Gallico ended his blockbuster novel The Poseidon Adventure with the sinking of the overturned luxury ship as a scant handful of survivors looked on. After the success of the first film of the same name (which ended with the ship still afloat) he was approached by Irwin Allen to write a sequel following on from the film's ending, rather than that of the novel. Mr. Gallico obliged with this further adventure featuring survivors and salvagers, a Communist killer, a beautiful girl pirate, a Vietnam veteran and a New York cop - the stricken Poseidon becomes a battle ground and the prize is a fortune in looted gold.
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Described as 'mainly autobiographical' by Gallico, this is a collection of some of his short stories that appeared in American and British magazines, spanning the years from his very first which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post to later stories which reflected his life in Europe. Of course, there is always more to the tale than first appears. From where did the idea come? How much of the writer's personal life, personality and personal problems have got into the telling? For each story in this volume, Gallico has written a separate background. The tales herein: McKabe; Flood; Did You See The Coronation? The Roman Kid; The Witch Of Woonsapucket; Penntifer's Plan; Oh, Them Golden Mittens; Thief Is An Ugly Word; The Dowry; Verna; The Enchanted Doll; The Glass Door; The Awful Secret of M. Bonneval; The Hat; The Silver Swans; The Silent Hostages; Shut Up Little Dog; Love Is A Gimmick; The Lost Hour; Orchestrations for Twelfth Night. -
Coronation: Paul Gallico
$10.00June 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. -
Set in England prior to the coronation of Elizabeth II. Mrs 'Arris is a charlady, hard-working, cheerful and always obliging. When she sees the beautiful Dior gown that one of her titled ladies will wear to the Coronation festivities, Mrs. 'Arris is determined to have one too. And she can - if she gives up catching the bus...and going to the cinema...and going to the pub for a drop of gin with her neighbour...and if she takes on extra work and does some sewing from home...She faces all manner of obstacles and snobbery and unwittingly does some good on her journey, but she is determined. Made into a beautiful film, Mrs. 'Arris Goes To Paris with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Ada 'Arris. and Omar Sharif - and recently remade. -
Jennie: Paul Gallico
$12.00This is the story of a young boy called Peter, who is knocked down by a car. To his considerable astonishment, when he recovers, he is not a boy anymore - he's a cat! Fortunately, he meets Jennie, a cat who had been abandoned by her family when they moved away, who educates him in the wiles of the feline world and life on the London streets. Will he stay a cat with Jennie, or return to being a human boy? -
Jennie: Paul Gallico
$8.00Gallico's fantasy story is of a young boy called Peter, who is knocked down by a car. To his considerable astonishment, when he recovers, he is not a young boy - he's a cat! Feeling very lonely, confused and lost, he meets Jennie, a cat who had been abandoned by her family when they moved away, who educates him in the wiles of the feline world. Will he stay a cat with Jennie, or return to being a human boy? But then he is challenged by Dempsey, a battle-scarred veteran and Peter must win... This is not necessarily a children's or teens' book - any reader will gain something from this story. -
The small English travelling circus of Mr Marvel is stranded by disaster in a remote part of the seemingly limitless plain of La Mancha, in Spain. Mr Marvel returns to England to deal with the insurance problems; and the story is that of the members of the circus ""family" who are left to handle the animals of the menagerie, of the acts and the horses. Among this group of misfits is Rose, who chooses to stay with Toby of the equestrian troupe and Mr. Albert, who has taught her to love the wild animals as he does. Rose - despite her dubious morals - has managed to keep a strange kind of goodness and innocence, even when she sells the only commodity she owns to secure food for the animals. Then Mr. Albert and the dwarf Janos find that they too have something to sell - to the Marquesa, whose desperate plight can never find recompense in her fortune. This is a story of dark romance, disaster and eventual deliverance, cowardice and greed, compassion and cruelty, kindness and love - and told with brilliantly observed humour and pathos. -
The small English travelling circus of Mr Marvel is stranded by disaster in a remote part of the seemingly limitless plain of La Mancha, in Spain. Mr Marvel returns to England to deal with the insurance problems; and the story is that of the members of the circus ""family" who are left to handle the animals of the menagerie, of the acts and the horses. Among this group of misfits is Rose, who chooses to stay with Toby of the equestrian troupe and Mr. Albert, who has taught her to love the wild animals as he does. Rose - despite her dubious morals - has managed to keep a strange kind of goodness and innocence, even when she sells the only commodity she owns to secure food for the animals. Then Mr. Albert and the dwarf Janos find that they too have something to sell - to the Marquesa, whose desperate plight can never find recompense in her fortune. This is a story of dark romance, disaster and eventual deliverance, cowardice and greed, compassion and cruelty, kindness and love - and told with brilliantly observed humour and pathos. -
