Novels

Hardcover. The Library of America, 1st pr., 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, A first printing of the Library of America. Maroon cloth with spine printed in gilt. Patterned endpapers and attached blue ribbon bookmark. Ivory slipcase lettered and bordered in gilt. Arnold Rampersad wrote the notes for this volume. Includes: Lawd Today!, Uncle Tom's Children, and Native Son. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Ardmore PA, Dorrance and Co., 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 156 pages. Inscribed to Roger Shattuck, literary critic and historian, w/ letter and postcard laid in. Light edgewear, rubbing to dust jacket. Else clean and tight.

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. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Thirty years after leaving Eunola, Mississippi, to pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer, Leland Standard returns with her son, and a dinner party given in her honor brings to light the secrets, desires, and life stories of the guests. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY IRVING at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference in red ink on the half-title page. A whimsical family saga of a hotel and a bear and an opera house. Irving's fifth published novel and the basis for a 1984 film adaptation by director Tony Richardson. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, tan cloth with dark blue lettering, in a bright dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 401 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. No markings.

Hardcover. El Paso, TX, Sweet Earth Flying Press, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 115 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Penned by two of the most famous African American writers of the 1930s, this never-before-published coming-of-age story chronicles the adventures of a 12-year-old Mexican boy, Miguel Del Monte, who joins his uncle in herding wild broncos from northern Mexico to Los Angeles. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, this historic tale follows Miguel as he embarks on this unexpected trip across the American Southwest desert, determined to prove himself brave and smart enough to deal with the anticipated hardships. Along with a close encounter with roving bandits and the dangerous forces of nature, Miguel has bittersweet interactions with people of diverse racial and cultural groups, learning important lessons along the way. Separated into concise episodes and reflecting the beauty of various peoples, this collection depicts the power of tolerance and multicultural inclusion.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, green cloth with an orange and black design of a woman astride a horse, in a bright wraparound dust jacket with light edgewear and chipping (featuring a Frank Tenney Johnson illustration). 336 pages plus publisher's ads, 4 b&w plates. Name in pencil on inside front cover. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 2nd pr., Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY BEGLEY on the front fly leaf in the year of publication. This autobiographical Holocaust novel won the Hemingway/PEN Award in 1991. The French version (Une education polonaise) won the Prix Medicis etranger in 1992. Begley's debut novel. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, light blue cloth with dark blue lettering, in a bright dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping, 323 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. Small name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

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. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty '90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria. For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize each other, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.

Hardcover. London, Secker & Warburg, 1st , 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY BRINK on title-page. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

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. New York, Knopf, 1st, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 354 pages, hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR AND ACTRESS DEMI MOORE on title page. Moore portrayed the character Erin Grant in the film adaptation. Mild fading to dust jacket spine. Light edgewear to dust jacket as well, mostly to fore edge corners. In a protective plastic sleeve. A clean and tight copy.

NY, Random House, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A compulsively readable debut novel about marriage, immigration, class, race, and the trapdoors in the American Dream. The unforgettable story of a young Cameroonian couple making a new life in New York just as the Great Recession upends the economy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday Publishing, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background--murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity--can be a key to doors he didn't even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer. As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there's not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn't seem to care about Javi's newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his "unique perspective." But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once Gio's released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi's charade, or will it all come crumbling down? Clean copy.

Hardcover. Saint Paul MN, Graywolf Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the title page. Winner of the S. Miriella Gable Prize. Amy Hempel has said "Victoria Redel's contribution to the literature of obsession is rendered with unusual delicacy and daring." In this exquisite debut novel, Victoria Redel takes us deep into the mind of a very singular mother, and yet through her we see the dangerously whisper-thin line between selfless and selfish motivation that exists in all devotion. After all, "Who has ever wanted to share a love?" Clean, bight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 174 pages. Unclipped dust jacket with very minor wear at very edges. A nice copy. The fourth novel by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Updike features Joey Robinson, an advertising consultant in Manhattan who describes the recent visit he, his second wife and his eleven-year-old stepson made to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up.

Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st UK, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master. Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his art-historian wife are asked to assess three dusty paintings blocking the draught from the chimney. But hiding beneath the soot is nothing less-Martin believes-than a lost work by Bruegel. So begins a hilarious trail of lies and deceits, desperate schemes and soaring hopes as Martin, betting all that he owns and much that he doesn't, embarks on a quest to prove his hunch, win his wife over, and separate the painting from its owner. The book was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize . Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1988, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Stated First Edition. The critically acclaimed first novel from Jonathan Franzen. St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city until it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, India, named S. Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city's leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, The Twenty-Seventh City shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, the American Dream unraveling into terror and dark comedy.

Hardcover. London, England, j.W. Arrowsmith, 1st Edition, 1898 , Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 385 pages. Hardcover. B/w frontispiece, illustrations throughout by illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson. Tanning from age throughout, pages untrimmed, deckled. Letter from the author dated "17th Sept: 03" laid in (see image), possibly to William Heinemann. Green cover boards, gilt title on spine, front cover. Some agewear to spine top and bottom. Binding very good, spine straight. Very good condition.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. 184 pages, a novel about youth gangs in Harlem. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 279 pages. James Facos evokes the tension, the triumph and the tragedy of an American bomber crew in England during the height of the war over Germany in 1944. Clean copy.

