Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 319 pages. When his mother dies, thirteen-year-old David is sent to live with his father in a small town in Maine. David is a rebellious and defiant child and doesn't care for his new life. He spends his time hanging out with his friends and exploring the woods. One day, David runs away from home and spends a year hitchhiking and living on the streets of America. At the end of his journey, he returns home and finally learns to love and appreciate his father and family. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The Fleuri ranch on Colorado's Croom Mountain resembles a scene from the 1880s, save for a few modern conveniences such as a tractor, a refrigerator, and a water pump. Life for the Fleuris, who supplement their meager income with moonshine and illegal game, hasn't changed much either. When a government agent persuades them to turn the ranch into a model 1880s homestead for paying visitors, it seems a perfect solution to their plight, until the deed is done. Greenberg deals realistically with the impact of government regulation, social and cultural change, and affluence on a backwoods family, while treating family members with the tenderness, humor, and dignity that each so richly deserves. 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, Library of America, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 970 pages. Joan Didion's influence on postwar American letters is undeniable. Whether writing fiction, memoir, or trailblazing journalism, her gifts for narrative and dialogue, and her intimate but detached authorial persona, have won her legions of readers and admirers. Now Library of America launches its multi-volume edition of Didion's collected writings, prepared in consultation with the author, that brings together her fiction and nonfiction for the first time. Collected in this first volume are Didion's five iconic books from the 1960s and 1970s: Run River, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, and The White Album. Whether writing about countercultural San Francisco, the Las Vegas wedding industry, Lucille Miller, Charles Manson, or the shopping mall, Didion achieves a wonderful negative sublimity without condemning her subjects or condescending to her readers. Chiefly about California, these books display Didion's genius for finding exactly the right language and tone to capture America's broken twilight landscape at a moment of headlong conflict and change. Remainder dot to bottom edge, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1st, 1937, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a very worn and chipped dust jacket, 294 pages. In these four short novels set in America, England and Paris, Rebecca West explores the lives and relationships of rich women and men who are ruled by 'the harsh voice we hear when money talks, or hate'. There is Josie, a flower of American girlhood with boundless ambition for wealth. There is Etienne de Sefavenac, a dilettante French aristocrat whose courtly stratagems are intended to ensnare Nancy Sarle - a plain American businesswoman. There is Alice Pemberton, a sensible Englishwoman - the very salt of the earth - in her own estimation. And lastly there is Sam Hartley, an American businessman who has fought his way to riches with his wife at his side, but whose life is now haunted by visions of beautiful young women.
Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, orange cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 158 pages. One of Henry Williamson's lesser-known novels: a cart horse and two monkeys decide they want to have a go at winning the Epson Derby. Dust jacket profoundly worn., tape repaired. Name on front fly leaf.
Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. The story of the Ill-fated Donner Party and the ordeal of being stuck in the Sierras through winter in the 1840's. The late author lived in the house once occupied by Patty Reed, the Donner party survivor whose family is the subject of the book.
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.
Hardcover. NY, Ecco, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY FORD on the title page. This copy of Pulitzer Prize winner Ford's novel presents the story of 15 year old Dell Parsons and his sister Berner, who must fend for themselves when their parents are arrested, convicted and imprisoned for a Montana bank robbery. Dell's sister runs while Dell is spirited into Canada to live with an American who has his own issues. 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. NY, Harper & Brothers, 1st, 1909, Hardcover, Edwardian era novel, illustrated throughout with 34 black and white plates by Rose O'Neill. Orange cloth lettered and decorated in gilt and dark green with an inset blind-stamped design of pumpkins and vines on the front cover, 307 pages, no dust jacket. Small number stamp on inside front cover, otherwise clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in an edgeworn and chipped dust jacket. "It is ample token of Maxine Kumin's talents as poet and novelist that this compelling novel never departs from the substance of real life. She invests with new insight the homely details of a New England suburb and the crises that punctuate life with familiarity and the saving grace of humor. The broad canvas of The Passions of Uxport offers the reader richness of character, scene and perception, and the wry wisdom of a woman of experience." Tape repaired dj, book is clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1st, 1907, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in light green pictorial cloth, 241 pages. An historical adventure set in Ireland. A novel on Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the last significant claimant of the Stuart dynasty to the British throne and leader of the Jacobite rebellion in 1745-46. Previous owner's inscription on front fly leaf. Uncommon title.