Matilda: Paul Gallico
$25.00When a Broadway agent sells a boxing kangaroo to a showman - who really called up for a knife-thrower - things really start happening. The male kangaroo, called Matilda, accidentally tangles with a middleweight boxing king and the affray is reported with mock seriousness by journalist Duke Parkhurst. He claims that Matilda is now technically the World Champion and Bimmie the agent, Billy Baker the Bermondsey Kid who owns Matilda, Duke and a variety of rascals, scoundrels and reprobates all get involved. Even the Mafia want to get in on the act. Gallico, with his talent for the whimsical, has written an ingenious and hilarious story, a champion in itself. -
A hilarious fictional account of the infamous apes of Gibraltar during World War Two. Based on the ancient legend that when the Rock Apes die out, the British will lose Gibraltar, so deep-rooted is this belief that in 1944 Winston Churchill actually caused a signal to be sent to Gibraltar expressing anxiety over rumours concerning the apes and directing that every effort must be made to restore their dwindling number. On Gibraltar, Gunner Lovejoy and Captain Bailey are in charge of looking after the apes and Bailey drives the Brigadier up the wall with requests and suggestions for bettering the care of the apes. Between that and the mischief of Scruffy, Alpha ape - who goes in for wig theft, smashing tiled roofs, pooping in the town's water supply - Bailey is transferred, the apes are neglected and population begins to dwindle. Then the Germans get hold of the news and the legend - and begin using it for propaganda! -
Gallico makes a return to his earlier style - the small boy armoured in innocence and faith, as made famous by The Small Miracle. The odyssey of nine-year-old Julian West leads him across the country from San Diego, California to Washington on a lonely and courageous venture to patent his invention. He meets a man who offers him help and companionship - at a price. But like Christian in Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress, Julian knows not friend or enemy, but marches steadily through a series of fantastic situations and all-too-real dangers. If these perils are conquered by innocence when Julian's private world is shattered at the end of the Journey, Julian is ready - for he is no longer a child. -
A bizarre and frightening use of psychic phenomena as a weapon in the Cold War. An ingenious story, complete with mountebanks and conmen - and the real thing. Professor Constable is convinced that he is in touch with his dead daughter through a medium. The evidence is a cast of a hand, with the fingerprints of the dead girl in it. Alexander Hero, top operative of the So You Think You’ve Seen a Ghost Society of Great Britain, is hired to investigate a medium and her husband who may be trying to sway the Professor to sell his secrets to the Russians. Hero's job is to find out and debunk how they created Mary's hand - after she had been cremated... -
Professor Constable's only daughter was dead of leukaemia at the age of ten. Constable, a world famous scientist, was convinced that she was in communication with him beyond the grave. Were the 'spirit manifestations' of Mary Constable a depraved and cunning confidence game? Or were they as they appeared to be - genuine? AS Constable was a key Government scientist working on a project of world-shaking importance, Washington sent Alexander Hero, chief investigator for the British Society for Psychical Research. Working against time, Hero sees the evidence that had convinced the Professor - a translucent, hollow, seamless wax hand, complete with identifiable finger prints - the hand of Mary Constable. With each passing hour, the spirit of Mary seemed to be literally sapping her father's will, driving him to abandon work on Operation Foxglove, vital to the defence of the West. Alone in New York, surrounded by officials who regarded him with suspicion, Hero had to expose the spirit-daughter as a diabolical hoax. Suddenly he found an ally - a beautiful girl as well-versed in professional magic as Hero was in psychic phenomena. Hero had only seconds to decide - and the wrong decision would cost him his life. -
The Lonely: Paul Gallico
