china fiction

Hardcover. London, Palazzo Editions, reprint, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 209 pages. Illustrated in color by Robert Ingpen. Around the World in Eighty Days is an evocation of an era when all travel was an adventure - and Jules Verne's tale of a race against the clock has never lost its power to thrill. Set in 1872, Mr. Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of precision and predictability, and his manservant, the ever resourceful Passepartout, ride through India on an elephant, sail the South China Sea in the teeth of a typhoon and cross the snow-covered plains of the American Wild West in order to fulfill a wager that the journey can be completed in just eighty days. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 217 pages. A 12 year old girl who knows little of her Chinese heritage is sent to San Francisco's Chinatown to live with her grandmother. Jane Addams Peace Award & Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. Color dust jacket art by Allen Say.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Griffith and Rowland Press, 1st, 1908, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light blue cloth covers stamped in white and dark blue. Story of survival based on a wreck in the China Sea of the Ketrel, a full-rigged ship bound from Liverpool to Yokohama, Japan. 360 pages, illustrated in b&w, one plate not present (the map on pg. 135). Bookplate on inside front cover, otherwise clean.

Softcover. NY, Kelly O'Quinn, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover magazine, 70 pages. Very light wear. A periodical devoted to scientific speculation about the future. This issue contains: Jane Fonda's China Syndrome by Nancy Naglin; War in Space by Stella Morris; The Great H. G. Wells Film Revival by Joseph Kay; H. G. Wells Revival - Return of the Time Traveler by Barbara Lewis; Interview: Timothy Leary by Robin Snelson; The 23rd Century: A Vision for Star Trek by Jesco von Puttkamer; Building the First Space Colonies by Gerard O'Neill; The Sound of the Future by Todd Rundgren; and How to Design a Getaway Special to Space by G. Harry Stine; along with the usual features, including a painting of Titan by Don Davis.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1st, 1949, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 211 pages. Hardcover. Not ex-library. Black and white illustrations by Paul Brown. Front and rear endpapers illustrated in red. Part of the Clara Ingram Judson "They Came From" series. Green cloth covers with title in black on front cover and spine. Dust jacket with chipping and some tape repaired tears along edges - Jacket now protected with clear plastic cover. Book listed on rear inside flap is "The Lost Violin". A few rough page edges from closed pages being opened by original owner. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. London, Fourth Estate, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 362 pages, SIGNED BY AW on title page. Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman -- a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer -- whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley's most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel's narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era. Haunting, highly original, The Harmony Silk Factory is suspenseful to the last page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, George H. Doran , 1st, 1923, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with orange cloth spine, paper spine label chipped. First printing with Doran logo on copyright page. With a preface by Hilaire Belloc, 333 pages. "Bramah attained commercial and critical success with his creation of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. He first appears in The Wallet of Kai Lung which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards published it in 1900. It was still in print a hundred years later. The Kai Lung stories are humorous tales set in China, often with fantasy elements such as dragons and gods." Covers rubbed, edgeworn. Clean internally.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran and Company, reprint, 1923, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with tan cloth spine with a blue title label. Preface By Hillaire Belloc. 'Bramah attained commercial and critical success with his creation of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. He first appears in The Wallet of Kai Lung which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards published it in 1900. It was still in print a hundred years later. The Kai Lung stories are humorous tales set in China, often with fantasy elements such as dragons and gods." Numeral 1 on copyright page, no date on title page, so suspected 2nd printing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Berkley Prime Crime, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. The 6th mystery set in the small town of Pecan Springs, Texas, featuring former attorney and now herbalist, China Bayles. Bayles investigates the murder of retired Texas Ranger Roy Adcock which hits surprisingly close to home. Clean copy.

hardcover. NY, Greenwillow, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. B&w illustrations by Peter Sis. A tale of Touch, a runaway orphan boy who seeks help from the ghost of a magician. The Great Chaffalo obliges the boy with a stallion with a golden mane and a hide as fine as China silk. But Touch discovers even this wonderful horse cannot take him beyond the reach of his troubles. A tale of innocence in a world of villainy, of things that are seen but are not what they seem -- a tale of mystery and wonder. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1st, 1919, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, pictorial green cloth with large, striking design of a dragon in yellow on front; lettered in yellow on front and spine; 380 pages. Color frontispiece by Gayle Hoskins (Originally published in Munsey's Magazine). Scarce copy of a mystery pulp writers' first book. Clean.

