crime

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 181 pages. "In the 1960's and 1970's, American professor Norton Dodge forayed on his own in the Soviet Union, bought the work of underground 'unofficial' artists, and brought it out himself or arranged to have it shipped illegally to the United States. John McPhee investigates Dodge's clandestine activities in the service of dissident Soviet art, his motives for his work, and the fates of several of the artists whose lives he touched. The Ransom of Russian Art is a suspenseful, chilling, and fascinating report on a covert operation like no other". Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 215 pages. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Gollancz, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 268 pages. Amos Hatcher, a private investigator specializing in art crimes, soon realizes that the solution to two murders hinges on identifying a stolen art object that is only presumed to exist. The first Amos Hatcher mystery, by American art historian and author Oliver Banks (1941-91).

Hardcover. NY, Grosset Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers stamped in black. In a dust jacket with light edgewear and chipping. A crime novel set in the Kentucky mountains involving lawless gangs and horse racing. A Hubin listed Mystery. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Glen Orbik. Two identical twin sisters--one a sexually repressed defense attorney, the other a former libertine now living a respectable life in suburbia--are about to have their darkest secrets revealed, to the men in their lives and to themselves. As one sister prepares for the toughest trial of her career and the other faces a stalker who knows details of her life that even her husband doesn't, both find themselves pushed to the edge, and confronted by discoveries about their husbands that shock and disturb them. THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN is an intense, psychologically penetrating tale of fears and fantasies, the desires that drive us, and how far men will go for the women they love. Like new.

Softcover. Rochester VT, Park Street Press, 1st thus, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 288 pages. This groundbreaking survey, originally published in London in 1860, is a radically open-minded look at the use of drugs across the world and throughout the ages. Early users of tobacco in Russia would have their noses cut off and repeat offenders their heads. Pope Innocent XII excommunicated any who used it in St. Peters. Marijuana users in 14th century Egypt would have their teeth extracted for the crime. Yet use of these and other forbidden substances continued to grow. If only as a record of the perennial failure of harsh punishments to deter drug use Victorian naturalist Mordecai Cooke's work The Seven Sisters of Sleep would remain significant. But Cooke's natural humor and keen insights have ensured this work's reputation as possibly the best early book from what has grown into an enormous body of literature on mind- and mood-altering substances. Written at a time, similar to our own, when drug use was being reconsidered, The Seven Sisters of Sleep is a thought-provoking and open-minded look at the use of drugs across the world and throughout the ages. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 263 pages. Larry Dolman is a rather literal minded ex-cop who now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings--and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 335 pages. In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar & Rinehart, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with red lettering. The acclaimed crime writer's last book (he died in 1930), a collection of courtroom stories featuring Colonel Braxton, "great lawyer, great detective, and gallant gentleman ", and set in Virginia in the 1850's. Both Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen considered Post second only to Poe as an American writer of detective fiction. Clean, square copy.