Hardcover. Barre MA, The Imprint Society, Ltd. Ed., 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue and beige cloth covered boards with gilt vignette of telescope on cover and gilt titled spine. 80 pages, wood engravings by Michael McCurdy. Limited edition, one of 1,950, this unnumbered and unsigned. A science fiction tale set in Boston, a tasty satire. Book is bright, clean, housed in a lightly worn slipcase.
Softcover. NY, New Directions, 1st pbk., 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 152 pages. Walter Abish's delightful first novel, is an extraordinary linguistic tour de force, high comedy set in an imaginary dark continent that expands and contracts with ineluctable precision, as one by one the author adds the letters of the alphabet to his book, and then subtracts them. While the 'geoglyphic' African landscape forms and crumbles, it is, among other things, attacked by an army of driver ants, invaded by Zanzibar, painted orange by the transvestite Queen Quat of Tanzania, and becomes a hunting ground for a pair of murderous jewel thieves tracking down their nymphomaniac moll. INSCRIBED BY ABISH on the front fly leaf which also has previous owner's name in corner.
Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 351 pages. Written in the shadow of the Yugoslav wars, yet never eclipsed by them, Mama Leone is a delightful cycle of interconnected stories by one of Central Europe's most dazzling contemporary storytellers. Miljenko Jergovic leads us from a bittersweet world of precocious childhood wonder and hilarious invention, where the seduction of a well-told lie is worth more than a thousand prosaic truths, out into fractured worlds bleary-eyed from the unmagnificence of growing up. Yet for every familial betrayal and diminished expectation, every love and home(land) irretrievably lost, every terror and worst fear realized, Jergovic's characters never surrender the promise of redemption being but a lone kiss or winning bingo card away. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Chicago, Frederick J. Drake and Co., 1902, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial cloth, 164 pages plus publisher's ads. 86 illustrations, frontis portrait of author. Only date is the copyright year 1902. Features detailed explanations and diagrams of numerous feats with coins-most prominent among them the author's world-famous original creation, "The Miser's Dream," a much-imitated act climaxing in the production of a shower of half-dollars. In this complete manual of the art of conjuring with coins, Downs shares his secrets for scores of "fakes" and sleights, including passing a coin through the bottom of a hat, the money-producing cigarette, the mysterious claret glass, the crystal coin ladder, the obedient coins, and many more. He also offers a wealth of suggestions for stage "business" involving handkerchiefs, goblets, hats and other props, as well as helpful tips on presentation, patter and other techniques. Overall fair, fragile condition with some chipping to cloth on front cover.
Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 1990, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 161 pages, black cloth, book slightly cocked. Dust jacket edgeworn with light chipping. INSCRIBED BY HARRIS ( "Joyce and Irving, with love, Wilson & Margaret 1990") on the title page to Joyce and Irving Adler. The book is heavily annotated and underlined in both ink and light pencil by Joyce who was a literary scholar who wrote two books on Harris.
Hardcover. New York, Free Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 292 pages, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Ecco Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 101 pages. In Fort Bragg, North Carolina, three recent paratrooper training graduates are temporarily attached to an airborne infantry company as they await orders to report to Vietnam. Because most of the men in the company fought together in Vietnam, the three newcomers are treated as outsiders and ignored. When money and personal property are discovered missing from the barracks, suspicion falls on the three newcomers. The narrative structure of the book contains several shifts of tone and point of view as the story unfolds. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Bloomsbury, Uncorr. proof , 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 232 pages. Paperback proof. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Clean, tight copy with light edgewear to paper wrappers.
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.
Softcover. A. J. Cornell Publications , 1st thus, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 189 pages. Cornell Woolrich, best known as the author of "Rear Window," is unsurpassed in his ability to create and sustain sheer suspense. In his tales of terror, ordinary people find themselves in the most extraordinary circumstances--and, as readers, we share their spine-tingling tension every step of the way. Collected here are four of his most nail-biting novellas: EYES THAT WATCH YOU: Greedy Vera Miller plots her husband's murder right under the nose of her mute, paralyzed mother-in-law. After all, the old lady won't be able to tell anyone about the crime. Or will she? THE NIGHT I DIED: Nice guy Ben Cook, goaded by his scheming common-law wife, fakes his own suicide and moves to another town--all to trick his life insurance company into making a large payout. No one en route or at the new address will recognize him, will they? YOU'LL NEVER SEE ME AGAI": Ed Bliss's new bride, miffed by her husband's insults about her biscuits, promises that Ed will never have to see her again--and storms out! When she doesn't return within a few days, Ed begins to suspect foul play--but when he reports the crime to the police, he's the first one they suspect! MURDER ALWAYS GATHERS MOMENTUM: For his wife's sake, Dick Paine approaches a former employer for back wages he is owed--but things go terribly wrong and the old boss ends up dead. Now the guilt-ridden Paine, who'd never before committed a crime, is convinced that people will figure out what happened. As his paranoia gathers momentum, anyone he meets is at risk of becoming his next victim.
