Search Results: Historical Literature from Shop-books.ca

Picador, New York, 2003. First edition. Condition: Very good plus softcover, light edge nicks and creasing at spine.From the publisher: Born of god and king and hidden as a girl until Odysseus discovers him, Achilles becomes the Greeks' greatest warrior at Troy. Into his story comes a cast of fascinating characters among them Hector, Helen, Penthiselaia the Amazon Queen, and the centaur Chiron; and finally John Keats, whose writings form the basis of a meditation on the nature of identity and shared experience. Achilles is an affirmation of the story's enduring power to reach across centuries and cultures to the core of our imagination.

Condition: Very good, light edge wear and slight scuffing on covers, light crease at rear cover, previous owner's and price on inside front cover.In french, with notes, analyses, and commentary by Denise-P. Cogny and Pierre Cogny.

Subterranean Press, Burton MI, First edition. Condition: Fine in near fine dust jacket. The slightest of edge nicks on dust jacket else fine.From the publisher: When a private envoy of the queen and member of Lord Carmichael's discreet service goes missing, Balfour and Meriwether are asked to look into the affair. They will find a labyrinth of dreams, horrors from hell, prophecy, sexual perversion and an abandoned farmhouse on the moors outside Harrowmoor Sanitarium. The Earth itself will bare its secrets, and the Empire will tremble in the face of the hidden dangers they uncover, but the greatest peril is the one they brought with them. This is the first novella length work in the Balfour and Meriwether stories by Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominated author Daniel Abraham.

Harvest/Harcourt, 2003. First trade paperback printing. Condition: Very good edge wear and corner bumps, bottom edge has small tears, spine crease and nicks.It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander-who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa-adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a… Read More

Norton, New York, 8th paperback printing. Condition: Good, edge wear and corner creasing, scuffing on predominately black covers, underlining and notes in ink.Beowulf is the longest and finest literary work to have come down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, and one of the world's greatest epic poems. Set in the half-legendary, half historical Scandinavian past, it tells the story of the hero Beowulf, who comes to the aid of the Danish king Hrothgar by killing first the terrifying, demonic monster Grendel, and then Grendel's infuriated and vengeful mother. A lifetime later, Beowulf's own kingdom, Geatland, is threatened by a fiery dragon; Beowulf heroically takes on this challenge, but himself dies killing the dragon. The poem celebrates the virtues of the heroic life, but Hrothgar and Beowulf are beacons of wisdom and courage in a dark world of feuds, violence and uncertainty, and Beowulf's selfless heroism is set against a background of ruthless power struggles, fratricide and tyranny.

Condition: Fine in near fine dust jacket. Signed, limited, and numbered edition; number 426 of 500. From the publisher: Black Hills is an important and revelatory novel, the most singular accomplishment to date by the always unpredictable Dan Simmons. With empathy and great narrative power, it illuminates a significant chapter in the nation s history, and takes us deep into the heart of an extraordinary American life. The story begins at the Battle of Little Big Horn in June of 1876. Eleven-year-old Paha Sapa (whose name, in the Lakota dialect, means Black Hills ), is present at the precise moment of Custer s death, a moment that will have enormous ramifications. The narrative that follows encompasses eighty years of highly charged history and ranges from the eponymous (and sacred) Black Hills of South Dakota to the Dust Bowls of the Great Depression to the emerging face of Mount Rushmore, where an astonishing revelation awaits. On one level, Black Hills is a story of profound and inescapable loss: of… Read More

Mcclelland & Stewart, Toronto, 2017. 4th printing. Condition: Very good plus, light edge and spine wear, corner bumps.London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures -- a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows. Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London in search of her; what he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most… Read More

Vintage V-207, New York. Later printing. Condition: Near fine, very light edge and corner wear, light sunshadow.This English edition includes the plays Caligula, The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu), State of Siege (L'État de siège), and The Just Assassins (Les Justes).

Condition: Good, book has light edge wear and corner bumps, slight scuffing at spine ends, some notes and underlining and previous bookstore stamp on inside front cover. no dust jacket. No date or edition noted.Edited with notes and vocabulary by Osmond T. Robert and new-type exercises, passages for prose translations by H.L. Humphreys.

Penguin, London. 4th paperback printing. Condition: Near fine, very light edge and corner wear, price sticker on rear cover.Confessions is a remarkable account of the pleasures and pains of worshipping at the 'Church of Opium'. Thomas De Quincey consumed daily large quantities of laudanum (at the time a legal painkiller), and this autobiography of addiction hauntingly describes his surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings through London, along with the nightmares, despair and paranoia to which he became prey. The result is a work in which the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory and imagination are seamlessly interwoven, describing in intimate detail the mind-altering pleasures and pains unique to opium. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater forged a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, paving the way for later generations of literary addicts from Baudelaire to James Frey, and anticipating psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious.

