england fiction

New York, Doubleday, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly chipped dust jacket. 64 pages. Black & white and color illustrations by Margot Tomes. A tale of the King's birthday & the marzipan shop on the narrowest lane in England.

Hardcover. New York, Scribner, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 338 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Clean, tight copy. A novel about the author Henry James that attracted praise from reviewers nationwide. It's a bold writer indeed who dares to put himself inside the mind of novelist Henry James, but that is what Toibin, highly talented Irish author of The Heather Blazing and The Blackwater Lightship, has ventured here, with a remarkable degree of success. The book is a fictionalized study, based on many biographical materials and family accounts, of the novelist's interior life from the moment in London in 1895 when James's hope to succeed in the theater rather than on the printed page was eclipsed by the towering success of his younger contemporary Oscar Wilde. Thereafter the book ranges seamlessly back and forth over James's life, from his memories of his prominent Brahmin family in the States-including the suicide of his father and the tragic early death of his troubled sister Alice-to his settling in England, in a cherished house of his own choosing in Rye. Along the way it offers hints, no more, of James's troubled sexual identity, including his fascination with a young English manservant, his (apparently platonic) night in bed with Oliver Wendell Holmes and his curious obsession with a dashing Scandinavian sculptor of little talent but huge charisma. Another recurrent motif is James's absorption in the lives of spirited, highly intelligent but unhappy young women who die prematurely, which helped to inform some of his strongest fiction. The subtlety and empathy with which Toibin inhabits James's psyche and captures the fleeting emotional nuances of his world are beyond praise, and even the echoes of the master's style ring true.

Hardcover. NY, Greenwillow Books, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 192 pages.Remainder mark bottom edge. Fourth book in the series about the life-sized rag dolls. Seventy-year-old Sir Magnus, grandfather of a family of life-size rag dolls living in a house in England and pretending to be human, has a premonition that all of them will soon die and that they will return to being lifeless and useless". Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Kensington Publishing , 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The options for the penniless daughter of a deceased earl are few indeed in Regency England. So, following the suspicious death of her father, the Earl of Morton, and the discovery that she and her much younger sister have been left without income or home, Lady Caroline takes a post as a lady's companion to the wealthy widow Frogerton. Mysterious intrigue ensues in this series debut. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Rae D. Henkle, 1st , 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 318 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Black cloth stamped in red on the front and the spine. Previous owner's bookplate front end paper. A New England mystery, beginning with a strike at a tannery. Another challenge for Detective Peter Creighton.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton/Seymour Lawrence, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A large and awkward New England family salvages life the best it can in the aftermath of the sudden death of the mother, Rosie Vincent. The author's first novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 157 pages. A study of the popular English children's writer, Mrs Sherwood, 1775-1851 considering her style, writings, relations with publishers, etc. Includes reprints of The little woodman and his dog Caesar originally published: London, Houlston, 1850 and Soffrona and her cat Muff originally published: Wellington, Salop, Houlston, 1828. Includes a 38 page bibliography. "No study of nineteenth - century children's books in England can afford to ignore Mrs. Sherwood. She produced over four hundred different titles - books, tales, tracts, texts, magazines, articles in periodicals, cbapbooks, and Sunday School rewards. There is evidence that the writings of her Evangelical period, in particular, had a remarkable influence upon Victorian literature for the young.

Hardcover. Surrey UK, Severn House Publishers, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Cannell offers an Agatha Christie-like whodunit with touches of Olde World England and a soupcon of romance. Young Florence Norris is thrilled to become a housemaid at Mullings, home of the respected Stodmarsh family. Although she leaves service to marry, her husband dies in the war, and she's drawn back to Mullings, where she becomes the trusted housekeeper and confidante of young master Ned Stodmarsh. The years pass happily enough until the terrible day when Lady Stodmarsh dies unexpectedly. Florence suspects Lady Stodmarsh was murdered, but without evidence, she can't take her case to the police. Shortly after his wife's tragic death, Lord Stodmarsh takes a holiday to assuage his grief--and shocks everyone by returning home with a new wife. While Lord Stodmarsh is alive, his new wife is all sweetness and light, but when he dies unexpectedly, she reveals her true, wicked nature. When more violent murders occur, Florence can no longer keep her suspicions to herself. With a multistranded plot, strong characters, and echoes of Rebecca, this mix of romance and crime will appeal to a wide range of readers. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 340 pages. An historical novel about King John of England, from the author of "The Lion in Winter."

