Novels

Hardcover. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st Edition, 1894, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 513 pages. Hardcover. Light green boards with dark green and gold gilt decoration on front cover and spine. Some light chipping to edges and corners of boards. Previous owner's inscription dated "Xmas 1894". Pages lightly tanned with age, otherwise unmarked.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in white, 84 pages. Decorative woodcut on endpapers. Internally bright and clean. Illustrated throughout with beautiful woodcut engravings by John Farleigh. Designed by Farleigh. No dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Carbondale IL, Southern Illinois University Press, reprint, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 479 pages. Predestined, Whitman's first and most successful novel, is a remarkably con-trolled, inexorably plotted story of Felix Piers, born to wealth and misfortune, who was predestined to a life of failure. The rich, varied background of New York City's many sides provides the compelling backdrop to this deterministic novel. First published in 1910, one of the titles in the Lost American Fiction Series. The author is an over-looked American literary naturalist whose Predestined compares favorably with the work of Frank Norris. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow and Company, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY DELBANCO on the front fly leaf. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, Counterpoint, 2nd pr., 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dustjacket, 161 pages. An unsuccessful writer and an inveterate alcoholic, Boris Alikhanov has recently divorced his wife Tatyana, and he is running out of money. The prospect of a summer job as a tour guide at the Pushkin Hills Preserve offers him hope of regaining some balance in life as his wife makes plans to emigrate to the West with their daughter Masha, but during Alikhanov's stay in the rural estate of Mikhaylovskoye, his life continues to unravel.Populated with unforgettable characters?including Alikhanov's fellow guides Mitrofanov and Pototsky, and the KGB officer Belyaev? Pushkin Hills ranks among Dovlatov's renowned works The Suitcase and The Zone as his most personal and poignant portrayal of the Russian attitude towards life and art.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. First work of longer fiction (although still a brief one) by this Virginia-born poet and short story writer. A moving story of jazz and an old muscian brought back to the United States as a 'museum project' to capture his creative process and preserve his music. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 391 pages. Attractive copy of the fourth novel by Pulitzer Prize winner, Richard Russo. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction than he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father, the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park. Such is the canvas of Richard Russo's Straight Man, a novel of surpassing wit, poignancy, and insight. As he established in his previous books Russo is unique among contemporary authors for his ability to flawlessly capture the soul of the wise guy and the heart of a difficult parent. In Hank Devereaux, Russo has created a hero whose humor and identification with the absurd are mitigated only by his love for his family, friends, and, ultimately, knowledge itself. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 4th pr., 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover, overall very good in fair worn and chipped dust jacket that's price-clipped. Winner of the 1954 National Book Award. 536 pages, Fourth printing, October 1953. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Udall's second novel introduces Golden Richards, a builder, with four wives, 28 children and a propensity to create trouble for himself and his family. SIGNED BY UDALL on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, The Folio Society, reprint, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, brown patterned cloth with gilt lettering to spine, in slipcase. Maya Angelou's autobiographical account of her childhood and early youth growing up in 1930's America, is an evocation of a black girl's struggle against her oppressors. A great American classic, Maya Angelou's powerful and perceptive memoir forged a path for Black American women's writing and made her an international icon. Written in 1969, it recounts her early experiences as a woman of color in the segregated Deep South where, surrounded by bigotry and poverty, daily life was lived on a knife-edge.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America,, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light sticker residue to rear panel, 1096 pages. The ultimate Portis: for the first time in one collector's volume, the complete fiction and collected nonfiction of the author of True Grit. Remainder mark to bottom edge, otherwise like new.

Hardcover. Boston, Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. Maisie Danston, a rich, sexy senior at Dartmouth College, has everything. brains, beauty and a boyfriend. But Teddy Leskovitch becomes obsessed with her, spying on her at every opportunity until his overwhelming desire drives him to kidnap her in a wild, desperate attempt to prove his love. The author's first novel.

