Hardcover. Franklin Center PA, Franklin Library, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 213 pages, color frontispiece illustration by Gary Kelley. Deluxe edition by the Franklin Library. Bound in jet black cloth with attractive gilt decorations and titles. Three raised bands to the spine. All edges gilt. Printed on high quality, acid free paper. After a bridegroom is shot on the steps of the church on his wedding day, his widow traces the group of men responsible and eliminates them one by one.
Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, Book Club Ed., 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. Three mystery novels in one volume. Detective Book Club Series. Clean, bright copy. No markings.
Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. As Gone With the Wind approaches release, all the stars but Clark Gable prepare to head to Atlanta for the big premiere. Clark and his wife, Carole Lombard, are too distressed to celebrate the opening of the biggest movie of his career because Lydia Austin, a young actress and protege of Carole's, is missing. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated boards. Three complete unabridged mysteries in one volume. Detective Book Club Edition. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 157 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #834. Cover art by Barye Phillips. Light creasing to paper wrappers.
Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 191 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #s817. Light creasing to paper wrappers.
Softcover. New York, Bantam Books, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 151 pages. Paperback. Bantam Mystery #1910. Cover art by Bayre Phillips. Light creasing to cover wrappers.
Softcover. New York, Pocket Books/Permabooks, 1st, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 242 pages. Paperback. Pocket Book #193. Chipping to spine edges. Moderate creasing to wrappers.
Hardcover. NY, Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY THOMAS on the title page. When a legendary freedom fighter is kidnapped, his close friend the Libyan dictator angrily blames the CIA. In retaliation, the Libyans kidnap the U.S. Presidents brother. Enter the Mordida Man--an independent fixer and bribery expert who must find and free the Presidents brother without causing an international incident.
Softcover. New York, Five-Star Mysteries, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 157 pages. Paperback. Five-Star Mystery # 45. Moderate wear to pictorial wrappers. Pages tanned. Staple binding visable on front and rear hinge. Spine faded and frayed. Scarce. Chipped at edges.
Softcover. New York, Pocket Book, 2nd, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 186 pages. Paperback. Pocket Book #385. Moderate edgewear on paper wrappers. Small notation on first page. Light creasing to wrappers.
Softcover. New York, Popular Library Mystery, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Popular Library Mystery # 554. Moderate wear to paper wrappers. Pages tanned. Moderate soil on rear. Front hinge cracked.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 159 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #4476. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Cover art by Robert McGinnis. Minor reading crease to spine. Sticker to inside front wrapper. Spine faded.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #276. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Light crease and fade to spine and front cover. Map on rear cover.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #133. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Light crease to front cover. Map on rear cover. Cover art by Otto Storch.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #D338.Minor wear to paper wrappers. Creasing to covers and spine. Cover art by Robert McGinnis. Ink notation on first page.
Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Keith Beaumont, an ace British Arctic troubleshooter and scientific expert is despatched to research base Target-5 on the icepack near Greenland to intercept a Soviet defector named Gorov who is carrying secret documents detailing a submarine defence network. The contents could upset the balance of world power, as these stories dictate, so when Beaumont and Gorov are tailed by Soviet airborne assault troops, they must head towards the edge of the ice pack in a perilous journey. This is a short but thrilling novel firmly set in the 1970s. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Ontario, Viking Canada, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY FINDLEY on the title page. Vanessa Van Horne investigates the seeming connection between the tearing down of the Aurora Sands Hotel and the mysterious death of wealthy businessman Calder Maddox. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Little, Brown & Company, reprint, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 204 pages. Originally published by Lion Books as a paperback in 1954. By the time Jim Thompson was sixteen years old, he had been a newspaper boy, a burlesque show hawker, a plumber's helper, a comedian in two-reel pictures, a night bellboy in a luxury hotel and over a dozen other occupations. By the time he was eighteen, he was driving across America in a broken-down Ford without a penny to his name and his mother and his kid sister Freddie in tow, looking for just one more paycheck to keep them all alive. A bittersweet comedy of a hard-won American life, ROUGHNECK chronicles the many jobs, near-criminal escapades, and downright unlawful grifts of the man who would become one of crime fiction's most enduring writers, in a larger-than-life literary memoir--or wildly entertaining tall tale--as only Thompson could tell it. Hard times have never sounded so good. Clean, unread copy.
Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 189 pages. Roy DIllon seems too handsome and well-mannered to be a professional con man. Lilly Dillon looks too young--and loves Roy a little too intensely--to be taken for his mother. Moira Langtry is getting too old to keep on living off the kindness of male strangers. And Carol Roberg seems too innocent to be acquainted with suffering. This was filmed in 1990 by Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Donald E. Westlake and starring Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Mulholland Books, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. It was supposed to be only a temporary job -- something to pay the bills until Dusty could get his feet back on the ground and raise enough money for medical school. After all, there's nothing wrong with being a bellboy at a respectable hotel like the Manton -- that is, until she came along. Marcia Hillis. The perfect woman. Beautiful. Experienced. Older and wiser. The only woman to ever measure up to that other her -- the one whose painful rejection Dusty can't quite put from his mind. A richly-imagined crime narrative of the Oedipal and betrayal, A Swell-Looking Babe is Thompson at his very best -- a cornerstone in Thompson's enduring legacy as the Dimestore Dostoyevsky of American fiction. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Minotaur Books, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY MAYOR on the title page. Joe Gunther and his team-the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI)-are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and back-up. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd, seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen year old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains.At the same time, an old, retired state politician turns up dead at his high-end nursing home, in circumstances that leave investigators unsure that he wasn't murdered. And a patient who calls herself The Governor has walked away from a state mental facility during the post-hurricane flood. It turns out that she was indeed once "Governor for a Day," over forty years ago, but that she might have also been falsely committed and drugged to keep her from revealing something that she saw all those years ago. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY CLARK on the title page. Kevin Moore, once a high-flying Virginia attorney, hits rock bottom after a tumultuous summer leaves him disbarred and separated from his wife. Short on cash and looking for work, he lands in the middle of nowhere with a job at SUBstitution, the world's saddest sandwich shop. Kevin's determined to set his life right again, but the troubles keep coming, including a visit from a mysterious stranger who wanders into the shop armed with a threatening "invitation" to join a multimillion-dollar scam. Before long, Kevin will need every bit of his legal savvy just to stay out of prison. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Macaulay, 1st, 1924, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright blue covers with titles and image of talon in black. Black & white frontispiece by George W. Gage. Light wear to covers otherwise VG.
Hardcover. New York, Warner Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. SIGNED BY DONALD WESTLAKE on title page. Bright, clean copy in a dust jacket.
Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 223 pages. Over the course of a fifty-year career, Donald E. Westlake published nearly one hundred books, including not one but two long-running series, starring the hard-hitting Parker and the hapless John Dortmunder. In the six years since his death, Westlake's reputation has only grown, with fans continuing to marvel at his tightly constructed plots, no-nonsense prose, and keen, even unsettling, insights into human behavior. With The Getaway Car, we get our first glimpse of another side of Westlake the writer: what he did when he wasn't busy making stuff up. And it's fascinating. Setting previously published pieces, many little seen, alongside never-before-published material found in Westlake's working files, the book offers a clear picture of the man behind the books-including his thoughts on his own work and that of his peers, mentors, and influences. The book opens with revealing (and funny) fragments from an unpublished autobiography, then goes on to offer an extended history of private eye fiction, a conversation among Westlake's numerous pen names, letters to friends and colleagues, interviews, appreciations of fellow writers, and much, much more. There's even a recipe for Sloth a la Dortmunder. Really. Rounded out with a foreword by Westlake's longtime friend Lawrence Block, The Getaway Car is a fitting capstone to a storied career and a wonderful opportunity to revel anew in the voice and sensibility of a master craftsman.
Hardcover. UK, The Chicken House, 1st UK, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 348 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on half title page. First English translation of German mystery novel. Faint age toning to top and bottom text block edges. Scarce. A tight copy.
Hardcover. London, Orion, 1st UK, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 335 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Lovely copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.
Hardcover. London, Gollancz, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BOOKPLATE BY AUTHOR laid in. Clean copy. "The extraordinary tale of Edward Moon, stage conjuror and detective, his silent associate the Somnambulist, a mysterious and shadowy figure, The Sleeper, shrouded in inscrutable mystery and veiled behind half-truths and hinted-at destiny, and a devilish plot to bring the British Empire crashing down." (from the inside flap of the front cover).
Hardcover. New York , Simon & Schuster , 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. SIGNED BY CLARK on title page. 318 pages. Dust jacket with light scratches, sticker residue. Internally very good.
Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 247 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. "Signed copy"-sticker on front cover. Beautiful copy in clear mylar sleeve.
Hardcover. London, Allison and Busby, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Spring, 1858. The route of the Caledonian Railway through the southern uplands of the Scottish countryside is disrupted by a fatal crash. Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are called from the crime of London to investigate, and must contend with old enemy Superintendent Rory McTurk to uncover the criminals behind the disaster. Clean copy.
