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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. -
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! -
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 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.
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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. -
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. -
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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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. -
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.