business, but it's the sportsman's ability to laugh at his friends, his foes and himself which sets him apart from those who merely look on. Illustrated by Paul Rigby.
  • This special edition includes Film Festivals; When They Were Young; Scenes That Shook Us; New Faces in  Films; Stylists To The Stars... interviews, box office, spotlights, fashions and so much more. Illustrated with black and white photographs of the biggest stars of yesteryear.
  • Enoch Roden begins his apprenticeship in printing with a bad accident, but as the story progresses, his training becomes more spiritual. Mr. Drury, his boss, trusts in God's provision for his business but when business goes bad, it leads to confession of his faults. Enoch questions his attitude of despising God's daily gifts.  Trusting God's providence when it doesn't seem like He is paying attention is a training many go through. The author was a founding member of the London Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1884.
  • An exquisite little pocket-size book containing a wealth of information by way of prose and poetry about the meanings of flowers, the legends surrounding them and the origins of their names. Beautifully illustrated with Victoriana images and delicately scented with Penhaligon's Violets. Uncommon title.
  • Considered a must for every child's Christmas stocking. Tiger Tim's annual has stories, games, puzzles, cartoons, jokes and riddles - something for all ages and just the thing to keep children occupied in the post-Christmas aftermath, especially in England.
  • There are pirates, adventures and plenty of heroics from the golden age when the might of England made itself felt by land and sea, under the rule of Good Queen Bess, the mistress of English hearts and Englishmen.  In particular, these are the adventures of Humphrey Salkeld - how he was kidnapped and carried away to Mexico; how he underwent torments at the hands of the Inquisitors; and how he fell in with Captain Francis Drake and escaped to England. First published in 1895, Fletcher also wrote poetry and non-fiction books, and was acclaimed for his murder mystery novels. He wrote over 100 of these, the first one being published in 1914.  Illustrated by W.S. Stacey.
  • Circa 1940s-50s, an annual for teenage girls featuring short stories, nature articles, activities and craft, poetry and more.  Contributors include: Winifred Bear, Mary Lillian Royce,  V.F. Wells, Leonora Fry, Nancy Martin and more. Illustrated by W. Spence and others.
  • A presentation of hundreds of entertaining caricatures of celebrities from popular American periodicals in the first half of the twentieth century. Employing a vivid new type of portraiture based on modern design and a preoccupation with personality- based fame, master caricaturists filled the pages of newspapers and magazines with renderings of Mae West, George Gershwin, the Marx Brothers, Babe Ruth, Mussolini, and other personalities and celebrities of the day.
  • The Norwegian freighter Gangerolf leaves Subic Bay in the Philippines with a motley assortment of passengers. In the hold, under armed guard, is the entire crew of a sunken U-boat. In the first class cabins are Bill Derby, a British submarine commander on his way back to England for a medical board; Lt-Commander Witheringham - 'Withers' - a useless little man whose existence the Admiralty has forgotten over the years; and Captain Spatter, the American commander of the prisoners' guard. He's always broke becuase he plays craps with the enlisted men and never wins. But the most important passenger is Wren (Womens' Royal Navy Service) Mary Lou Smith - an unconventional young woman. Every character, from Wren Smith to Captain 'Happy' Christiansen, the Gangerolf 's huge, whiskey-guzzling Master, is real and alive, from the moment they board the freighter to the day they are marooned on a deserted island.
  • We can't help you out with a plot line here - even Trove let us down! But we can tell you about the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Everett-Green
  • What? We’ve heard about Table Manners and Party Manners; Visiting Cards and Formal Manners...Another etiquette book in a world already groaning under the wight of etiquette books? Yes. Because this book pioneers in a new field of good manners and good form when you find yourself there with the partner of your choice. It should be given to every couple; doctors will prescribe it to all their discontented partnered patients. NB: Statistics quoted do not include Eskimos, nudists, bedridden people or dancers. You may gather from all this that is is a funny book...Chapters include Getting Undressed; In Bed; Getting Up; The Bedroom As A Public Lounge; On Coming Home From Stag Dinners; The Wife Who Stays Out Late; Reading In Bed; Physical Jerks; In And About The Bathroom; How To Make Conversation In The Morning; A Short History Of Bed Manners; Bed Manners On A Friend’s Yacht; Berth Control In The Sleeping Car; Camp-Bed Manners; Simple Rules For Subtle People; When Nighthood Is In Flower; Last Words.
  • The Fowler Vacola Jar method of preserving fruit and vegetables out of season was world famous and it looks to be coming back into fashion as more and more people grow their own food.  Contains very detailed instructions and is a must for those wishing to live the alternative, slower-paced lifestyle.
  • De Vaca was one of hundreds of men who left Spain in 1527 on an expedition headed by Panfilo de Narvaez. The mission was to explore Florida.  This is the eyewitness account of how an expedition of over 600 men and five ships was reduced to a band of four half-mad survivors who staggered into Mexico City, having unintentionally become the first Europeans to cross the American Southwest via Texas, Ne Mexico and Arizona.  It is the quintessential travel horror story.
  • Australian character poetry from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
  • The Seven Seas is a series  of poems centred on Britain’s role in colonialism and Empire building. With reverberating lyrics and powerful imagery, Kipling writes of the ruthless means that were often employed to add nations to the glorious Empire, and the subsequent effects upon these colonised nations. Though disturbing and unsettling in theme, Kipling’s lyrical dexterity makes these poems strangely compelling reading.