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Graywolf Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY DIMMICK on the title page. Like a ripped-from-the-headlines episode of TV's Law and Order, this second novel from Dimmick (following In the Presence of Horses) describes the aftermath of a horrendous physical attack at a Rhode Island school. In this particular incident, a knife-wielding student has disfigured teacher Zoe Muir. Unable to return to business-as-usual, she moves to northern Vermont, buys an unfinished house in the woods, and attempts to reconstruct her life. Clean copy.

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. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 298 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Clean, tight copy with only light edge wear to covers. Autographed copy sticker on front dj. Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karras return from the acclaimed thriller, King Suckerman, as they square off against drug lords and racists on the crime-ridden streets of the nation's capital in the midst of the 1980s.

Hardcover. London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1st UK, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Canadian author's first book, a novel of late eighteenth-century London featuring young George Cautley navigating his way through London's high society, finds that nothing is as it seems and everyone wears a disguise. Illustrations by John Lawrence. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 67 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Two of Ozick's most widely admired pieces, "The Shawl" (a story) and "Rosa" (a novella) were published together in this book for the first time. Very powerful writing from the author of Trust and Levitation.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, green cloth with blue lettering, dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 308 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. Inscription, date on front fly leaf, with Christmas stamp, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill NC, Algonquin Books, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 236 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half title page. Faint foxing to top edge, light shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, William Morrow and Company, 1st US, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 525 pages. Light wear and rubbing to dust jacket, else a very nice, tight copy in clear brodart cover.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 239 pages, red cloth covers with black lettering. Bright, unclipped dust jacket (red title on spine with VERY slight fade. SIGNED BY PRICE on the front fly leaf. His first book.

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.

Hardcover. Mexico City, Joaquin Mortiz, 1st , 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 242 pages. First Edition printed in Mexico City, #1146 of 5000 copies. Red cloth and gilt lettering on spine. Dust jacket has light soiling and chipping, covered with a clear plastic Brodart.

Hardcover. Saint Paul MN, Graywolf Press, 1st US, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 245 pages. This is Petterson's third novel, first published in Norway in 1996 and translated into English, by Anne Born, two years later. A girl reminisces about growing up in Nazi-occupied Norway and forming a bond with her brother, active in the resistance, within an unhappy family. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Reynal & Company, Inc., 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 186 pages. Hardcover. (SIGNED BY AUTHOR) Dust jacket unclipped, has a touch of age wear, wrapped in clear, plastic mylar. Red cloth cover boards, white title on spine. Slight tanning to edges from age. Pages clean, binding tight, spine straight.

Hardcover. NY, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st US, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 206 pages. Exploring the nature of a new people created by Soviet communal society, this novel centers on a group of Soviet emigres living in a boarding house in Germany, each seeking to establish a niche in the West. Dripping venom, the narrator ranges in systematic fashion through the actions of the communist regime from 1917 to the present, excoriating Soviet history. Seen through the cold eye of the observer, the System is duplicitous, corrupt, inefficient and boring, when it is not simply maddening. This furious, outraged, highly theatrical monologue documenting the emergence of the New Man, Homo sovieticus, will seem a definitive portrait to those familiar with the ways of the Kremlin. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Avon, 1st pbk, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, mass market paperback, 222 pages. Avon T-449, 35 cents cover price.

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. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2nd pr., 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 280 pages, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. Very clean and tight copy. Dust jacket price-clipped.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1st US, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Translated by John Lambert. A sweeping fictional account of the early Christians, whose unlikely beliefs conquered the world. Gripped by the tale of a Messiah whose blood we drink and body we eat, the genre-defying author Emmanuel Carrere revisits the story of the early Church in his latest work. With an idiosyncratic and at times iconoclastic take on the charms and foibles of the Church fathers, Carrere ferries readers through his "doors" into the biblical narrative. Once inside, he follows the ragtag group of early Christians through the tumultuous days of the faith's founding. Shouldering biblical scholarship like a camcorder, Carrere re-creates the climate of the New Testament with the acumen of a seasoned storyteller, intertwining his own account of reckoning with the central tenets of the faith with the lives of the first Christians. Clean copy.

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Graywolf Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY DIMMICK on the title page. Like a ripped-from-the-headlines episode of TV's Law and Order, this second novel from Dimmick (following In the Presence of Horses) describes the aftermath of a horrendous physical attack at a Rhode Island school. In this particular incident, a knife-wielding student has disfigured teacher Zoe Muir. Unable to return to business-as-usual, she moves to northern Vermont, buys an unfinished house in the woods, and attempts to reconstruct her life. Clean copy.

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. Brattleboro VT, Stephen Daye Press, 1st, 1934, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket ($2.00 on flap), 183 pages, b&w illustrations by Allen Congden, Introduction by Walter Hard. The semi-autobiographical novel of city dweller making a living on a farm in Vermont. Written during the Great Depression. Scarce, especially in this great condition. Clean.

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. NY, Viking, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A compelling portrait of the disintegration of the members of the Caldwell family, who have retreated to a horse farm from the city rat-race and their painful struggle to confront the problematic relationships they share. Clean copy.

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. Black Sparrow Press, Trade Ed., 1982, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 452 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on colophon page. Number 706 of 2000 limited edition copies. Unmarked and tight copy

Hardcover. London, Chapman and Hall, 1st, 1837, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, polished black calf, raised bands on spine, stamped with gilt design, leather label with title in second compartment. Marbled endpapers, 609 pages. The engraved plates suffer from oxidation (tanning) and have no captions other than the page numbers. The vignette illustration on the title page has "Weller" (rather than "Veller") indicating a later issue. The binding is sound, light edgewear to leather covers. Has the two title pages, errata slip and binders directions. The 2 Buss plates included. Pictures available.