Condition: Very good, edge wear and corner bumps, light discoloration at top left corner, previous owner's name on inside few first pages has been blacked out.Learning French as a second language text.

Bantam, New York. 3rd paperback printing. Condition: Good, edge and corner wear, corner creases, rear cover has soiling, well read.Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?This short novel was the artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.

Signet, New York. 14th paperback printing. Condition: Good, edge wear, corner creasing, scuff marks on covers, spine creases, underlining, a well read book.Includes an introduction to the play by Sylvan Barnet, the full text with detailed footnotes at the bottom of each page keyed to the numbered lines, commentaries and a short biography.

McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Toronto, 1979. First printing. Condition: Very good in good dust jacket, book has light bumps, dust jacket has wrinkling, light edge wear, price sticker on front cover, price clipped.In this remarkable collection of fourteen previously uncollected stories, L.M. Montgomery weaves her unique brand of magic as she explores the private passions of the heart. A country doctor never loses faith in the young woman who swears to return to him; a beautiful maiden, in a fit of pique, recklessly pledges to marry the very first man who asks her; an estranged wife bets her future happiness on a horse race; two maiden ladies, scared onto a roof by a dog, ponder marriage to the dog's owner as the price of rescue. These are some of the unforgettable characters whose stories—of romance and friendship, reconciliation and abiding love—live again in an anthology L.M. Montgomery readers will treasure. By the author of Anne of Green Gables.

Condition: Fine in near fine dust jacket. Signed, numbered, and limited edition; number 766 of 1000 copies.A goddess has to do what a goddess has to do.And in World Fantasy Award winner K.J. Parker's sharply inventive new novella Downfall of the Gods that means everything from soothing supernatural egos to accompanying the argumentative Lord Achias on an epic quest to save his soul...and get her own way.

Bantam Classic, New York. Later paperback printing. Condition: Good minus, edge and corner wear, creasing, small triangular tear at top and rear corner, slight discoloration on covers.One of the most popular stories ever told, Dracula has been recreated for the stage and screen hundreds of times yet it is essentially a Victorian saga, an awesome tale of a thrillingly bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal atrocities reflect the dark underside of a supremely moralistic age.

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009. First edition. Condition: Near fine in very good minus dust jacket. DJ has small creases and slight tear near spine.Drood is the name and nightmare that obsesses Charles Dickens for the last five years of his life. On June 9, 1865, Dickens and his mistress are secretly returning to London, when their express train hurtles over a gap in a trestle. All of the first class carriages except the one carrying Dickens are smashed to bits in the valley below. When Dickens descends into that valley to confront the dead and dying, his life will be changed forever. And at the core of that ensuing five year night mare is...Drood...

Allison and Busby, London, 1999. First printing in this edition. Condition: Near fine, light edge wear and slight corner bumps.In this, the second of Margaret Irwin's great trilogy about the life of 'Good Queen Bess', Elizabeth I, the imperious, high spirited heroine of Young Bess finds herself the prey of her sister Mary's jealous suspicions. The death of her young brother, Edward IV; the accession of Bloody Mary; the execution of Lady Jane Grey; her own imprisonment in the Tower of London; and the arrival of Philip of Spain to marry Queen Mary provide the powerful background to Irwin's masterful novel as Elizabeth strives to achieve her ambition, the Crown of England.

Penguin Classics, New York, 1985. 11th paperback printing. Condition: Good, edge and corner wear, faint crease along front cover, underlining, highlighting, and notes in ink on several pages."Who is going to marry Eugenie Grandet?"This is the question that fills the minds of the inhabitants of Saumur, the setting for Eugenie Grandet (1833), one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's Comedie Humaine. The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel.Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It… Read More

Viking, Toronto, 2005. First edition, signed by the author. Condition: Near fine, light edge wear, mild scuffing on dust jacket.From the publisher, synopsis: In St. Petersburg, beside the glittering court life of the Romanovs, the Russian people are seething. It is not only the Bolsheviks but also the new tycoons profiting from the booming economy and the more aggressively ambitious aristocrats who are impatient with the idle, incompetent Romanovs. Pyotr Ryzhkov, probing the murder of a child prostitute, suddenly finds his inquiries deliberately hampered. As the investigation widens, financiers, policemen, government officers, foreign diplomats, and even the minister of justice seem to be involved in an ever-larger circle of fraud and violence. Then a killing gives Ryzhkov the final clue and leads to a desperate journey to Serbia.