Novels

Hardcover. Berkeley CA, Thorp Springs Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light rubbing, A novel about Texas prisons written by a Texas poet and publisher. INSCRIBED BY FOREMAN on the blank prelim page. Uncommon with a small printing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 446 pages. "Gemma Hardy" is set in Scotland and Iceland in the 1950's and 1960's. Some of the familiar plot aspects of "Jane Eyre" are present -- Gemma has been taken in by a kindly uncle when her parents (living in Iceland, although her mother is Scottish) die in an accident; her uncle dies and her aunt and cousins make her life a misery; she is sent away to a school similar in many aspects to the Lowood of "Jane Eyre"; she becomes a governess to a young girl and falls in love with the child's guardian, and then flees him when his deep, dark secret hits the light of day. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 2nd pr., 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Drawn from fragments of historical fact, Matthiessen's masterpiece brilliantly depicts the fortunes and misfortunes of Edgar J. Watson, a real-life entrepreneur and outlaw who appeared in the lawless Florida Everglades around the turn of the century. Clean copy.

Softcover. Ann Arbor MI, Ardis, 1st US, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 204 pages. Translated by A.R. Tulloch. The novel 'The Naked Year' (1921) brought Pilnyak immediate fame. It contains a graphic description of the worst year of the Russian Civil War. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1st, 1904, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 411 pages, hardcover. Color illustrations by John Cecil Clay. Margaret Armstrong cover desIgn. Spine has half-inch tear near author's name. Bumping to corners. Unmarked. A tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, George H. Doran Company, 2nd pr., 1921, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with orange lettering on the cover and spine, 433 pages. No colophon on title page or copyright page. Red top edge faded. This was Dos Passos' second book -- published when he was just 25 years old, and having spent the end of WWI as a volunteer with the ambulance corps in Spain and Italy during WWI. This is a profoundly anti-war book - and remains a high-water mark of realism in war writing. Second state with the correct "singing" on page 213. No dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Company, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with mild soiling. A ink line has been drawn through the flap price ($4.50), otherwise clean. Sontag's first book, a novel of ideas written at a time when Freud's theory of Dream Interpretation was considered the greatest of all. The protagonist Hippolyte's violently imaginative dream life becomes indistinguishable from his real world experiences. First Printing stated.

Hardcover. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 241 pages, first printing with the A on copyright page. Book is clean, no markings. The olive green cloth covers have some discoloration along top edge (very light), probably caused by light water damage or dampness. The result is also some tan spotting along the top INSIDE of the dust jacket, and a tiny area of tanning at top corner of front fly leaf. The outside of the front panel of the dust jacket is unaffected, but the rear panel has two dark spots at top. The spine has some fading, flap not price-clipped. The edge of the text block has some spotting, light foxing. Overall, a very attractive copy, now protected in a clear plastic cover.

Hardcover. New York, Dutton, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 142 pages, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page, handwritten letter by author laid-in. Minor dust jacket edge fade, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 218 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark to bottom edge, else a very nice, 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, Spiegel & Grau, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 384 pages. "Set in a beautiful but dying Pennsylvania steel town, 'American Rust' is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation that arises from its loss. It is the story of two young men bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia and the beauty around them who dream of a future beyond the factories, abandoned homes, and the polluted river. Isaac is the smartest kid in town, left behind to care for his sick father after his mother commits suicide and his sister Lee moves away. Now Isaac wants out too. Not even his best friend, Billy Poe, can stand in his way: broad-shouldered Billy, always ready for a fight, still living in his mother's trailer. Then, on the very day of Isaac's leaving, something happens that changes the friends' fates and tests the loyalties of their friendship and those of their lovers, families, and the town itself. Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, 'American Rust' is an extraordinarily moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us."

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.

Hardcover. London, Picador, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. This signed first edition of author and journalist Sid Smith's novel 'Something Like A House' was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award, following a British soldier who deserts to China during the Korean War and stays there some 35 years, bringing up a little girl who later becomes a victim of experimental biological warfare. Despite being set in China, Smith had never traveled there before writing the novel, the background gleaned from extensive research at the British Library amongst other places. An exciting novel set in a China almost unknown to the outside world, a chilling account of an army deserter living through a Cultural Revolution. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, W W Norton & Co, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Enright is author of seven novels, most recently Actress. She has been awarded the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Lifetime A.hievement Award . An incandescent novel from one of our greatest living novelists (The Times) about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women. Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel's orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence, in Dublin and beyond, her grandfather's poetry seems to guide her home. The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of McDaragh women who must contend with inheritances-of poetic wonder and of abandonment by a man who is lauded in public and carelessly selfish at home. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with light fading to spine. Collection of stories about a platoon of soldiers in the Vietnam War. First trade edition with 1 in number row. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. First novel by the author of I Cover the Waterfront. Harried businessman takes a year off to loaf on a houseboat. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The critically acclaimed, award-winning lawyer/author's follow-up book to his "Wartime Lies" debut. The story of the last two years of Ben's life, told by his closest friend, Jack, who pieces the facts together from his own memory and from the personal papers that come into his possession as executor of Ben's will. It is the story, most particularly, of Ben's tumultuous love affair with Jack's cousin Veronique, a woman whose dazzling beauty masks darkness and disquiet. Wi th Veronique, Ben discovers "the vast bliss of being loved." But when her husband learns of the affair and a commitment to Veronique is required, Ben discovers his own fragility-and the brutal hold his past has on him." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 1st, 1995, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 355 pages. Unclipped dust jacket wit slight rubbing, sticker residue. Otherwise, clean and tight copy. The lives of two very different couples--wealthy Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, and Candido and America Rincon, a pair of Mexican illegals--suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.