Hardcover. NY, Tor Publishing Group, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 492 pages. INSCRIBED BY SZPARA on the title page. K. M. Szpara's Docile is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles. There is no consent under capitalism. To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Content warning: Docile contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Stars son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his fathers jailer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st US, 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth covers with gilt lettering, 454 pages. "This novel forecasts the advent of the world state. It includes Wells's most thorough indictment of the phenomenon of fascism." A strange disturbing book, published on the eve of WWII. It is in part an analysis of fascism and in part a utopian novel. The book is a biography of a character Rudolf 'Rud' Whitlow, who is born with such an aggressive temperament that he is referred to by his nurse as the 'Holy Terror' and the infant become the despair of his parents. Rud eventually gets involved in socialist activism and a group plotting world revolution.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth with black lettering in a bright dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 335 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Printed for I. Riley and Co, 2nd Ed., 1806, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, The First Settlers of Virginia, an Historical Novel, Exhibiting a View of the Rise and Progress of the Colony at James Town, a Picture of Indian Manners, the Countenance of the Country, and its Natural Productions. Hardcover, Second edition, considerably enlarged. Contemporary calf over boards. Octavo. xii, [13]-284 pages. PLEASE NOTE: No frontispiece engraving of Pocahontas rescuing John Smith. No signs of extraction, so probably never bound in. A reproduction of the frontis laid in. This is one of the earliest American romantic novels about Native Americans. Davis was an English immigrant with literary aspirations who lived in Philadelphia at the beginning of the 19th century. He was acquainted with the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. He originally adapted this material from his 1803 "Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America" and published it in 1805 as "Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas: An Indian Tale." This expanded version includes Davis's autobiography, "A Memoir of the Author" (pp. {275]-284). Includes "Errata" on page [274]. Clean, no markings.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY FFORDE on the title page, signed "Jasper". Postcard for Sommeworld laid in. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 358 pages. A Baton Rouge matron flees to Jersey City to start life anew, only to find herself in a no-man's-land of rent strikes, hired thugs, and life-threatening potholes -- in this earthy comedy by Sharp. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, Book Club Ed., 1948, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with black and gilt stamping. 1066 pages. A number-one bestseller when it was first published in 1948, this powerful novel is a compelling vision of nineteenth-century America with timeless resonance. Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life -- from the battles of the Civil War to the politics of the Gilded Age, from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father. This panoramic epic of the nineteenth century in Raintree County--particularly of the Civil War and its effects -- was produced after six years of research, writing, and revision. It continues to command attention and respect as a stylistically unique work of considerable force. Gutter crack at title page, sound, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Arlington Books, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 235 pages. First volume in the Gurney trilogy. Adventures on the high seas. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 336 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author's first book and SIGNED BY KRAMER on title page.

Hardcover. Santa Barbara CA, Black Sparrow Press, 1st thus, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, With a new Preface by the Author. Hardcover, numbered and signed issue, limited to 350 numbered hardcover copies, signed by Paul Bowles [# 78]. . A fine copy in fine, unprinted acetate dust jacket. SIGNED BY PAUL BOWLES (on limitation page). Octavo, cloth spine, paper-covered boards, 406 pages.

Hardcover. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 283 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Light wear and soiling to pictorial dust jacket, protected by clear mylar cover, else a very neat, tight copy.

Hardcover. Hartford CT, American Publishing Co, 1st, 1880, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 631 pages. 328 black & white illustrations by various artists. Both hinges cracked. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Soiling to covers. Tears to cloth on spine. Wear to corners, spine.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 273 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean.

Hardcover. New York, D. Appleton and Co, 1st, 1890, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 273 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Silver gilt ornate decoration on front and spine. Previous owner's stamp on front fly leaf. Light soil on bottom spine, and light edgewear on edges. A period story set in the Okefenokee Swamp with illustrations by E.W. Kemble, including three images showing black people, and one scene of a dog fighting a cougar.

Hardcover. London, Macmillan, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 295 pages. West's unfinished novel, the subsequent chapters following This Real Night. A feminist novel that reveals both the problems of marriage and the ecstasies of sexual love, completing the final chapters of the saga that began with THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS, and continued with THIS REAL NIGHT. Afterword by Victoria Glendinning. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Haunted by the memory of the hijacked Paris-New York flight on which his mother was killed when he was a teenager, Lowell has been receiving calls from a stranger obsessed with learning the whole truth about Air France 64 badgering him for information about the flight she was also on as a child. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 3rd pr., 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bight dust jacket. In this comic, fiercely compassionate novel, David Gates, whose first novel Jernigan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, sends his protagonist on a visceral journey to the dark side of suburban masculinity, explores the claims youth makes on middle age, and the tenacious --at times perverse--power of love to assert itself.When Doug Willis has a mid-life crisis, he doesn't join a gym or have an affair. Instead he gets himself arrested while camping with his wife and kids, takes a two month leave of absence from his PR job, and retreats to his farmhouse in rural Preston Falls--where he plugs in his guitar and tries to shut out his life. While his wife, Jean, struggles to pay the bills and raise their sullen, skeptical kids, Willis's plans for hiatus crumble into Dewars-and-cocaine fueled disarray. A shattered window, an unguarded gun, and a shady small town attorney force a crisis--and Willis can't go home again. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PROSE on the title page. The au pair for the Porter family, Haitian-born Simone, becomes witness to the family's casual cruelty, observing the activities of Rosemary, a sculptor, her philandering husband, her mercurial friends, and her strange children. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unc;ipped dust jacket. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges readers deep into a bustling Indian eneighborhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world. Young Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again. Clean copy.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Oneiric Press, reprint, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 222 pages. Wilson has blended H.P. Lovecraft's dark vision with his own revolutionary philosophy and unique narrative powers to produce a stunning, high-tension story of vaulting imagination. A professor makes a horrifying discovery while excavating a sinister archeological site. For over 200 years, mind parasites have been lurking in the deepest layers of human consciousness, feeding on human life force and steadily gaining a foothold on the planet. Now they threaten humanity's extinction. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in a very worn dust jacket with tape repairs. Black cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Vidal's second novel, a work with some gay aspects but one in which the author felt he played things a bit too safely. "Robert Holton has just returned from the torment and strife of war in Europe and settled in a solitary existence working for a New York stockbroking business The haunting memories of nights of love spent in Florence are suppressed as he struggles to succeed in an arid city." Book is tight and clean.

