Antiquities & Oddities

//Antiquities & Oddities
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  • The story of the dysfunctional and dirt-poor Walden family, headed by patriarch Ty Ty, who is firmly convinced that there is treasure buried on his land, treasure that dates back to the glory days of the clan.  He is determined to find it and drives his family to dig up the entire property in a frenzied effort to find it - all except that acre that's dedicated to God and must not be touched!  Made into a film with Robert Ryan and Tina Louise, well away from her ditzy Gilligan's Island role.
  • June 2, 1953.  It's a great day for the Commonwealth - it's the coronation day of the young, beautiful Elizabeth II.  Will Clagg, steelworker, his wife Violet, their two children Johnny and Gwinny and Grumbling Granny are determined to see this wondrous event.  No matter how long the day, nor the obstacles to be encountered...Each member of the family learns a great deal on this important day, and returns home laden with life-long gifts they never expected.
  • A cult classic, based on an actual murder case. Theresa Dunn, a convent-educated school teacher with a respectable family and a decent fiance haunts the singles bars of New York.  She arrives alone, but picks up a take-home man against the long, dark, lonely night. seeking to fill the emptiness within, and always failing. Then she begins to call in sick at school. spending her days with her pick-ups. As Theresa's life starts to spin out of control she meets the wrong man on the wrong night at the wrong bar....A cult classic, based on an actual murder case.
  • No matter how conservative science can explain somethings, strange phenomena continues:  Yeti sightings, the Loch Ness Monster, spontaneous human combustion and encounters with angels are just a very few of the explorations of this author.
  • The people of Spanish Fort, Florida, had never seen such rain before.  Young Edward Ames is washed away, eventually landing in the company of the two Morse children on one of the few remaining areas of high ground.  Many days later, the children are rescued by Shem, a mysterious dark skinned stranger, a kind man with a curious ambition.  And his cargo is strange - a boatload of animals.
  • Young Bill Berenger, having already won a considerable reputation for pulling off some difficult assignments involving detective skill, pluck and other assets, is this time involved in the machinations of a half-mad individual who calls himself the Fire-Seraph. This dangerous sort believes himself the descendant of the Incas and plots to dominate the world. Thus Berenger finds himself - to begin with - responsible for a cargo of explosives which the Fire-Seraph is hoping to secure for his own purpose. One thing leads to another and even when, after an air attack, Berenger's ship reaches its South American port and the end of the adventure might appear to have been reached, its most desperate episodes are ahead. Bill again meets his girl-friend Janet-Eve, and clearly a romance is blooming but before it can come to full flower, he has to take the biggest risk he ever ran in a situation that seems hopeless.  Historic naval fiction and adventure for young adults.
  • The First Fleet Re-enactment.  A fleet of square riggers left London on April 27 1987 and arrived at Sydney Cove on January 26 1988.  The author was a full-voyage trainee on that re-enactment voyage.
  • In 1973, ABC Radio broadcast a series of radio talks - Heresies. The series featured provocative and often unorthodox views of social, political economic and cultural issues, often challenging established opinion. It was intended as a medium for ideas, rather than a forum for prominent public figures.  Featured in this  collection: Professor Frederick May: The Revival of the Cliche and Frolic of Painted Dolls; Rev. Norman Webb: The End of History and Man has Come Of Age; Beatrice Faust: Sex - Common Sense or Popular Fallacy and Nice Girls Do; Helen Palmer: If You Can't Measure It, It Doesn't Exist and many more.   
  • Over a hundred enigmas to solve, as well as logic puzzles, magic squares, brain teasers, riddles and more all with a medieval theme to wake up and perk up the grey matter. Can you foil the cunning traps in these tricky games? There's no sturdy steed or magic sword to help - alas! - but a cunning mind and a little reflection will conquer the dragons and dodge the poison vials.
  • Those interested in 8 mm, 9.5 mm or 16 mm - or those who may still even have one - will find this book of practical value, full of sound, expert advice and instruction on every aspect of this art. The principles of projection and the mechanics of the individual projector are discussed clearly and simply, step by step and the reader is introduced to methods to ensure a smooth running projection technique. Illustrated.
  • Set in 19th century India, this is the tale of Kim - Kimball O'Hara - the orphaned son of an Irish soldier  and a poor Irish mother  who have both died in poverty. Living a vagabond existence in an India under British rule, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He befriends an aged Tibetan lama and accompanies him on a spiritual journey. He is also recruited by a native member of the British secret services as a spy but he is recognised by his late father's regimental chaplain and is sent to a good English school. Kim maintains contact with his secret service friends - and he will not only learn to serve his country, but also will learn to fulfil the lama's and his own dream of Enlightenment.
  • Tydvil Jones is a victim of feminine autocracy; he's no longer young and he awoke to the fact that he'd never had a day's fun in his entire life.  Fiercely determined to make up for lost time, he finds an ally in a very Powerful Personage. In three months, he manages more riotous adventure than most men manage in a lifetime and squares his account with his nagging spouse.  He complicates the lives of his friends, confounds his enemies and becomes the most wanted by the entire police force.  Jones breaks the shackles of convention and emerges triumphant, shameless and unregenerate - but very very happy! In the style of Thorne Smith.
  • The hysterically funny inside story of the fictional Butterfield Administration of 30 days duration in 1909 as told by the 'First Lady', hostess of the Executive Mansion for that one month.  Among other things, she details her rise from genteel poverty in the Deep South to sudden wealth, her romances, glamour and travels; and then to love, marriage and the ultimate address - the White House!  Now a spry 94 years and a permanent 'guest' at the Boskey Dell Home for the Senile and Disturbed, Mrs Butterfield gives American political history a real shock treatment in this mock-memoir complete with photos.
  • Belle Poitrine, (French for 'pretty bosom') born Mayble Sclumpfert, presents her hilarious, scandalous 'memoirs' of her life as star of the screen, theatre and television, here documented meticulously by Patrick Dennis.  All the world's a stage, and she's the most important player on it. At once coy and coercive,  she claws her way from Striver's Row to the silver screen. Recalling Belle's career, which ranged from portraying Anne Boleyn in Oh, Henry to roles in both Sodom and its sequel Gomorrah (not to mention the classic Papaya Paradise), Little Me serves up copious quanitites of husbands, couture, and Pink Lady cocktails, with international adventures and a murder trial to boot. Includes plenty of photos of 'Belle's' life and antics.
  • The man with no name rode into San Miguel and saw the chance to make himself a fistful of dollars. He set two rival families against each other and managed to survive the bloodshed unscathed, while each side paid his hire. Then a massive shipment of Mexican gold arrived and violence exploded in the streets, the man with no name - the stranger, the Americano - came near to losing his life; that was when he ceased to be dangerous and became lethal...Cover art shows representation of Clint Eastwood as the Stranger in the 1964 film of the same name.
  • Everybody knows Jones:  His house is better...his car is bigger... Whatever you may have, Jones has it better, bigger, smaller or the latest model or not at all - according to the latest fashion.  But how does Jones do it?  The only way to keep up with Jones is to get out of your pre-allotted pigeon-hole and BE Jones! A hilarious contemporary satire of life in the late 1950s on a topic that everyone still understands - envying thy neighbour! Illustrations by Norman Mansbridge.
  • The most magical nanny in the history of reading is up to more adventures and taking everyone along for the ride. And she's reappeared just in time. According to her tape measure, Jane and Michael have grown "Worse and Worse" since she went away. But the children won't have time to be naughty with all that Mary has planned for them. A visit to Mr. Twigley’s music box-filled attic, an encounter with the Marble Boy and a ride on Miss Calico’s enchanted candy canes are all part of an average day out with everyone's favorite nanny. Illustrations by Mary Shepard.
  • A wonderful, charming book on the flowers and gardens of Japan - not just any tourist book, but one which also discloses the spirituality behind Japanese garden plans and why they are planned as they are. It was published in 1908 and has fifty beautiful colour illustrations. (See gallery photos for artwork examples)  From Chapter II: Stones, Garden Ornaments and Fences. Stones and rocks are such important features in all Japanese gardens that when choosing the material for the making of a landscape garden, however large or however small, the selection of the stones would appear to be the primary consideration. Their size must be in perfect proportion with the house and grounds which they are to transform into a natural landscape, and they will give the scale for all the other materials used - the lanterns, bridges, and water-basins, and even the trees and fences. Their number may vary from five important stones to as many as 138, each with its especial sense and function. I think the correct position and placing of the stones is the part of the art which it would be most difficult for a foreigner to accomplish: the mere names and special functions of the stones would require years of careful study. To the eye of a Japanese one stone wrongly placed would upset all the balance and repose of the picture. Large rocks and boulders seem to be essential for the success of a large garden, and are used to suggest mountains, hills, and the rocks of the natural scene; any very fantastic and artificial looking rocks are avoided, for fear they should give an appearance of unreality to the landscape. The fancy of giving sex to certain stones, and in temple grounds of assigning holy attributes and even of giving them the names of Buddhist deities, dates from very early days, and this custom of applying a religious meaning to the most important rocks survives to this day. Mr. Conder tells us that "formerly it was said that the principal boulders of a garden should represent the Ku, or Nine Spirits of the Buddhist pantheon, five being of standing and four of recumbent..."