  • Mikes visited Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, Siam (Thailand) India and Turkey. At once he came up against an awkward truth - if you are in the East then it stops being the East. The glamour of the Orient is automatically transferred to California - or even to Illinois. So he stopped bothering about points of the compass and concentrated on the people instead. Contrary to expectations, he found them pretty scrutable. Like Londoners,  New Yorkers and residents of the village of Siklos in Hungary, they seemed to Mikes to be endearing and funny. None of them liked being oppressed, although some liked oppressing other people when they got the chance. Most of them said they detested Europeans, which often seemed to mean Americans but at the same time  were as friendly as could be. They enjoyed criticising themselves but didn't like other people criticising them. In such familiar circumstances, Mr Mikes felt free to be as funny as he liked and so he has been - as well as being humorous and wise. English humor. Illustrated by Nicholas Bentley.
  • A fabulously sage collection of wisdom and observations from the most brilliant mind of his day. Just a sample: 'Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.' Or...'The daily newspaper! The educator of the people! God help us, it might be so. It educates into inattention, folly, sin, vacuity and foolishness. It saps concentration, dissipates aspiration, scrambles grey matter and irons out convolutions. Watch the commuter rush for his Dope when he reaches the station in the morning.' That was written in 1927 - so not much has changed. Hubbard, were he alive today, would probably say the same of television or the Internet.
  • Everything you thought you knew is wrong!  Such as..Henry VIII did NOT have six wives; Everest is NOT the world's tallest mountain; ALexander Graham Bell did NOT invent the telephone; and Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are NOT berries. Great potential for trivia nights.
  • A wealth of cinematic history that includes The Year In Cinema; Star Of The Year; Rising Stars And New Faces (including Jean Seberg, Anthony Perkins, Elvis Presley and Tony Randall); The Cartoon Film; Television Films; General Releases; Foreign Films and more.  Plenty of colour and black and white photographs.
  • Truthful Jones is the teller of the world's tallest tales - how to beat parking officers, the four-legged lottery, crime, politics and death. He tells behind-the-scenes stories about the government of Nifty Neville Wran, Bob Hawke, Menzies and Fraser; why attendances are falling at Aussie Rules matches and the inside story on cricket 'sledging'. Want to back the Melbourne Cup winner with the perfect system? Truthful has the tips.  A selection of the best from Hardy's column in People magazine.
  • The first edition of this book came out in 1928, and as a result of 'much correspondence' and further research, the author released this updated edition in 1944. Contents in this volume: The Devil's Hoofmarks: A series of strange footmarks in the snow appeared in Devonshire in 1855; The Vault At Barbados - also known as the moving coffins of Barbados; The Ships Seen On The Ice: Ships from a polar expedition believed lost in 1845 are spotted years later; The Berbalangs of Cagyan Sulu: Tales of zombies in the Philippines in 1896; Orffyreus' Wheel: Did  Orffyreus invent a perpetual motion machine in 1717? Crosse's Acari: A new species of insects allegedly created by the reanimation of dead matter; The Auroras And Other Doubtful Islands: Islands that had been recognised and charted for centuries - yet they don't exist...; Mersenne's Numbers: Marin Mersenne, a French Minim friar, gave his name to Mersenne primes in the 17th century - prime numbers that are one less than a power of two;  The Wizard of Mauritius: In the late 1700s Bottineau could predict, with accuracy, which ships would soon be arriving; The Planet Vulcan: Is there another planet between Mercury and the Sun? Nostradamus: The French scholar and mystic predicted a great many things that came true yet sceptics will point at those which haven't come true - to which the the believers retort, 'Yet...' Having written his quatrains in a mix of Latin, Greek, French with a touch of English tossed in. It being entirely possible that the quatrains were torn in half by Nostradamus so that the first two lines may have little to do with the last two, the world has not yet heard the last of him. While at least one of these 'Oddities' has now been solved - the moving coffins of Barbados - the others remain unexplained to this day. With photographs and sketches.
  • Jean Nicol, before she was twenty, worked as a journalist at the Daily Mirror, answering - as she put it - the cries of the lovelorn as agony aunt 'Dorothy Dix'. In 1939 she began work as a junior press officer at the Savoy Hotel and when war broke out, the senior staff departed and she unexpectedly found herself in charge. Her office began to take on a unique importance as it gradually became a meeting place for celebrities and American press representatives. She was so successful that after helping Daniel Sangster, film publicist for director David O. Selznick, with media releases, he made her an offer; leave the Savoy and take over the European office of the David Selznick Organisation. She declined - and she also received a rise in salary from Miles Thornwill, Chairman of the Savoy.  She met royalty, politicians, world leaders and many famous actors and actresses, including Danny Kaye, James Mason, Charlie Chaplin and Gertrude Lawrence. She first met Derek Tangye in 1941 when he asked her to stock his book, Time Was Mine in the hotel book stall. They became engaged in the winter of 1942 and married in February 1943. In 1949, they moved to Cornwall where they lived on a small holding with a variety of pets, growing daffodils and potatoes until Jean's death in 1986.  Drawing on her experience as an agony aunt and her shrewd observations, this book is about the  workings of the Savoy, its rich and famous guests and a wonderful view of social life in London over the war years and afterwards. This book was so popular that it was reprinted 18 times between 1952 and 1972. Illustrated with black and white photographs. 
  • Sale!
    Religious Tract Society - improving stories for children. Research shows that this was published in 1936 after the author's death in 1923.