$15.00A tale of two lonely souls trying to reach out to one of their kind in order to feel completeness. Jerry, a much-loved only child, grows up in Long Island and is happy to marry his childhood sweetheart. But the Second World War intervenes and he is stationed in England, far from home. About to go on furlough to Scotland, he invites Patches, a WAAF - no strings attached, they have a wonderful time, and part with a handshake as agreed. He finds that what he feels for Patches is real - but will they ever see each other again? On his journey from boy to man, he realizes that there's more to it than growing a dashing moustache or going with girls. Once he returns home, he struggles, realising that he loves Patches, that his parents and his fiancee have invested so much in the plans they had made for a future - and they have no way of understanding that his experiences in both love and war have changed him for life. The emotional turmoil which each character undergoes has been written brilliantly and makes the book worth reading. In spite of its slow pace, there is never a dull moment. For each action that is taken, a justification is given, which makes it even more difficult for the reader to decide what can be the end of the story. A most vivid description of the characters and their thoughts makes the reader literally go under the skin of each and relive their moments time and again. -
At the height of its New Year revels, luxury ocean liner Poseidon is capsized by a massive tidal wave caused by an undersea earthquake. A handful of survivors must fight for their lives against appalling odds, struggling through the entrails of the stricken vessel in a nightmare race to get to the hull, the only part above water, before the ship sinks. Faced with rising water, panic, desperation and the death throes of the liner, they must do whatever they can to survive and make to the rescue they hope is coming. Front and back cover shows scenes from Irwin Allen's 1972 film of the same name; this is not a novelisation of the film - it is the original text of Gallico's 1969 novel. -
This classic tale of simple faith by Paul Gallico begins: "Once there was a boy named Pepino who lived in the mountain town of Assisi. He had no mother. He had no father. He lived in a stable with his donkey, Violetta. Violetta was everything to Pepino." Then one day Violetta gets sick, and nothing seems to help. Pepino is sure that if he can just bring her into the crypt of Saint Francis, who loves all animals, she will get well. But can he convince the priests to let him try? If he can, it will be a miracle...Illustrated by Edgar Norfield. -
The Snow Goose : A simple parable on the power of friendship and love, set against a backdrop of the horror of war. Philip Rhayader is a disabled artist living a solitary life in an abandoned lighthouse in the marshlands of Essex who meets a young local girl, Fritha, when she brings him a wounded snow goose. They become friends as the bird is nursed back to flight, and it revisits the lighthouse in its migration for several years. Rhayader and his small sailboat take part in the Dunkirk evacuation and the snow goose stays by his small boat, a symbol of luck and survival to the rescued men. The Small Miracle: When his donkey falls ill, a small boy in modern day Assisi goes to Rome seeking permission for the only remedy he truly trusts. Illustrated by Anne Linton.
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Magonius Sucatus Patricius was a wild, carefree undisciplined Romano-British boy living in south-west Britain toward the end of the fourth century. The legions had been recalled to Rome; Christianity, the official religion of the Empire was in the ascendancy and the Empire itself was breaking apart. When he was sixteen, Patricius visited his family's seaside estate and was carried off by Irish sea raiders to endure six years as a slave, shepherd and swineherd in the pagan wilderness of Northern Ireland . He escaped and after many adventures in France made his way home to Britain. Thirty years later - now a Bishop - Patricius again braved the hostile shores of Ireland to begin the most courageous conversion in the history of Christianity: that of a nation devoted to Celtic Gods and Druidism. Gallico presents the reader with St. Patrick with reason backed with evidence, without recourse to the more dramatic myths that surround him and weaving in excerpts from two extant sources: Confession and Letter to Coroticus to separate fact from legend. A balanced portrait of the extraordinary Saint. -
The Zoo Gang: Paul Gallico
$40.00In World War II, five men banded together in the Underground Resistance to make life miserable for the Germans in the south of France: The Tiger; The Elephant; The Leopard; The Wolf and The Fox. Naturally, they became known as the Zoo Gang. Thirty years after the war ended, the Zoo Gang re-emerges on the Riviera, this time to fight a different enemy: the criminal underworld that lurks just below the surface of the sunshine, pretty girls, holiday-makers and wealthy lotus-eaters of the Cote d'Azur. -
The victim of the Hungarian communists in this story is a brash young American newspaperman, assigned to a Paris edition of an American paper. Emotionally upset over what he considers callousness in his editor in the case of an enforced confession of an American, the threat of the Hungarians that the next "spy trial" will end in a death sentence, Jimmy uses the assignment to Vienna to get into Hungary where he is immediately seized and imprisoned as a spy. The story is told in counterpoint; Paris, the newspaper office, the determined exploration of every channel of release; Budapest, the prison, and the vicious ingenuity of the new kind of mental torture leading to the mindless man on trial.