Novels

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. Leipzig, Bernard Tauchnitz, 1860, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, A very handsome edition of The Marble Faun, otherwise known as Transformation: Or The Romance of Monte Beni. The work was written on the eve of the American Civil War and is set in Italy. The work combines gothic literature, travel guides and fables. Two matching volumes, 292 + 280 pages. Title page states 1860. Bound in full vellum with leather ties, gilt-ruled and gilt-lettered parchment. Copyright Edition stated on title page of each volume and Printing Office of the Publisher on page 292 of volume one. twenty-six albumen photographic plates of contemporary Rome to 'Volume One' and twenty three to 'Volume Two'. Covers splayed as is common with this edition. Clean copies.

Hardcover. New York, Norton, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 274 pages, in a bright unclipped dust jacket. Like new and SIGNED BY MICHAELS at the 2003 Breadloaf Writer's Conference.

Hardcover. New York , Simon and Schuster, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 446 pages, bright, clean copy in a similar, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PRICE on front fly leaf.

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. New York, Noonday Press, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 237 pages. Hardcover. INSCRIBED BY ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER TO MAURICE WINOGRAD, YIDDISH WRITER AND POET - INCLUDES NOTE GIFTING BOOK FROM WINOGRAD TO MANHATTAN RESIDENT MORRIS SALANT. Degree of toning to pages, darkening to pages 116 - 117 where note was laid. Dust jacket with chipping to edges, chunks of paper missing at top and bottom of spine - jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Clean, unmarked text.

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. Minneapolis, Milkweed Editions, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 407 pages. A priest struggling with temptation moves back into his working-class childhood home in this "suspenseful, illuminating, and highly readable saga" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Hardcover. NY, Westvaco Corp., reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Limited edition. 286 pages. Orange cloth lettered in gold at the spine and with a blind-stamped baseball design to the upper board. Decorated endpapers. With head and tail bands and a ribbon place marker. A fine copy in decorated stiff card slipcase. A limited edition of Lardner's first book, produced in an unspecified quantity as a Christmas gift for customers of the Westvaco Corporation. Illustrated with color reproductions of vintage baseball cards. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Saint Paul MN, Thomas Dunne Books, 1st US, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 202 pages. 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. NY, Summit Books, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Remainder mark on bottom edge, otherwise clean. Marge Piercy, whose earlier novels have chronicled the female experience in the turbulent '60s and 70s, now turns her considerable skill and passion to the 1950s in this portrait of women in transition from repression to freedom. Through the intense friendship between Jill and her cousin, Donna, we see and feel what it was like to grow up in Detroit in the '50s and go to college when the first seeds of freedom were sown. Through Jill's childhood friend Howie, and her relationships with Mike and Peter, we come to understand the danger that sex posed when abortions were illegal, making the outcome of a chance encounter of a night of love a matter of life and death. And, through Marge Piercy's brilliant, thought-provoking novel, our lives are illuminated.