Hardcover. NY, Berkley Prime Crime, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Driving out to Rosemary's house on an errand, China discovers her accountant has been murdered. With one abusive ex-husband and plenty of former clients in the picture, there's no shortage of suspects. And with a vengeful ex-convict on the loose, there's plenty for China to worry about. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row , 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. When villagers call Cassia and her brother, Foxfire, "the serpent's children," they mean it as an insult. But to Cassia it is an honor, for legend says that once a serpent sets her mind on something, she never gives up. And in a time when famine, drought, and violence mark her family's life, Cassia has nothing less than survival to fight for. Their father is a revolutionary, determined to free China from invaders. Foxfire, certain he'll find a mountain of gold, flees to a faraway land. Cassia will need all of her strength and wisdom to keep her family together, and to prove that she is truly the serpent's child. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday Doran, reprint, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in an edgeworn and chipped dust jacket, 301 pages. Adventure on the High Seas in Which Stuart Ormsby is Shanghaied Aboard the Tramp Steamer 'Nanking' Bound for Ports on the China Coast.

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, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, SIGNED BY AUTHOR on the half-title page. In 1942, Ruth and Simeon must leave their missionary parents to escape the perils of war, and Ruth learns much about human nature and life as she and her brother make the dangerous trip through China to India. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Grosset & Dunlap, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial cloth, 101 pages. Oversized, no dust jacket issued. B&W and color Illustrations by Sawyers and Reusswig.

Hardcover. NY, Whittlesey House, 1st, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth covers stamped in black and red, 50 pages illustrated in 2-colors and b&w by Plato Chan. Adapted from an Old Chinese Legend by Plato and Christina Chan. The Text by Christina Chan. The Illustrations by Plato Chan. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Candlewick, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A timeless tale by the incomparable Kate DiCamillo, complete with stunning full-color plates by Bagram Ibatoulline, honors the enduring power of love. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who treated him with the utmost care and adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost. Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle -- that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Candlewick, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A timeless tale by the incomparable Kate DiCamillo, complete with stunning full-color plates by Bagram Ibatoulline, honors the enduring power of love. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who treated him with the utmost care and adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost. Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the top of a garbage heap to the fireside of a hoboes' camp, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. And along the way, we are shown a true miracle -- that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1960, Hardcover, 336 pages, b&w drawings by Lea. Dust jacket with light edgewear, chipping. Novel about Hank Spurling, a Marine hero of the war in the Pacific, who returned to the Cloudrock Mountains in Wyoming. In the early days of World War II, Lea became a war correspondent for Life magazine, executing paintings of action in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, China, North Africa, and Europe. Lea's career thereafter involved both painting and writing, on a variety of subjects but generally reflective of his roots in the Southwest. Clean copy.

NY, Hawthorn Books, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 143 pages. Yellow cloth, blue design/lettering. Color pictorial dust jacket shows very minor edgewear. Spine of dust jacket is slightly toned. B/W illustrations throughout by Marvin Besunder. Previous owners' names in ink on a blank page at back otherwise clean. " Lin Li-ti, parted from his family during the tumultuous evacuation from mainland Communist Chino to the Nationalist island of Formosa, found himself hungry and alone in a land where no one seemed to care about a lost boy." Written by a woman who lived in Taiwan, as well as other places in the world, who is a teacher and author.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 32 pages. Black & white illustrations by William Pene du Bois. Dust jacket price-clipped with light soiling, HarperCrest label on spine.

Hardcover. NY, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 241 pages. An historical novel of China's 1930's struggle with Japan. B&W illustrations by Margaret Ayer. Dust jacket with light edgewear, small hole in rear panel. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf.