Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with minor fading to spine, 246 pages. A dozen new stories by the acclaimed "minimalist" writer introduce more of her plucky, hardworking, slightly askew characters--losers, absconders, plotters, ponderers and pontificators. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 339 pages. INSCRIBED BY CAUNITZ on the half-title page. A tale of high-level international art smuggling machinations which involve a copy of Homer's Iliad that belonged to Alexander the Great. A planned assassination outside Athens that turns into a massacre and the simultaneous murder of a shady Greek dealer send Major Andreas Vassos of the Greek police off to New York to pursue leads that involve a brutal Irish gang and some smooth operators with ties to the State Department and the wartime OSS. Throw in a tough New York police lieutenant, a beautiful art historian and a villainous collector, and you have the makings for a fast-moving thriller. Clean copy.
Softcover. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 309 pages. "If you want to write good short stories," Lao She once observed, "you have to give it everything you've got. The world will allow the existence of a very imperfect novel, but it won't be that polite with a short story. Art, after all, is not like a pig-the fatter the better." Lao She's stories proved to be very good indeed, moving and delighting readers for many years and establishing him as a master of classic modern fiction. Thankfully we now have access to a rich collection of his short stories in superb English translations. These stories showcase the varied facets of Lao She's impressive talent and draw us effortlessly into his world-and we emerge the better for it. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Returning to her South Side alma mater for a reunion, private detective V.I. Warshawski becomes involved in the search for a former classmate's long-lost father, a quest that uncovers a web of corruption, danger, and murder. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, reprint, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 162 pages. Shortly after Albert Cohen left France for London to escape the Nazis, he received news of his mother's death in Marseille. Unable to mourn her, he expressed his grief in a series of moving pieces for La France libre, which later grew into Book of My Mother. Achingly honest, intimate, and moving, this love song is a tribute to all mothers. Cohen himself expressed, "I shall not have written in vain if one of you, after reading my hymn of death, is one evening gentler with his mother because of me and my mother." Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st US, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 414 pages. Perpetually shrouded in a thick cloud of cigar smoke, Herman Arbogast Brenner, scion of an old and famous cigar dynasty, has decided to kill himself--but not until he has written down his forty-six years of life, in a Proustian attempt to conjure the wounds, joys, and sensations of his childhood in the rolling countryside of the Aargau region of Switzerland. Estranged from his wife and two children, he decides there is no point in squirreling away his fortune, so he buys himself a Ferrari 328 GTS, and drives around sharing cigars with his few remaining friends. In this roman a clef, writing and smoking become intertwined through the act of remembering, as Brenner, a fallible, wounded, yet lovable antihero, searches for epiphany, attempting to unearth memories just out of reach-- the glimmer of a red toy car, the sound of a particular chord played on the piano, the smell of the cigars themselves. Brenner is the final work from Hermann Burger, who died by suicide in 1989. The book comes out just days before what would have been the author's 80th birthday. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Citadel Press, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages, b&w illustrations. Indiana-born Vivian Gordon fluttered to New York in 1920 looking for fame and fortune. Before long, the flame-haired chorus girl parlayed her youth, beauty, and ambition into more profitable means as a tough and glamorous symbol of Prohibition-era excess. She was a speakeasy owner, blackmailer, high-end escort, extortionist, racketeer, and con woman. But given her dangerously intimate associations, Vivian was also a woman who knew too much and who rightfully feared for her life. On February 26, 1931, Vivian's bludgeoned and garroted body was found dumped in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. Now, in the first in-depth biography of its kind, Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist Anthony M. DeStefano unravels her tumultuous life and the headline-making murder that became an obsession for many. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PARKER with his usual scrawl on the title page. Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, become entangled in the affairs of the Mafia and in an internecine struggle for control of the Boston underworld when they set out to find the errant spouse of the daughter of big-time Boston hoodlum Julius Ventura.
Softcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Asia Center, 1st pbk, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 445 pages, b&w illustrations. In China Made, Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping the modern world-nationalism and consumerism-developed in tandem in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every commodity as either "Chinese" or "foreign," and consumer culture became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated, institutionalized, and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language archives, magazines, newspapers, and books, this first exploration of the historical ties between nationalism and consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese history and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern nations. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press , 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 149 pages. The chief nurse of the Union Hospital in Washington, D.C., describes life and stress in the hospital and comments on notable persons of power. Her heretofore unpublished diary and letters comprise a fresh, highly significant document concerning the medical history of the Civil War and the contributions of women nurses in the Northern military hospitals. This book is edited, with Introduction and Commentary, by John R. Brumgardt.
Hardcover. San Diego, Canterbury Classics, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. This unique format features a graphic adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel, with giant pop-ups on every spread. Readers will be mesmerized by the giant 3-D pop-ups in this graphic adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel. When the scientist Victor Frankenstein attempts to create a new being from dead corpses, he has little knowledge of the horrors that await--or of the anguish that his actions will wreak on his own creation. Illustrator Anthony Williams's full-color scenes capture the grim atmosphere of Shelley's novel in detail so that a new generation of readers can enjoy this horror classic. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Stein & Day, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. General MacArthur's troops retreated here after the first surrender ever of an American Army in the Field, on the Bataan Peninsula. Reenacts the events of the Bataan and Corregidor battles of World War II through the eyes of the doctors, nurses, and soldiers interviewed after the war. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Library of America , 4th pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 990 pages. James M. Cain's pioneering novel of murder and adultery along the California highway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), shocked contemporaries with its laconic toughness and fierce sexuality. Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) uses truncated rhythms and a unique narrative structure to turn its account of a Hollywood dance marathon into an unforgettable evocation of social chaos and personal desperation. In Thieves Like Us (1937), Edward Anderson vividly brings to life the dusty roads and back-country hideouts where a fugitive band of Oklahoma outlaws plays out its destiny. The Big Clock (1946), an ingenious novel of pursuit and evasion by the poet Kenneth Fearing, is set by contrast in the dense and neurotic inner world of a giant publishing corporation under the thumb of a warped and ultimately murderous chief executive. William Lindsay Gresham's controversial Nightmare Alley (1946), a ferocious psychological portrait of a charismatic carnival hustler, creates an unforgettable atmosphere of duplicity, corruption, and self-destruction. I Married a Dead Man (1948), a tale of switched identity set in the anxious suburbs, is perhaps the most striking novel of Cornell Woolrich, who found in the techniques of the gothic thriller the means to express an overpowering sense of personal doom. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt & Co., 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glazed pictorial boards, contains about 50 one-panel cartoons from the syndicated newspaper strip. The first Dennis collection. Light foxing/spotting to covers, clean copy otherwise.
Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 275 pages. Joao Cabral de Melo Neto is one of Brazil's most acclaimed poets. From his early days, Mr. Cabral has written poems that are marked by a captivating use of simple language. Avoiding ceremony and circumstance, they follow centuries-old paths rather than struggle to break new ground. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt , 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 740 pages. Historian Musicant offers a detailed examination of the American war that catapulted the nation to imperial status. Musicant offers a portrait of a nation increasingly torn between the desire for isolation and the yearning for a place on the international stage. That conflict was at first fought out in the nation's newspapers, which managed to gradually sway public opinion toward involvements abroad. The sinking of the American warship Maine in the harbor of Havana pushed America over the edge, and McKinley was compelled to declare war on Spain. The war itself lasted less than a year and featured only a few large-scale battles, but Musicant is able to wring considerable drama from this thorough narrative of events. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Morrow, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 292 pages. Light wear to pictorial dust jacket protected by a clear brodart cover. A very nice, tight, clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, The New Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 402 pages. Ann Oakley came to widespread attention as part of the new school of British feminists to emerge in the 1960s, and has since earned a reputation as one of the most innovative feminist thinkers and social scientists writing today. In Experiments in Knowing, a major new work, Oakley integrates her personal and professional thinking to examine the historical development of methodology in the social and natural sciences, demonstrating how both fields have been subject to a process of "gendering." Oakley not only reconciles the long-standing opposition between the quantitative and the qualitative methods but shows that the experimental and intuitive approaches must be used in tandem to provide a full understanding of any subject of scientific inquiry. Clean copy.
Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 418 pages, b&w illustrations. "...chronicles the historic transition from apartheid to democracy. This compelling story is told through the lives of four pairs of South Africans from opposite sides of the racial and political divide. Taken together, the profiles provide the most intimate look yet at the social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa." Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Archipelago Books, 1st transl., 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 171 pages. Firefly is a dream-like evocation of pre-war Cuba, replete with hurricanes, mystical cults and slave-markets. The story is the coming-of-age of a precocious and exuberant boy with an oversized head and underdeveloped sense of direction, who views the world as a threatening conspiracy. Told in breathless and lyrical prose, the novel is a loving rendition of a long-lost home, a meditation on exile, and an allegory of Cuba's isolation in the world. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 2nd pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy pictorial boards, color illustrations by Lionni. In honor of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Frederick, Knopf is pleased to issue an expanded collector's edition of Leo Lionni's timeless tales that celebrate the power of imagination and the human spirit. With the addition of three new titles--Matthew's Dream, An Extraordinary Egg, and Six Crows--this magnificent treasury now contains 16 unabridged stories, including three Caldecott Honor books and Lionni's inimitable full-color artwork gracing every page. Add a striking new cover and a fascinating introduction by the author, and this is a volume no Lionni fan will want to be without. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 373 pages. Scholars have long held that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was a centralized organization from its founding in 1921. In a departure from that view, From Friend to Comrade demonstrates how the CCP began as a group of study societies, only evolving into a mass Marxist-Leninist party by 1927. Hans J. van de Ven's study is based on party documents of the 1920s that have only recently become available, as well as the writings of a wide range of Chinese communists. He analyzes the party's difficulty in building a cohesive organization firmly rooted in Chinese society. While past scholarship has emphasized the influence of Soviet communism on the CCP, van de Ven stresses the thinking and actions of Chinese communists themselves, placing their struggle in the context of China's political history and highly complex society. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Dey Street Books, reprint, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 594 pages, b&w illustrations. Rediscover the groundbreaking magic of Blade Runner with this revised and updated edition of the classic guide to Ridley Scott's transformative film and published in anticipation of its sequel, Blade Runner 2049, premiering October 2017 and starring Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, and Harrison Ford. Ridley Scott's 1992 "Director's Cut" confirmed the international film cognoscenti's judgment: Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick's brilliant and troubling science fiction masterpiece Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is the most visually dense, thematically challenging, and influential science fiction film ever made. Future Noir offers a deeper understanding of this cult phenomenon that is storytelling and visual filmmaking at its best. In this intensive, intimate and anything-but-glamorous behind-the-scenes account, film insider and cinephile Paul M. Sammon explores how Ridley Scott purposefully used his creative genius to transform the work of science fiction's most uncompromising author into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic that would reinvent the genre. Sammon reveals how the making of the original Blade Runner was a seven-year odyssey that would test the stamina and the imagination of writers, producers, special effects wizards, and the most innovative art directors and set designers in the industry at the time it was made.
Hardcover. NY, Elsevier/Nelson, 2nd pr., 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket, 127 pages. Newbery Medalist Katherine Paterson describes what it means to be a writer & reader struggling through the "gates of excellence". Spine with light fading.