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 416 pages. In the summer of 1865, the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in a cheap hotel in Wiesbaden, unable to leave until he'd paid the bill. Having lost the last of his money at the roulette table, his debts hung heavy over his head, his epileptic seizures were worsening, and his wife and beloved brother were dead. Desperate, a story came to him, a way to write himself out of his predicament: the murderer Raskolnikov, the hot, disorienting swirl of St Petersburg, the axe, the terrible crime, and the murderer's paranoia. The book was Crime and Punishment, and from the moment it was published it was a sensation. But how did this haunting tale of guilt come to be, and why does it still hold such a sway over us all these years later? The Sinner and the Saint gives us the story of the creation of a work of literature that has bewitched readers for over a century, and of the two men so central to it: Dostoevsky himself, and Pierre Francois Lacenaire, a notorious murderer and glamorous egoist who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s and whose sensational story provided the germ of the novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Quirk Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright acetate dust jacket, 240 pages. Meet more than one hundred of the most heroic female characters in comics history, complete with backstories, vintage art, and colorful commentary. This spectacular sisterhood includes costumed crimebusters like Miss Fury, super-spies like Tiffany Sinn, sci-fi pioneers like Gale Allen, and even kid troublemakers like Little Lulu. With vintage art, publication details, a decade-by-decade survey of industry trends and women's roles in comics, and spotlights on iconic favorites like Wonder Woman and Ms. Marvel, The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen proves that not only do strong female protagonists belong in comics, they've always been there. 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. NY, DC Comics, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Collects stories from classic Spirit adventures in which a murdered detective fights crime from beyond the grave. July 1947-December 1947. Color art by Eisner. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. NY, DC Comics, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Collects stories from classic Spirit adventures in which a murdered detective fights crime from beyond the grave. July 1949-December 1949. The stories in the latest volume of vintage Spirit exploits catch the masked crime fighter nine years into the series. Eisner, ever inventive, was still finding ways to keep things fresh, and a four-week arc sees the hero wandering exotic Pacific islands. There are some signs that Eisner may have been wearying of his headliner. In many tales here, including the celebrated "Ten Minutes," which counts down the final moments of a young man's life, the Spirit barely makes an appearance. As always, Eisner's much-imitated "cartoon noir" style finds him moving seamlessly from broad humor to high melodrama. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 298 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. Clean, tight copy with only light edge wear to covers. Autographed copy sticker on front dj. Marcus Clay and Dimitri Karras return from the acclaimed thriller, King Suckerman, as they square off against drug lords and racists on the crime-ridden streets of the nation's capital in the midst of the 1980s.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 414 pages, b&w illustrations. Explores the history of the Teamsters up through the 1970's by looking at the subject from the perspective of a number of the key players -- one at a time. A novel yet very effective approach to a large and complicated subject. The book proves to be both informative and entertaining. Remainder stamp to bottom edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, John Day Publishers, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn. chipped dust jacket, 215 pages. Contains the first appearance of numerous letters from Ezra Pound and documents relating to the trial. Written by his lawyer, Julien Cornell. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, William Hodge & Company, 1st, 1952, Book: Good, Harcover, red cloth with gilt lettering on spine. In 1902 the 'Veronica' set sail on her last voyage. An extraordinary outbreak of mutiny occurred, resulting in the deaths of all but five of the thirteen persons on board. The ship was set on fire and abandoned. The five men arrived on the island of Cajueri Tuoia on the north coast of Brazil. They were destitute and asked to board the S.S. Brunswick. Their stories of the events were doubted and two of the men decided to tell the truth. The other three were brought to trial in Liverpool charged with the murder of Captain Shaw and six other crew members. One of the harder to find editions in the series. 248 pages, b&w illustrations. Light tape marks on cover, rear hinge cracked, otherwise clean.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. Abandoned as a baby in a bus station locker, shuttled from one abusive foster home and detention center to another, Bobbie Gotteson grew up angry, hurting, damaged. His hunger to succeed as a musician brought him across the country to Hollywood, but along with it came his seething rage, his paranoid delusions, and his capacity for acts of shocking violence. Unavailable for 40 years, THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY is an eloquent, terrifying, heartbreaking exploration of madness by one of the most acclaimed authors of the past century. This definitive edition for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates, unseen since its sole publication in a literary journal nearly half a century ago, which examines the impact of Gotteson's killing spree on a woman who survived it, as seen through the eyes of the troubled young man hired by a private detective to surveil her. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. Abandoned as a baby in a bus station locker, shuttled from one abusive foster home and detention center to another, Bobbie Gotteson grew up angry, hurting, damaged. His hunger to succeed as a musician brought him across the country to Hollywood, but along with it came his seething rage, his paranoid delusions, and his capacity for acts of shocking violence. Unavailable for 40 years, THE TRIUMPH OF THE SPIDER MONKEY is an eloquent, terrifying, heartbreaking exploration of madness by one of the most acclaimed authors of the past century. This definitive edition for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates, unseen since its sole publication in a literary journal nearly half a century ago, which examines the impact of Gotteson's killing spree on a woman who survived it, as seen through the eyes of the troubled young man hired by a private detective to surveil her. Like new.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. The story of two kids who witness a violent crime they think was committed by their neighbor (an undertaker). However, since these two are always telling made-up stories nobody believes them. They have to find the evidence. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, E. P. Dutton, 2nd pr., 1931, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth covers with gilt lettering (now partially faded). 320 pages, b&w plates. Chapters include: The Scientific detective; Human Monsters; Famous bandits; Crimes of the insane; Political crime; Some famous women criminals; The case of a spy - Mata Hari; The Death Penalty. Spine faded, otherwise, clean copy.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Gregory Manchess. What beautiful 18-year-old would want to spend her life taking care of an invalid? Not Shirley Angela. But that's the life she was trapped in--until she met Jack.Now Shirley and Jack have a plan to put the old man out of his misery and walk away with a suitcase full of cash. But there's nothing like money to come between lovers--money, and other women. Like new.

Hardcover. NY, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti series, the Venetian inspector has been called on to investigate many things, from shocking to petty crimes. But in The Waters of Eternal Youth, the 25th novel in this celebrated series, Brunetti finds himself drawn into a case that may not be a case at all. Clean copy.