Antiquities & Oddities

//Antiquities & Oddities
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  • A portfolio of paintings by artists who sailed with Cook, able men with a spirit equal to their Captain's who earned, through their talent and courage, the fame their sketches, watercolours and oils of unknown lands brought to them. Beautiful colour, sepia and black and white artworks.
  • Cat; n. Small domesticated carnivorous quadruped.  This selection of writings has been presented as Nine Lives: The Kittenish; The Legendary; The Traditional; The Diabolical; The Poetical; The Domestic; The Curious; The Wild and The Last. A fabulous vintage volume for those who worship and observe cats. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • Originally published in 1837, here are the 'Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers' - pirates! True stories of the diabolical desperadoes who plundered ships on the high seas and murdered their passengers and crews. The stories - based on contemporary newspaper accounts, trial proceedings and Admiralty records - describe in lurid detail the life, atrocities and bloody death of the infamous Black Beard as well as the cold-blooded exploits of Jean Lafitte, Robert Kidd, Edward Low, Thomas White, Anne Bonney, Mary Read and scores of other maritime marauders. For those interested in the true-life adventures of the ruthless men and women who sailed under the black flag so long ago. With illustrations reproduced from the original edition.  
  • For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is - a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth. He makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited - "Not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek. There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, says Manson. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience.  
  • The year is 1793, the darkest days of the French revolution, and little Charles-Léon is ill. The delicate son of Louise and Bastien de Croissy is recommended country air, but travel permits are needed - and impossible to come by. Louise's friend, Josette, believes she knows a way out. For Josette is convinced that her hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel, will come to their rescue. She refuses to believe that he only exists in her imagination. 'I say that the Scarlet Pimpernel can do anything! And I mean to get in touch with him,' she vows, and sets forth into the Paris streets...
  • Being the Chronicle of the Wars of Montrose as Seen By Martin Somers, Adjutant of Women in O'Cahan's Regiment.  Surgeon and adjutant of women in  O'Cahan's Irish regiment, warring in Scotland with Montrose, is Martin Somers, better exponent of swordplay than of surgery. In his adventurous wardship of this ill-fated company of women, in the strengthening of the line against the forces of the Covenant, his dexterity and toughness is often decisive. This is a tale of keen endeavour, fury and tenderness.  Also published as The Dark Rose.

  • This highland tale focuses on Alistair, a young American laird, and his cousin Don. When they fight over Norray, an actress who has bewitched both young gentlemen, Alistair is left battered. Aleac, an occasional poacher, finds the laird and brings him home to be nursed back to health. There, he meets Aleac's niece Margaret...and the action really begins.
  • The team behind the The Book of General Ignorance turns conventional biography on its head.  Following their Herculean - or is it Sisyphean?- efforts to save the living from ignorance, the two wittiest Johns in the English language turn their attention to the dead. As the authors themselves say, “The first thing that strikes you about the Dead is just how many of them there are.” Helpfully, Lloyd and Mitchinson have employed a simple but ruthless criterion for inclusion: the dead person has to be interesting. Here, then, is a dictionary of the dead, an encyclopedia of the embalmed. Ludicrous in scope, whimsical in its arrangement, this wildly entertaining tome presents pithy and provocative biographies of the no-longer-living from the famous to the undeservedly and - until now - permanently obscure. Spades in hand, Lloyd and Mitchinson have dug up everything embarrassing, fascinating and downright weird about their subjects’ lives and added their own uniquely irreverent observations.  Organized by capricious categories such as dead people who died virgins, who kept pet monkeys, who lost limbs, those whose corpses refused to stay put - the dearly departed, from the inventor of the stove to a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster finally receive the epitaphs they truly deserve. Discover:  Why Freud had a lifelong fear of trains; the one thing that really made Isaac Newton laugh; how Catherine the Great really died (no horse was involved) and much more.
  • Are You Irish Or Normal? Sean O'Grada. O'Grada traces the history of the Irish in his own inimitable fashion, from many centuries B.C. (The First Irishman was a Greek) through the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries (A Man's Best Enemy is His Neighbour - And Where Was The O'Neill?) into the 15th and 16th centuries (A Good Sharp Axe Makes Divorce Permanent) and beyond. Now Listen, Mate! John O'Grady: O'Grady sez: These essays, or whatever they may be, represent my thoughts and conclusions on various things and people. My eldest son wanted me to write my autobiography: "The story of your life, Pop" he said. "And tell the truth." He can go and jump in Lake Burley Griffin. I offer instead some comment on what life has taught me. After sixty years of knocking around and being knocked about, a man acquires a sort of philosophy. Basically, mine is that nothing in life is worth getting steamed up about, and most things are good only for a laugh.  Illustrated by Paul Rigby.