The Best of John Bellairs: The House with a Clock in Its Walls; The Figure in the Shadows; The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring

The House with a Clock in Its Walls; The Figure in the Shadows and The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring are three magically eerie tales gathered in this one-volume edition. The series opens as Lewis Barnavelt, a newly orphaned ten-year-old, comes to live with his Uncle Johnathan. Little does Lewis know that Uncle Johnathan and his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmerman are witches. Lewis finds that he himself owns magical powers, and soon is thrust in a supernatural battle between good and evil. The second tale focuses on Grampa Barnavelt's old coin. Lewis thinks the coin is an amulet, but when he starts to wear it around his neck, bizarre things start to happen - and not all of them good. The last tale shifts the focus to thirteen-year-old Rose Rita, who is embittered because she cannot go to camp like Lewis. so Mrs. Zimmerman offers Rita an adventure of her own. But when a magical ring disappears, Rita gets more of an adventure than she bargained for. John Bellair's vivid characterization and and excruciatingly suspenseful plots make this series a thrilling ride!

HIGHEST FLICKR EXPLORE RANKING: 496 The world famous Spirt of Ecstasy flying lady mascot atop a mid-Sixties Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III at the Goodwood Revival historic race meeting, Goodwood Racing Circuit and Aerodrome, Goodwood, near Chichester, West Sussex, England. The Spirit of Ecstasy was designed by Charles Sykes, a graduate artist of London's Royal College of Arts, and behind it lies the tale of hidden passion between the succinctly-named John Walter Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu (the second Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, a pioneer of the automobile movement, and editor of The Car magazine) and his secret love Eleanor Velasco Thornton. Eleanor was Montagu's secretary, and their adoration for each other was to remain concealed, known only by their closest friends, for more than a decade. The reason was Eleanor's impoverished social and economic status, which, in those days in snobbish upper class Britain, was an obstacle to their relationship. And probably still would be, of course. Montagu, succumbing to family pressures, eventually married Lady Cecil Victoria Constance - far less hoi polloi - but the secret love affair continued. When Montagu commissioned Sykes to sculpt a personal mascot for his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Sykes chose Eleanor Thornton as his model. He originally crafted a figurine of her in fluttering robes, pressing a finger against her lips - to symbolise the secrets of their love. This was consequently christened The Whisper. At this time, Rolls-Royce motorcars did not feature radiator mascots as standard; they simply carried the Rolls-Royce emblem. This was not enough for some customers, who believed that such a prestigious vehicle as a Rolls-Royce motorcar should have its own more outstanding symbol, and by 1910 personal mascots had become the trend. Rolls-Royce was concerned to note that some owners were affixing 'inappropriate' ornaments to their cars. Managing director Claude Johnson was asked to see to the commissioning of something more suitably dignified and graceful. He also turned to Sykes to produce a mascot to adorn all future Rolls-Royces, with the specifications that it should convey "the spirit of the Rolls-Royce, namely, speed with silence, absence of vibration, the mysterious harnessing of great energy and a beautiful living organism of superb grace..." The brief also included evoking the spirit of mythical beauty, Nike, whose graceful image was admired in The Louvre, but Sykes was unimpressed. He felt that a more feminine representation might be apt. It was again Miss Thornton whom he had in mind. Sykes chose to modify Montagu's The Whisper into a version similar to today's Spirit of Ecstasy. He called this first model The Spirit of Speed and later dubbed it "A graceful little goddess, the Spirit of Ecstasy, who has selected road travel as her supreme delight and alighted on the prow of a Rolls-Royce motor car to revel in the freshness of the air and the musical sound of her fluttering draperies." As goddesses are occasionally prone to do, of course... Henry Royce was ill during the commissioning, and when he saw the finished item, he was far from impressed. He did not believe the figurine enhanced the cars, asserting that it impaired the driver's view, and was rarely seen driving one of his company's vehicles adorned with the mascot. Thus, he initially made sure it was officially listed only as an optional extra, but in practice it was fitted on almost all cars after it was introduced in 1911, becoming a standard fitment in the early-Twenties. And it has been on all Rolls-Royces ever since, outlasting by many years the woman who modelled for it, for Eleanor was drowned at the age of 35, along with hundreds of other passengers in December 1915, when the SS Persia on which she was travelling with Montagu through the Mediterranean to India, was torpedoed without warning by the German U-boat U-38. There was no time to get to a lifeboat and as they made for the decks on the listing ship, 'Montagu had Eleanor in his arms, the next they were hit by a wall of water and she was gone.' He survived and made his way home to read his own obituary in The Times. In a letter to the newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe, he confessed 'You will know, as a fellow human, what is my grief at the loss of Thorn, who, for 15 years, was all in all to me and who was the most devoted and lovable woman God ever made.' Just prior to the voyage, Eleanor had poignantly written to Lady Cecil - the two women got on well, apparently - 'You have the satisfaction of knowing that he will be well looked after. I do not think for one moment that there will be any trouble in the Med but supposing...well, then the Lord will have an extra chance, for there will be my place in the boat for him, even if he has to be stunned to take it.' Now I'm wondering what I should have on the bonnet of my old Volvo. Aside from, as recently, a flying deer... Taken at Goodwood Race Circuit a