  • The trail led from the assassination of a youthful President to the murder of a cynical homosexual after a bizarre orgy to a beautiful, promiscuous woman slain by an unknown lover. Then the trail went on to secret files behind the unmarked doors of an unlisted government agency. The victims have one thing in common - all twenty-five of them appeared on one piece of film. And twenty-four are now dead, leaving one man to tell the story to an unbelieving world - if he can live so long...
  • By that infamous hilarious member of the Goons, Harry Secombe. Larry Gower left the Army with one ambition: to be a comedian.  His pal Wally got him started in a tough Northern variety theatre, and after that, life was a hectic round of landladies and lodgers, amorous artistes and awkward audiences. But it was the life that Larry wanted - seedy clubs, spotlights and all.
  • Adrienne was the beautiful beloved bride of Vincent, Lord Satan, eager to begin her new life as mistress of Castle Caudill. From the moment she enters Castle Caudill, Adrienne is drawn into a world of demonic terror. Does she participate in satanic rituals and black masses or are they only horrifying dreams? Is her husband a devil with great powers at his command? And why does the ghost of Lord Satan's mother mournfully roam the halls of the castle? Desperately Adrienne sought the fearful truth, through shadows that concealed nightmarish terrors, in a world that cloaked dark unseen forces she was powerless to control...Cover art by Enrich Torres-Prat. Roberts, daughter of an Ohio missionary, was a hardworking librarian by day, devil-romancer...most likely also by day. Somewhat maligned by later romance historians for her undeniably violent sex scenes, Roberts was something of a pioneer in her context and milieu  in bringing a hefty amount of explicitly disreputable sexuality to the gothic genre of the 1970s. The Louisa Bronte heroine would follow her libido to hell and beyond and the consequences  be damned!
  • Obadiah and Elizabeth ‘flabbergasted frightfully’ when they heard their three children, Daniel, Walter and Sarah, were considering leaving England and joining the goldrush to the Antipodes - the Australian Goldfields. The children expected to find gold and to make ‘their everlasting fortune.’ Their parents could only see the terrible dangers involved in what they considered ‘a foolhardy adventure.’  Obadiah and Elizabeth concluded a warning letter they wrote to Walter, Daniel and Sarah with this desperate plea: PLEASE, PLEASE, DO NOT GO TO THE GOLDFIELDS.  This is an entertaining look at life on the goldfields in the 1850s from the journey from 'Home' to the Antipodes; the scenes of drunkneness and brawling that greeted the shocked Britishers;  the intriguing crimes of interfering with your own clock, severing a clothesline, kite flying and why they were deemed to be criminal; the women of the goldfields and what life was like for children and school students. For teenage readers and upwards. Illustrated  by Carson Ellis.
  • An Australian yarn of a man who fooled himself. A young ship's apprentice loses his indentures by missing his ship because of drunkenness and, demoted to common seaman, is taken on the windjammer Laconda for a voyage from Melbourne to Boston around the Horn.  He tries to bolster his self-conceit by building a reputation for toughness and assumes responsibility for the murder of the brutal first mate, Bates. His shipmates' awe is gratifying - until this deception rebounds.
  • For eleven-year-old Badge the world is bounded by the high ridges that enclose his valley home, deep in the heart of Tasmania. He delights in the wild life that surrounds him, and cares little for the world Outside. But one day visitors arrive from Outside - Russ, a splendid cousin from America, and his friend Dr Heftman, who have come to study the local natural history: and they bring a new interest into Badge's life. He had once been shown one of the country's rarest animals, the nearly extinct Tasmanian tiger, coming to a pool to drink: and he had promised never to reveal its whereabouts. But, carried away by the admiration of his cousin, he tells the secret: and then faces a terrible dilemma, for now Russ will want to carry the rare animal away from the free life of the wilds into captivity.
  • Book III of The Saint vs Crown Prince Rudolph. The Saint had decided to turn over a new leaf.  But he hadn't reckoned with Prince Rudolf - nor with his old adversary's hankering for diamonds! Why would a man as rich as Rudolph care about the comparatively small value of the Montenegrian Crown jewels?
  • Since everything old is new again, you can liven up your next 'do' with novel party games from the fabulous Fifties. Includes pencil and paper games, word games, team games, treasure hunts and mimes.  Good clean fun all round.
  • A narration of the events of the Biblical Exodus from Egypt told from the perspective of Ana, the scribe: This is the story of certain of the days that I, the scribe Ana, son of Meri, lived through, here upon this earth...I tell of Merapi - who was named Moon of Israel! - and of her people, the Hebrews, who dwelt for long in Egypt and departed thence - having paid us back in loss and shame for all the good and ill we gave them. And now I - the King's Companion, the great scribe, the beloved of the Pharaohs who have lived beneath the sun with me - tell of the war between the gods of Egypt and the god of Israel... I write of these matters now when I am very old in the reign of Rameses, before death takes me...