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. NY, Pantheon, 5th pr., 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with Booker List sticker. Two old friends-Daniel, a centenarian, and Elisabeth, born in 1984-look to both the future and the past as the United Kingdom stands divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W.W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. Hes also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robins emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mothers brain With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and sons ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers' most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet? Powers' thirteenth novel, his first since winning the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Overstory. BEWILDERMENT was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. Clean copy.

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. New York , Pantheon, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.110 pages, illustrated throughout in b&w by Spiegelman. Clean, tight copy. The quintessential hardboiled twenties poem, basis for two stage musicals and a 1975 film directed by James Ivory and starring James Coco and Raquel Welch. Remainder dot to top edge.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, orange cloth with dark green lettering and decoration to front cover, in a bright dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 252 pages. Rear dj lists to The Last of the Great Scouts. No markings.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth with dark blue lettering on spine and front cover, dust jacket with edgewear and chipping, 349 pages. Rear dj lists to The Young Pitcher. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY FFORDE on the title page, signed "Jasper". It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favorite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon Books, 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 139 pages. Translated by Leigh Hafrey. "A young writer attempts to examine the effects of political division on love, life, and identity in the twin city of Berlin and the relationship of inhabitants of Berlin with the Wall", Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st US, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY FFORDE and signed "Jasper" on the title page. Thursday has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction. Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap--as outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon's patron saint foretells doom, and if that isn't bad enough, back in the Book World The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace and World, 1st US, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with light wear. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Originally published in Germany as *Hundejahre*. This is the third and last volume of Grass's Danzig trilogy (the others are The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse). It consists of three chronological parts from the 1920s to the 1950s. Grass's syntax often parodies Martin Heidegger's philosophical syntax in 'Being and Time' which one of the teenage protagonists mocks. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 212 pages. Black cloth, pictorial dust jacket. Lovely copy. Like new. The Speed Queen is the gripping story of a twisted love triangle's drug-fueled killing spree across the desert plains, told in the voice of Oklahoma death-row inmate Marjorie Standiford, who is recounting her experiences for a best-selling horror writer researching the murders. It's a chilling, unputdownable crime novel in the tradition of James M. Cain -- a voyage into the dark soul of the American West.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st UK, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY CAREY. Winner of the Booker Prize. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, George Braziller, 1st US, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2nd pr., 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an unclipped, lightly worn dust jacket. 240 pages, turquoise cloth covers, silver lettered spine. Red-violet endpapers, top outer edge tinted black. Jacket design by Antiono Frasconi. Novel based on the slave societies of the West Indies in the 1750s. No markings.

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, Simon and Schuster, reprint, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 463 pages. Hardcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf. Purple gilt titles on spine. Small stains to top edge of boards. Dust jacket price clipped, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Limited Editions Club, 1st thus, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two oversized volumes with blue slipcase, SIGNED BY ILLUSTRATOR, John Groth in rear of volume 2. Blue and gray cloth boards with gilt titles on spine, illustrations throughout, very clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 178 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY LOWRY on title-page. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges.

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. London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1st UK, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and soiled dust jacket. Green cloth covers with gilt title on spine. Second published work from the literary icon. The story of Jack Burns and his fight with modern society (a theme Abbey would revisit). The character of Jack Burns would turn up in later Abbey novels; Monkey Wrench Gang, Good News and Hayduke Lives! Basis for the film starring Kirk Douglas titled "Lonely are the Brave". The UK first edition had a much smaller print run than its US counterpart and has striking artwork (by Stein) of the cowboy on his rearing horse as a menacing truck aproaches.

Hardcover. NY, Morrow, 1st, 1977, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 311 pages. A satirical novel about sperm banks and artificial insemination. Mild musty smell, no markings.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. In post-hurricane Charleston, Rob begins to salvage his life, but the tempestuous forces of love draw him into the shaken lives of family, friends, and lovers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st Canadian, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 355 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY BANKS on the half-title page. Tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1907, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth covers with pictorial design of girl on a horse stamped in white and black. 153 pages illustrated with 5 b&w plates by Lucius Hitchcock. Twain's historical fiction novel, partially written from the point of view of Buffalo Bill's favorite horse, Soldier Boy. This novel was first published in two installments in August and September 1906 in 'Harper's Magazine'. Twain's daughter Susy Clemens, who died in 1896 at age 24 of spinal meningitis, is understood to be the inspiration for lead character Cathy Alison. When Twain provided the story to Harper's, he included a photograph of Susy for the illustrator to use for Cathy. Spine is lightly faded, otherwise a bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 1st US, 1964, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly soiled and worn dust jacket, 186 pages. The little world of a public school, with its grudges and rivalries, reaches out into the little world of the aged, as the Old Boys grimly battle over the post of President of the Association.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1927, Book: Good, Hardcover, blue cloth covers, soiled with fading to spine and gilt on cover. 327 pages. Despite grubby exterior, interior is clean, tight binding. Stated First Edition. No dust jacket.

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. NY, Crown Publishers, 2nd pr., 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 190 pages. A mystery novel about the adventurous librarian lifestyle. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf.

Softcover. Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, A draft of Beattie's 1995 novel bound in black plastic spiral binding. No date, no markings. 500 pages, doubled-spaced.