CYPRUS, Paphos. Nikokles. Circa 325-309 BC. Distater (Silver, 21.27 g 6), Persic standard, Circa late 320s BC of later, perhaps circa 310. Head of Aphrodite to left, wearing an elaborate tiara composed of a mural crown with four towers enclosing a polos ornamented with palmettes and annulets, a disc earring with a triple pendant and a pearl necklace; behind her neck, ?-??. Rev. ?????????? / ?????? Apollo, wearing a laurel wreath and nude but for a cloak over his shoulders, seated left on omphalos, holding an arrow in his right hand and a bow, the bottom of which rests on the ground, in his left; to left, laurel branch; to right, behind Apollo’s hand, ? . SNG Copenhagen. Of the greatest rarity, only four genuine examples are known of this exceptional coin. Attractively toned and with particularly fine representations of both Aphrodite and Apollo. Some very minor metal faults, otherwise, nearly extremely fine. This is a spectacular coin of great beauty and historical significance. Nikokles was one of the most powerful of the late kings in Cyprus, but he, like all the others, was overthrown by Ptolemy I (Nikokles and his family all committed suicide). This coin falls into a series of Paphiote coins that began with the issues of Nikokles’ father Timocharis, who produced a very rare Persic stater (half the weight of this coin) with a very similar head of Aphrodite, coupled with her familiar, a dove. She was the most prominent deity at Paphos (her sanctuary was famous), and her importance is emphasized by the letters on the obverse: ?[????] ??[???????] = Queen of Paphos. This is emphasized by the mural crown she wears as well, since it symbolizes the powerful walls of Old Paphos (the city of New Paphos was almost certainly founded by Ptolemy I), of which she was the protectress. On the reverse we find Apollo, the syncretized version of Hylates, a similar god originally worshiped on Cyprus (nearby Kourion, a town not far away from Paphos on the west coast of the island, was famous for its sanctuary to Apollo-Hylates). It has been suggested that the figure on the reverse of this coin represents a statue that was erected in Paphos, perhaps by Nikokles, and that it was later carried off to Antioch where it was used as a prototype for the seated figure of Apollo that appeared on Seleukid coinage. The denomination of this coin, a Persic double stater, is a rare one, but it must have been produced as a prestige object in answer to the lighter Attic weight tetradrachms that had become prevalent in the east - it certainly fits in perfectly with the local system. Only four genuine examples of this coin are known: 1) The Uffizi piece (same dies as 2, same reverse die as 3); 2) Private Collection R (same dies as 1, same reverse die as 3); 3) Turin (same obverse die as 4, same reverse die as 1 and 2); and 4) This coin (same obverse die as 3).The Turin coin had been thought to be false thanks to a mistaken weight of 17.21 g recorded for it in 1883: Masson has disproved this, as do the die links we see here. The fact that only two obverse and two reverse dies are known for this coinage makes it very clear that it was meant to be a special issue (or, perhaps, that an originally large issue was unexpectedly cut short). It must have been struck after the less ostentatious issue of Alexander-type tetradrachms that bore the name of Nikokles in tiny letters along the border of the lion skin on the obverse (Price p. 388 and coins 3118-3123). Those pieces had to have been minted in the late 320s (they appear in a hoard buried c. 317) and it is possible that the more explicitly named distaters were produced shortly thereafter. However, a date in the years shortly before Nikokles’ suicide might fit the evidence even better. He was clearly chafing under Ptolemaic suzerainty at that time (he was negotiating with Antigonos Monophthalmos), and producing such a flamboyant coinage might be seen as a way of emphasizing his own importance. If this were the case it resulted in his downfall, and the clear probability that the Ptolemaic authorities in Cyprus made a conscious effort to demonetize and melt down all the coins of this type they could find; thus helping to explain its enormous rarity today. NOMOSFPL11, 80

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