Hardcover. London, Stanley Paul, reprint, nd, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering and design on spine. Frontispiece portrait of the author. Society novel, 159 pages.Translated from the Polish by S.C. de Soissons. De Soissons also provides a eulogistic 5 page introduction.

Hardcover. NY, The Dial Press, 2nd pr., 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 270 pages, very good in a rubbed dust jacket with light edgewear. Mailer's fourth novel and seventh book describes thirty-two hours in the life of college professor and war hero Stephen Rojack during a 1960s existential journey on Manhattan's East Side.

Hardcover. NY, Cupples & Leon, 1st US, 1924, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine and front cover, 300 pages plus publisher's ads. 4 b&w plates by George Avison. First published as Le Roi des Montagnes (1856) About's popular novel satirizes the famous Klephts of 19thC. Greece. His portrait of Hadj-Stavros owes something to the real life brigand of the mountains Christodoulos Hadji-Petros (whose charm was sufficient to attact Lady Jane Digby during her adventurous stay in Greece) Translated by Florence Crewe-Jones. Bookplate on inside front cover, spine gilt with light fading.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula. Clean, fresh copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st US, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good, price-clipped dust jacket. Illustrations in 2-colors by Frederick T. Chapman. This stirring tale of Iceland fishermen; of their expeditions to the cold and dangerous regions where the summers no longer have nights, and of their return to their firesides in Paimpol--is one of the great masterpieces of French literature. It is a gripping tale of adventure and romance, a colorful and exciting story of fearless men, and of their patient, courageous wives.

Hardcover. NY, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1st, 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. Uncommon post-apocalyptic novel set in the near future and "focussing on a few people brought into unnatural intimacy after an atomic bomb has been dropped on New York. Each of the characters is intended to be symbolic of forces let loose in the world by atomic fission. Chunks gone from edges of dj, spine faded. Interior of book is clean.

Hardcover. NY, William Faro, Inc., 1st thus, 1930, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. black cloth with title on spine label, 313 pages. A good+ copy of the first edition [1930 on the title page] of the William Faro pirated hard cover edition, lacking the dust-jacket. "Revised, 1930, by William Faro, Inc." on copyright page. No markings, edgewear to cloth covers, corners. mild wear to top of spine. Binding solid.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue tweed cloth with dark blue lettering on the spine, in a bright dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 246 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, tan cloth with black lettering on spine and front cover, dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 278 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Paris Review Editions/Doubleday, 1st, 1969, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket, 284 pages. The first of only two published novels by this Kansas-born author (1930-2008), a ribald satire that became a small-scale literary cause celebre after an excerpt published in The Paris Review in 1967 ignited a somewhat bizarre censorship attempt in the Long Island town of South Farmingdale, N.Y.; in the course of the kerfuffle, TPR editor George Plimpton interceded to speak out against the censorship, and subsequently agreed to published the full novel under the Paris Review Editions imprint. Better known as a poet and essayist, Wiebe enjoyed a long teaching career at the University of Cincinnati; at least one critic has declared his work to be in the same darkly comic literary vein as that of Laurence Sterne, Franz Kafka, William S. Burroughs and Flannery O'Connor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red and blue cloth with black stamping, 334 pages. Clean copy. Portraying the dark, authoritarian side of the utopian dream, this classic novel tells the story of the Reverend Harmston, a man devoted to building a microsociety in which there is a balance between the order that is necessary to produce livelihood and the freedom to fully explore sexuality. Setting up a commune in the remote Guyanese forest with the creed, "Hard work, frank love, and wholesome play," the reverend attempts to construct an ideal society that opens up cross-cultural dialogue between the spirit of European enlightenment and the culture of the native Amerindians. Underneath its generally comic tone, however, there are notes of a darker spirit at play--such as Harmston's unquestioned authority and the brutal punishments he hands out--that eerily foreshadow the actual 1978 Jonestown Massacre, a violent event that occurred 27 years after the novel's initial publication.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton, 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with $2.95 on flap. No date on title page, copyright 1954 on copyright page, no other printings. Front fly leaf missing so book opens to half-title page. Otherwise clean and bright.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, Book Club Edition, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 2nd pr., 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 280 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf.. The author's first novel. Clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Doubleday, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 305 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Small dent on cover and red dot sticker on last page, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Company, Reprint, 1907, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 323 pages. With Illustrations by William Rainey, R. I. Minor spine edge and corner wear. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf. Decorated front cover. Clean pages and tight binding.