Hardcover. NY, Arden Book Co., ist thus, nd, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 276 pages, all edges green. Notable for the great b&w illustrations by Keith Henderson, some double-page. No date give. Dust jacket with some short tape repairs on the verso, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1935, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers, 317 pages. Four friends walk and tell tales while hiking over moors. A light hearted narrative in which Henry Williamson intended to evoke a holiday spirit. The conceit of four friends on a hiking holiday and telling tales to one another links six short stories. Williamson focusses on presenting Devon and its people as it was in the mid 1930s. Covers with fading, chipping to spine cloth, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 252 pages. Franny Fuller, a frightened girl from upstate New York, becomes the nation's number-one sex symbol, hiding her personal misery and fragile personality behind a mask of glamour and ambition. Novel set in Hollywood around the late 1930s. Unclipped dust jacket with rubbing, protected by mylar cover. Otherwise, clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 275 pages. In April 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article that stunned the sports community. George Plimpton's 13-page profile of Sidd Finch, a mysterious pitcher who had been signed by the New York Mets and reportedly threw 168 mph, came complete with photos from spring training, scouting reports, and interviews with Mets players and management. A week later, SI apologized to readers around the world for their role in what is generally regarded as the greatest hoax in the history of sports journalism. The magazine had teamed up with the legendary author and Paris Review bon vivant for an April Fool's Day prank of unprecedented proportions. After the success of the article, Plimpton decided to turn the story into a novel -- a rousing baseball fairy tale that is considered one of the most memorable sports novels of the last half-century. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 363 pages. Introduction by Melvin van Peebles. Originally published in 1953 as "Cast the First Stone" which was edited and changed by the publisher and now has been restored to how Himes intended it to be "with its raw honesty and startling compassion entirely intact." His novel of Jimmy Monroe portrays an African American prisoner who must endure racism, homosexuality, and prison corruption, all of which test the limits of his sanity, his capacity for suffering, and his definition of love. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Celadon Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. It begins quietly on a balmy Southern night as some locals gather at Bo Peep's, one of the town's favorite watering holes. Within an hour, however, a man will be murdered and his companion will be "disappeared." An unlikely detective, Morgana Musgrove, doyenne of Savannah society, is called upon to unravel the mystery of these crimes. Morgana is an imperious, demanding, and conniving woman, whose four grown children are weary of her schemes. But one by one she inveigles them into helping with her investigation, and soon the family uncovers some terrifying truths-truths that will rock Savannah's power structure to its core. Moving from the homeless encampments that ring the city to the stately homes of Savannah's elite, Green's novel brilliantly depicts the underbelly of a city with a dark history and the strangely mesmerizing dysfunction of a complex family. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st US, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 287 pages. Translated from the Russian by Gordon Clough. A novel by the author of The Yawning Heights. A Professor in Moscow slowly realises that Communism isn't all it's cracked up to be. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Modern Library, reprint, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. Three novels in one volume: Young Lonigan (201 pages); The Young Manhood Of Studs Lonigan (412 pages); Judgment Day (465 pages). Farrell wrote these three novels at a time of national despair. During the Great Depression, many of America's most gifted writers and artists aspired to create a single, powerful work of art that would fully expose the evils of capitalism and lead to a political and economic overhaul of the American system. Farrell chose to use his own personal knowledge of Irish-American life on the South Side of Chicago to create a portrait of an average American slowly destroyed by the "spiritual poverty" of his environment. Both Chicago and the Irish-American Roman Catholic Church of that era are described at length, and faulted. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, green tweed cloth with black lettering on spine, dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 321 pages. Rear dj lists to Wild Horse Mesa. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Random House/Vintage Contemporaries, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 1st printing of the first American trade edition SIGNED by Ford on the title page with a black pen. No inscription. A trade paper original with glossy card covers. March Date: 1986. First edition is stated on the copyright page. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 1st US, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Was it any advantage to be loved by a man? This story tells of the loves of Evelyn Cotton, from the 1950s through to the 1970s, and their faults, though the man who chronicles her story loved her more than any of the others put together. The author's first novel.

Softcover. NY, The Dial Press, Uncorr. proof, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in red wrappers. An uncorrected proof 203 pages. Novel of men who followed their fathers into good jobs at the steel mill and are left high and dry when the layoffs start. Winner of the PEN West prize for best novel of 1985. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly used dust jacket. In the summer of 1946, New York City pulses with energy. Harry Copeland, a World War II veteran, has returned home to run the family business. Yet his life is upended by a single encounter with the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale, as each falls for the other in an instant. They pursue one another in a romance played out in Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine's choice of Harry over her longtime fiance endangers Harry's livelihood and threatens his life. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Coward-McCann, reprint, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with publisher's review slip laid in. Originally published in 1936 and reprinted after the success of Kantor's great novel, Andersonville, and renewed interest in the Civil War period. Bright, clean copy.

Softcover. Chicago/NY, Rand McNally, 1st, 1900, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wrapper, 367 pages. No. 57 in the Oriental Library. Chip to paper spine.

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

Hardcover. New York, Harper Collins, 1st, 1996, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, 342 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Lovely copy. Like new.

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. New York, Scribner, 1st US, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 338 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light sun-fade and rubbing to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

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, Pantheon, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Dust jacket with light edgewear. Psuedo. of Julian Barnes.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner's, 1st, 1908 , Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with top-edge gilt. Gilt and 2-color cover decoration by Armstrong, color illustrations by H. Fenn. Condition is somewhat fragile, but clean and nice with some minor wear to the cover.

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.