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very, pensive, Sydney (2026)

18/01/2022

Burmese Days, George Orwell
Published, Penguin 2009
In excellent second-hand condition

When Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Indian Dr. Veraswami, he defies this orthodoxy. The doctor is in danger: U Po Kyin, a corrupt magistrate, is plotting his downfall. The only thing that can save him is membership of the all-white Club, and Flory can help. Flory's life is changed further by the arrival of beautiful Elizabeth Lackersteen from Paris, who offers an escape from loneliness and the 'lie' of colonial life.

18/01/2022

East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Published, Penguin Group 2012
In excellent second-hand condition.

In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.

18/01/2022

Put Out More Flags, Evelyn Waugh
Published, Penguin 2000
In good second-hand condition

Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life-his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security. With Europe frozen in the "phoney war," when will Basil's big chance to fight finally arrive?

18/01/2022

Lust, Roald Dahl
Published, Penguin Books 2016
In excellent second-hand condition

We fall not in love but in lust . . .

Lust, in all its myriad forms, consumes us. What won't we do to achieve our heart's desire? In these ten tales of twisted love master storyteller, Roald Dahl explores how our darkest impulses reveal who we really are.

Here you'll read a story concerning wife swapping with a sting in its tail, hear of the aphrodisiac that drives men into a frenzy, discover the last act in a tale of jilted first love and discover the naked truth of art, among others.

18/01/2022

Three Sisters, Anton Chekov
Published, Metheun Student Edition 2006
In good second-hand condition, some yellowing to pages and few highlighted words by the previous owner.

First performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, The Three Sisters probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha, and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to escape. Their hopes for a life more suited to their cultivated tastes and sensibilities provide a touching counterpoint to the relentless flow of compromising events in the real world.
In this powerful play, a landmark of modern drama, Chekhov masterfully interweaves character and theme in subtle ways that make the work's finale seem as inevitable as it is deeply moving. It is reprinted here from a standard text with updated transliteration of character names and additional explanatory footnotes.

18/01/2022

A Scandalous Woman, Edna O'Brien
Published, Penguin 1976
In excellent vintage condition

The eight short stories of this collection have a dual theme: Ireland - its people, its personality - and woman - woman betrayed, or sacrificed, innocence involuntarily lost, happiness stolen or mislaid..

Edna O'Brien has concentrated on the discovery and perfection of despair; she fixes on those vivid moments when a child first understands she is not valued when a wife suddenly sheds all grace, or an old woman makes up her mind to loneliness.

18/01/2022

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Published, Penguin Random House 2006
In good second-hand condition

Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.

But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?

18/01/2022

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Published, Penguin 2014
In excellent second-hand condition

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

18/01/2022

The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall
Published, Penguin Classics 2015
In good second-hand condition

Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents—a fencer, a horse rider, and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer, and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions.

The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous le***an novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond.

07/01/2022

Captain Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
Published, MacMillan 1939
RARE
I’m excellent vintage condition with original jacket and limited damaged.

DM to purchase $24.25

07/01/2022

The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
Published, Norton, 1995
In excellent second-hand condition, the jacket has been wrapped in plastic.

DM to purchase $19.50

"A Tale of Passion," as its subtitle declares, The Good Soldier relates the complex social and sexual relationships between two couples, one English, one American, and the growing awareness by the American narrator John Dowell of the intrigues and passions behind their orderly Edwardian facade. It is the attitude of Dowell, his puzzlement, his uncertainty, and the seemingly haphazard manner of his narration that make the book so powerful and mysterious. Despite its catalog of death, insanity, and despair, the novel has many comic moments and has inspired the work of several distinguished writers, including Graham Greene.

07/01/2022

Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
Published, Thames Publishing 1960
In excellent vintage condition - rare edition

DM to purchase $19.20

When Nicholas Nickleby is left penniless after his father's death, he appeals to his wealthy uncle to help him find work and to protect his mother and sister. But Ralph Nickleby proves both hard-hearted and unscrupulous, and Nicholas finds himself forced to make his own way in the world. His adventures gave Dickens the opportunity to portray an extraordinary gallery of rogues and eccentrics: Wackford Squeers, the tyrannical headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a school for unwanted boys; the slow-witted orphan Smike, rescued by Nicholas; and the gloriously theatrical Mr. and Mrs. Crummles and their daughter, the 'infant phenomenon. Like many of Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby is characterized by his outrage at cruelty and social injustice, but it is also a flamboyantly exuberant work, revealing his comic genius at its most unerring.

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