Novels

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, reprint, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 320 pages. A brilliant, action-packed re-imagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. Copyright pages states First Edition with the number 10 above it, so a later printing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, brown cloth with black lettering on spine and front cover, dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 377 pages. Dust jacket art and four b&w illustrations by W. H. D. Koerner. Bottom quarter of spine gone, short blue mark to front fly leaf, otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. First edition, 1st printing, of this famed Hannibal Lecter & Clarice Starling thriller, later made into the movie starring Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins. Dust jacket with minor edgewear, clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 2nd Ed., 1948, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover on a worn and tape-repaired dust jacket. A nice copy of the 2nd edited version of Billy Budd, a Melville tale unfinished at the time of his death and left in a rough, unassembled condition. Its first publication was considered rushed and this 2nd version was much more painstakingly edited, and bears much editorial discussion and includes the first publication of the short story on which the novel was based. Book is very good, clean. The dj not so much.

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, 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, Phoenix Press, 1st, 1942, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light edge wear. A pulp romance from World War II about an office love affair. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Atheneum, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 181 pages. First appeared, in slightly different form, in The New Yorker. The traditional tale retold. In a series of short chapters the captious heroine is obliquely revealed as a woman regularly pleasured in a shower cubicle by the seven dwarves for whom she performs 'horsewifely' duties; the prince is a fop, and the stepmother is almost an incidental presence in relation to the potently amoral Hogo (one of several 'introduced' characters to the fable). Clean copy.

Hardcover. Bristol, England, J.W. Arrowsmith, 1st Edition, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 310 pages. Hardcover. Arrowsmith's 3/6 Series, Vol. XVIII. Hand-written letter from author [dated 27th Febry. /(18)95] laid in and attached to front flyleaf. In the letter, Hope mentions another book in comparison to this volume. Date of publication not indicated within, but correspondence accompanying and mentioning volume is dated 1895. Spine slightly cocked. Deep maroon cloth, gilt title on spine(slightly faded) and front cover board (still bright), boards have some rubbing, agewear, very light fraying at corners of boards, spine has chipping to top and bottom. Pages and edges have tanning from age. Some chipping to hinges of front and back endpapers, binding not affected. In very good condition.

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, Overlook Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY KESSLER on the title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 185 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 161 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. London, Picador, 1st UK, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Ever After is a rumination on death, faith, and finding meaning in life more than a proper novel. The narrator, Bill Unwin, is recovering from a failed suicide. His convalescence is used to muse over the fate of the father he never knew, and who may not even have been his father, and the ravings of his hedonistic mother over the vanity of posterity. Meanwhile, he is withholding the manuscript of one of his Victorian ancestors from a fellow Cambridge don, a vain, publicity-seeking but successful rival. This is finally the motive for a second, parallel plot, in many ways the more interesting, about the Victorian in forebear in question, Matthew Pearce. For Pearce, surveyor, amateur fossil-collector, and son-in-law to the local parson, is a man of his age, scientifically inclined yet religious. Lyell, Darwin cannot fail to attract Pearce, yet they also threaten his marriage and family, his very social standing. 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. London, J. M. Dent, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a mildly worn dust jacket, 112 pages with 12 drawings by the author. Fit for a duchess, indeed, was the splendid up-to-date privy which the Budd family finally achieved, after generations of living with a noisome hut in the garden. But, as usually happens, there was a canker: the marvels of modern technology defeated them. Here splendidly remembered as in her previous books, Dust to Dust and A Prospect of Love, is this and more of life in southern England in the 1930s. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, light green cloth with dark green lettering in a bright dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 309 pages. Rear dj lists to Betty Zane. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton/Seymour Lawrence, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A large and awkward New England family salvages life the best it can in the aftermath of the sudden death of the mother, Rosie Vincent. The author's first novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st US, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, quarter green cloth cover with patterned boards, 368 pages. A novel from Norway. Translated from the Norwegian by Edwin Bjorkman. Front dust jacket flap glued to inside front cover.Clean bright copy.

Hardcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 235 pages, top edge gilt. A novel from English author Henry Williamson in which he uses the concept of the stars - a regular feature in his work - to explore the nature of good and evil, with the author describing it as a celestial fantasy. With full plate and vignette wood engravings from Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe, an internationally renowned naturalistic painter of British birds and other wildlife. Clean 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, Riverhead Books, 1st US, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with Nobel Prize sticker on front, 992 pages. The Nobel Prize-winners richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas-and a new unrest-begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.

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

Hardcover. Franklin Center PA, The Franklin Library, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, First Edition thus. SIGNED by Updike, with "special message" by him and b&w illustrations by Michael Deas not in the trade edition. Basis for the movie of the same name starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon as the three repressed women who accidentally conjure what they believe to be the perfect man (Jack Nicholson, playing the devil). Full green, gilt-decorated leather; all edges gilt; ribbon place marker. Clean, bright 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, The New Press, 1st US, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 252 pages. While almost all of Duras's novels have been translated into English, her debut The Impudent Ones (Les Impudents) has been a glaring exception--until now. Fans of Duras will be thrilled to discover the germ of her bold, vital prose and signature blend of memoir and fiction in this intense and mournful story of the Taneran family, which introduces Duras's classic themes of familial conflict, illicit romance, and scandal in the sleepy suburbs and southwest provinces of France. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Beech Tree Books, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 189 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Price sticker on front inside of dj. Internally clean and tight with only light wear to cover boards.

Hardcover. New York, Scribner, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 338 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Clean, tight copy. A novel about the author Henry James that attracted praise from reviewers nationwide. It's a bold writer indeed who dares to put himself inside the mind of novelist Henry James, but that is what Toibin, highly talented Irish author of The Heather Blazing and The Blackwater Lightship, has ventured here, with a remarkable degree of success. The book is a fictionalized study, based on many biographical materials and family accounts, of the novelist's interior life from the moment in London in 1895 when James's hope to succeed in the theater rather than on the printed page was eclipsed by the towering success of his younger contemporary Oscar Wilde. Thereafter the book ranges seamlessly back and forth over James's life, from his memories of his prominent Brahmin family in the States-including the suicide of his father and the tragic early death of his troubled sister Alice-to his settling in England, in a cherished house of his own choosing in Rye. Along the way it offers hints, no more, of James's troubled sexual identity, including his fascination with a young English manservant, his (apparently platonic) night in bed with Oliver Wendell Holmes and his curious obsession with a dashing Scandinavian sculptor of little talent but huge charisma. Another recurrent motif is James's absorption in the lives of spirited, highly intelligent but unhappy young women who die prematurely, which helped to inform some of his strongest fiction. The subtlety and empathy with which Toibin inhabits James's psyche and captures the fleeting emotional nuances of his world are beyond praise, and even the echoes of the master's style ring true.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, full blue cloth, silver titling, map endsheets. Local color novel about life in the Mississippi River Delta of Louisiana, by an author living in that area. Clean. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Metropolitan Books, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 201 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket unclipped. Gilt title on spine. In excellent shape. Clean and bright inside and out.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, First Edition, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 276 pages. Hardcover INSCRIBED & SIGNED BY AUTHOR to title page. Black cloth boards with gilt titles to spine. Bright dust jacket, price-clipped with light wear to edges, light toning. Clean, unmarked copy.