Softcover. Ashland OR, Blackstone Publishing, reprint, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps. Ms. Moxie Mooney is Hollywood royalty--and she's in trouble. At the summons of his on-again, off-again lover, Fletch drops in on Moxie's film set, located in sunny Florida. If being called up for help by the box office beauty isn't work enough, Steve Peterman, Moxie's sleazy manager, is murdered while the cameras are rolling, and no one managed to see a thing. Despite the obvious lack of evidence, the rumor mill is still quick to churn up a potentially plausible suspect: Moxie. Realizing the need for a little R&R away from prying eyes, he hastily flies Moxie and her drunken father off to Key West. But trouble follows Fletch, in every sense of the word, and soon enough he's playing host to a full house of Hollywood's brightest.I n true Fletch style, he delves into the investigation, dodging police inquiry, betting on race horses, taking a leisurely sail, and talking up his elite houseguests to get the dirt and solve this perplexing murder.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. To escape punishment for a murder he didn't mean to commit, insurance man Don Barshter has to take on a new identity: Nathaniel Crowley, ferocious up-and-comer in the New York mob. But can he find safety in the skin of another man...a worse man...a sinner man...? Long before he became the award-winning creator of Matthew Scudder (A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES) and an MWA Grand Master, Lawrence Block penned this tough, unforgettable crime novel, his very first. But as he describes in a new afterword, the book wound up published only eight years later, under a different title and a fake name--and was then lost for half a century. Now appearing for the first time under Block's real name, with revisions by the author, SINNER MAN is revealed as a powerful work by a young novelist destined to become one of the giants of the mystery genre. Like new.
Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY CANNELL on title page. Clean, like new. An Ellie Haskell mystery, now the mother of infant twins who feels like the magic has gone out of her life. The fifth mystery by Cannell.
Hardcover. NY, Crown Publishers, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "Eric Auden, recently estranged from his wife and the world, finds himself one snowy day in New York's greatest art museum confronting the cool marble contours of the Goddess of Desire, forty-five centuries old and still a bit of a flirt. Helplessly enchanted, and hoping to revise his life, he steals her." Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Harper & Row, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 247 pages. Clean, tight copy in a very nice dust jacket.
Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 224 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to covers. Black and white pictures throughout. When Jack Davis took up his pen for EC Comics, he made his innocent victims more eye-poppingly terrified, his ax-murderers more gleefully gruesome, and his vampires and werewolves more bloodthirsty and feral than any other artist. These horror and suspense tales - from the pages of Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories, and Shock SuspenStories - offer everything a horror fan could ask for: re-animated bodies and body parts, a ghoul who stores bodies like a squirrel stores nuts, a vampire who moonlights at (where else?) a blood bank, greedy business partners, corrupt politicians, jealous lovers, revenge from beyond the grave, and a healthy complement of vampires, werewolves, and assorted grotesqueries. All leavened with the cackling, pun-laced humor of scripter Al Feldstein and illuminated as only the virtuoso brushwork of Jack Davis can present them.
NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping, 244 pages. Clean copy. A new Perry Mason story, originally published by Morrow in 1943. Murder, embezzlement, cross examination, a buried alarm clock make this another gripping Perry Mason mystery. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Stalking a serial killer in Miami. Remainder line to top edge.
Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED by the author on title page. A Mrs. Murphy mystery set in at the annual steeplechase races at Montpelier, the Virginia home of James and Dolly Madison. Like new.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. Miranda Sugarman was supposed to be in the Midwest, working as an eye doctor. So how did she wind up shot to death on the roof of New York's seediest strip club? It's up to detective John Blake to uncover his ex-girlfriend's secret life as a strip tease queen. But the deeper he digs, the darker the secrets he uncovers, until a shattering face-off in an East Village tenement changes his life forever. Stunning debut novel from an author whose stories have been selected for BEST MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR and THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES, as well as short-listed for the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America. Like new.
Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, colorful dustjacket with a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. "Here, long after anyone would have expected it, is the voice of James M. Cain, as fresh and as relevant as ever. THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS will involve you, and then shock you with an ending you'll never forget. This is a true rarity: a reader's novel that's also a literary event." --STEPHEN KING "James M. Cain was one of the founders of American hard-boiled fiction, and it's not a stretch to say that it's his voice one hears echoed in most of the Gold Medal novels of the 1950s. That makes Hard Case Crime the ideal publisher for THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS. How considerate of the postman to ring a third time, delivering Cain's final gift to us thirty-five years after his death." --LAWRENCE BLOCK
Hardcover. NY, Morrow, 1st, 1939, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 279 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Lending library stamp, lettering on front and rear end papers. Tight copy.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Richard B. Farrell. Detective Matt Cordell was happily married once, and gainfully employed, and sober. But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45. Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the city's bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matt's help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. It's just like the old days--only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end. Like new.
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