NY, Grove Press, 1st US, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 404 pages. Acclaimed novel based on the life of botanic artist William Buelow Gould (1801-53). In this account, Gould is a white convict condemned to the most feared penal colony in the British Empire, Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1828 and there ordered to paint a book of fish. Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer and forger, falls in love with a black woman and discovers too late that to love is not safe. The book's design features colour reproductions of Gould's original art work, and each chapter is printed in a different colour ink. The book has been awarded the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize and Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal, and the Australian Publisher's Association 2002 Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Best Designed Book of the Year. Clean copy
Hardcover. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A coming of age novel that takes place in Kentucky during the late 1940s. Bright. 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, 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, The Limited Editions Club, 1st thus, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover Limited edition (No. 1075 of 1500 copies). Signed by the illustrator on the Limitation Page. Quarter bound in publisher's brown leather over gilt embossed khaki boards, gilt lettering and decoration on spine, gilt mystic maze decoration on covers. Illustrated with 16 full-page, full-color plates (including two double-page spreads) hand-colored by Frank Hudec, as well as in-text drawings, historiated initials, and head and tail-pieces by Robin Jacques. Introduction by Charles Edmund Carrington. Slipcase with light wear, soil. Book very good with a mild misty odor.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A massive novel illustrated with photographs by Joel Gardner. John Gardner's final novel follows Peter Mickelsson, former football player and current Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University. Mickelsson is driven, opinionated, probably a drunk, definitely bankrupt, and perhaps going completely mad. During his personal descent, which he seems powerless to arrest, he somehow scrounges enough money together to buy a farmhouse in northern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains, which seems to be haunted by the ghosts of an incestuous family. Mickelsson's farmhouse sanctuary was (it turns out) not only the residence of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, but the scene of a murder; the place is haunted. Clean copy.
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. 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. Later Works includes Black Boy (American Hunger) and The Outsider. Clean copy. Mild soil to slipcase.
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.
Softcover. Chapel Hill, Algonquin Books, Uncorr. Proof, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in yellow wrappers with some fading. Beginning when a dead Ray Williams arrives in Heaven, the novel unfolds as the deceased proceeds to tell his life story backwards. As dodgy and shiftless in the afterlife as he was on Earth, Ray finds himself in Heaven's popular Last Words discussion group, where, for dramatic effect, he lies about his final utterances. A series of flashbacks reveals Ray's defining moments, including his real last words and what they meant, in a funny, poignant narrative that moves with the clarity of a fable and the complexity of modern psychology. Advance Uncorrected Proof. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright wraparound dust jacket. Ramona, written by Helen Hunt Jackson, is a timeless work of historical fiction that first captured hearts in 1884. Set against the rugged beauty of post-Mexican-American War California, this powerful novel weaves together romance, cultural heritage, and social justice in a narrative that resonates deeply with readers. We follow the life of a young woman of mixed Native American and European descent as she navigates the complexities of identity, love, and survival in a land fraught with change. Name on front fly leaf otherwise clean.
Hardcover. NY, Everyman's Library, reprint, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 168 pages. Joseph Roth's 1924 tale of a one-legged street musician defying his fate in postwar Vienna. Andreas Pum, having lost his leg in World War I, is rewarded with a medal and a permit to support himself by playing a barrel organ in the streets of Vienna. At first the simpleminded veteran is entirely satisfied with his lot, and he even finds a voluptuous widow to marry. But then a public quarrel with a respectable citizen on a tram propels Andreas's life into a rapid downward trajectory. As he loses his beggar's permit, his new wife, and even his freedom, he is provoked into finally rejecting his blind faith in the benevolence of the powers that govern his life. Joseph Roth's remarkable novel deploys the haunting atmosphere and propulsive power of a dream to convey the bewilderment of an ordinary man as his world falls apart around him. Clean copy.