Softcover. Evanston, Triquarterly Books, First Thus, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 255 pages. Softcover SIGNED BY AUTHOR to title page. Bright cover with only light marginal wear to edges. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd Mead, 1st thus, 1929, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, octavo, black cloth covered boards with elaborate gilt decoration, title and spine titles. 291 pages. Uncut edges. With twelve full page engravings, capitals and decorations by Frank C. Pape. In a black paper dust jacket with light gray decoration, light edgewear. The cover gilt is bright but there is moderate flecking/discoloration to the black cloth in areas. Endpapers have some tanning, interior is clean and bright.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd Mead, 1st thus, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, octavo, black cloth covered boards with elaborate gilt decoration, title and spine titles. 302 pages. Uncut edges. With twelve full page engravings, capitals and decorations by Frank C. Pape. In a black paper dust jacket with red decoration, with a chip to top of spine at front edge. The cover gilt is bright but there is some flecking/discoloration to the black cloth in areas. Interior is clean and bright.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1932, Book: Good, 352 pages. Hardcover. Pencil marking to preliminary and half title page, some soiling to spine & board edges, and fraying to crown & heel. Red dyed top edge with sunfading. Toning throughout, fingerprint p. 61 and tears to p. 350. Otherwise clean inside. A worn copy that feels comfortable in your hands.

Hardcover. NY, Richard R Smith, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, 348 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Light toning throughout. Red dyed top edge with some fading. Original dust jacket with tears, chips, and age toning, now protected with a plastic cover. Tight binding.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1941, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 285 pages. Hardcover. Light toning throughout, some tanning to endpapers. Red cover boards with black titles to spine. Clean and unmarked copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 234 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Brick cloth covered boards with gilt titles & gilt compartment lines to spine. Small tear to crown & heel of spine. Light toning to pages throughout, tight binding, a few pages with small spots to gutter, else clean.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st US, 1917, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 343 pages. Hardcover. Gilt titles & green embossed graphic to front, gilt titles to spine. Rear hinge cracked. Light toning throughout.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 4th pr., 1899, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 550 pages. Hardcover with light wear, light rubbing to board edges. Tight binding, tight signatures. Decorative header illustrations throughout in black & white. Clean inside and out.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 388 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Brick cloth covered boards with green printed titles to cover & spine. Light wear to edges. Light toning to pages throughout, light foxing to endpapers, tight binding, else clean.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st US, 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 266 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Brick boards with light wear to edges, small spot of soil to rear endpaper. Ligth fraying to crown & heel of spine. Clean tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st thus, 1938, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 280 pages. Hardcover. Light pencil markings throughout. Ex-library copy with all usual stampings and markings. Light soiling to cover board edges., two abrasions on rear fore edge. Retro printed graphic to cover and spine, printed in black & wine. Toning to pages throughout.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd, Mead & Co, 1st, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 362 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Rectangular paste down illustration to front board with small chips to edges. Frontis illustration, "Stood and Watched the Ocean and the Sky," in black & white. Light foxing to preliminary pages. Else quite clean, a few small spots to some pages, a nice copy with light toning & tight binding.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson & Co, 2nd pr., Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 286 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket, small spot on front cover. Light pencil markings to some pages, previous owner's bookplate to rear endpaper. Tight binding, tight signatures.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st illust. thus, 1892, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green and white diagonal striped cloth with green and gold embellishments. Top edge gilt. Color frontispiece and other drawings by Harry W. McVickar. Previous owner's bookplate inside front cover, otherwise clean. Cloth spine has some fading.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with light chipping. Humorous tennis novel by the son of Groucho Marx. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Harper and Row, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, Ford's first book. Dust jacket with light edgewear, chips to corners. small tan stain to top corner (about 1/4" triangle). Unclipped.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 196 pages. Publisher's release and photo of author laid in. Foxing to top edge. Spine slightly cocked. Else a very clean, tight copy. The author's first work of fiction and his second book to be published (the first being a philosophical work published 1988 under the title "Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970"). Writing of this debut Novel in the New York Times, Anne Gotlieb stated "This is a strange and often wonderful hybrid -- an ebullient philosophical novel in the form of a folktale-cum-black girl's odyssey. It is a book bubbling like a conjure woman's kettle with African lore, preserved intact in the half-magical, half-demeaning world of Hatten County, Georgia."