Hardcover. New York, Penguin Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 442 pages. Light edge wear, rubbing to dust jacket. Else a very clean, tight copy. Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. Faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Or the encore.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1902, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 331 pages. Red cloth covers w/ gilt lettering on spine. Light rubbing to corners and edges of spine. Light foxing to end papers. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Else a clean, tight copy. A collection of nine short stories by Bret Harte (1836-1902), published a month before the author's death in England. Includes the author's "A Mercury of the Foot-Hills" and eight other stories.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A series of dazzlingly successful armored-car robberies, with no link to the underworld, takes place in the New England of the 1970s. . Young urban terrorists, turned on by the radical politics of the sixties... unwilling to bother with distinctions between ends and means. In this fiendishly well-crafted and explosive novel about betrayers and the betrayed, Higgins shows how the establishment... takes revenge by forging alliances that move its members beyond the law. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus Giroux , 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 137 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor rubbing to dust jacket top.

Hardcover. NY, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 223 pages. A mystery/adventure for young adults set in England. Library Ed. (NOT Ex-lib) Nice dust jacket.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Company , 2nd, 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Penelope's Experiences England - 176 pages. 53 black & white illustrations by Charles E. Brock. Previous owners name on front endpaper. Green cloth covers with bright gilt title and decorations on spine and cover. Clean, tight copy. Penelope's Experiences Scotland - 301 pages. 55 black & white illustrations by Charles E. Brock. Green cloth covers with bright gilt title and decorations on spine and cover. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 295 pages. Color frontis. and b&w drawings by Henry Pitz. An adventure story set in Pre-war England. A boy discovers an old classic car which enables him and his impoverished father to set out and enter the London-to-Brighton Run. Their car, named the "Wanderlust", soon attracts the attention of crooks. Previous owner's inscription on blank prelim page.

Hardcover. London, Chatto & Windus, 3rd Ed., 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth, faded gilt title on spine, 480 pages. Contains local folklore under various heading such as Giants, fairies, Tregeagle, mermaids, sorcery & witchcraft etc. A few black and white illustrations by George Cruikshank. Previous owner's stamp to front fly leaf. Otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Longmans, Green & Co., 1st, 1933, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardbound, 278 pages. Illustrated by John Gincano. Previous owner's signature front endpaper. Heavy soiling to spine and edges of covers. Fade marks. Book covers a bit warped. Corners a bit bumped. Small chunk missing from p. 117, and tears to surrounding pages, but no harm to text. The book tells of the author's family immigrating from England to New York and then to Iowa and their lives on the Iowa prairie.

Hardcover. NY, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1st US, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, library edition, NOT EX-LIB. Stated First Edition.

Hardcover. Bristol, England, J.W. Arrowsmith, 1st Edition, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 310 pages. Hardcover. Arrowsmith's 3/6 Series, Vol. XVIII. Hand-written letter from author [dated 27th Febry. /(18)95] laid in and attached to front flyleaf. In the letter, Hope mentions another book in comparison to this volume. Date of publication not indicated within, but correspondence accompanying and mentioning volume is dated 1895. Spine slightly cocked. Deep maroon cloth, gilt title on spine(slightly faded) and front cover board (still bright), boards have some rubbing, agewear, very light fraying at corners of boards, spine has chipping to top and bottom. Pages and edges have tanning from age. Some chipping to hinges of front and back endpapers, binding not affected. In very good condition.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday , 1st US, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Val Leary is handsome, charming and broke. On the morning of April Fools' Day 1871, while walking through one of London's wealthiest districts, he notices a young maidservant scrubbing the steps of 53 Northbourne Park Villas. In that instant he conceives the idea for a remarkable case of burglary. The set-up seems perfect, but chance intervenes in a succession of coincidences that place the jewels further and further beyond the reach of Val and his cronies - until...Set in the Upstairs, Downstairs world of Victorian England, this is an ingenious and gripping tale by the acknowledged master of the English crime novel.

Hardcover. England, PS Pubishing, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 61 pages. Gray cloth, gilt. Very good pictorial dust jacket. Introduction by Gregory Benford. #129 in limited series of 300 signed copies. SIGNED BY AUTHOR and Benford.

Hardcover. London, England, j.W. Arrowsmith, 1st Edition, 1898 , Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 385 pages. Hardcover. B/w frontispiece, illustrations throughout by illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson. Tanning from age throughout, pages untrimmed, deckled. Letter from the author dated "17th Sept: 03" laid in (see image), possibly to William Heinemann. Green cover boards, gilt title on spine, front cover. Some agewear to spine top and bottom. Binding very good, spine straight. Very good condition.

Hardcover. NY, David McKay, 1st, 1967, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn and chipped dust jacket, 150 pages. SIGNED BY PIERCE on the front fly leaf. Samantha longs for a part on the stage but in Elizabethan England that is forbidden for girls. She sells oranges instead, hoping to make a living for herself and her invalid mother. However, when her mother dies and Samantha is desperate for a place to stay she realizes the only possibility is to seek refuge with her friend Hugh, an apprentice to John Heminges' theatrical troupe. This requires a reckless masquerade. Rear endpapers with transparent tape.