fiction history

Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 223 pages. Over the course of a fifty-year career, Donald E. Westlake published nearly one hundred books, including not one but two long-running series, starring the hard-hitting Parker and the hapless John Dortmunder. In the six years since his death, Westlake's reputation has only grown, with fans continuing to marvel at his tightly constructed plots, no-nonsense prose, and keen, even unsettling, insights into human behavior. With The Getaway Car, we get our first glimpse of another side of Westlake the writer: what he did when he wasn't busy making stuff up. And it's fascinating. Setting previously published pieces, many little seen, alongside never-before-published material found in Westlake's working files, the book offers a clear picture of the man behind the books-including his thoughts on his own work and that of his peers, mentors, and influences. The book opens with revealing (and funny) fragments from an unpublished autobiography, then goes on to offer an extended history of private eye fiction, a conversation among Westlake's numerous pen names, letters to friends and colleagues, interviews, appreciations of fellow writers, and much, much more. There's even a recipe for Sloth a la Dortmunder. Really. Rounded out with a foreword by Westlake's longtime friend Lawrence Block, The Getaway Car is a fitting capstone to a storied career and a wonderful opportunity to revel anew in the voice and sensibility of a master craftsman.

Hardcover. NY, Scholastic, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "Those shackles didn't rob us of being black, son, they robbed us of being human."This is the story of one family. A family whose history saw its first ancestor captured, shackled, and brought to this country from Africa. A family who can still see remnants of the shackles that held some of its members captive -- even today. It is a story of pride, determination, struggle, and love. And of the piece of the land that holds them together throughout it all. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday & Co, 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Return to the thrilling days of yesteryear when the most exciting people having the most exciting adventures came to us in our own homes through radio. Little Orphan Annie, Superman and others paraded through our ears and our homes in that wonderful time when our imaginations were ignited by fictional characters. Harmon provides reminiscences of the heyday of radio programming, with insights on such radio dramas as I Love a Mystery, Gangbusters, The Shadow, Inner Sanctum, Batman and Robin, Superman, Tom Mix, The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, Adventures by Morse and a couple of dozen more. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1st, 1893, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 190 pages. Frontis illustration loose but present. Illustration and gold embossed title on cover. Some discoloration to spine, otherwise good. Black & white Illustrations by J.O.B.

Hardcover. Taschen, 2nd pr., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Huge oversized hardcover, 16x11", 596 pages. The full, fascinating story of this fabled company, written and designed by EC-expert Grant Geissman. Even the most die-hard EC Fan-Addicts will find something new within these pages, with the Gaines family archives providing over 100 rarities that have never seen print. Cover images are reproduced from Gaines file copies. 1,000 illustrations include the rarest and most notorious covers, interior pages and panels, rare photos, vintage original artwork, and some of the most celebrated stories ever to be printed in four colors. Author Grant Geissman was a customer in Bud Plant's San Jose comic book store in 1968-69, long before he became a recording star and EC expert. Grant has written several books on EC and, in my mind, is the foremost authority on both Mad and EC. He generously did a special bookplate for us, which reproduces a "fantasy" cover for Incredible Science Fiction that he commissioned from Angelo Torres. It's in full color and signed by Grant.

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, Schwartz & Wade Books, 2nd pr, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 180 pages. Profusely illustrated in b&w. Here are the extraordinary lives of Abraham and Mary, from their disparate childhoods and tumultuous courtship, through the agony of the Civil War, to the loss of three of their children, and finally their own tragic deaths. Readers can find Mary's recipe for Abraham's 'favorite cake' and bake it themselves; hear what Abraham looked like as a toddler; see a photo of the Lincoln's dog; discover that the Lincoln children kept goats at the White House; see the Emancipation Proclamation written in Lincoln's own hand. Perfect for reluctant readers as well as history lovers, The Lincolns provides a living breathing portrait of a man, a woman, and a country. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Row, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 309 pages. Library Edition with spine sticker (NOT EX-LIB). Complete number row. Horn Book review, 1983: "The author interweaves black folklore with her own family history in a tale remarkable for its total integration of the novel with the imaginative possibilities of legend." An African god-child and her older brother travel as albatrosses on a slave ship to Georgia, witnessing two centuries of history in two god-days! Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper Design, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 304 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Foreword by Fraser Heston. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 science fiction cult classic film the Planet of the Apes, a handsomely designed commemorative volume full of rich, behind-the-scenes detail and exclusive, never-before-seen photographs and illustrations. Based on Pierre Boulle's novel La Planete de Singes, the original Planet of the Apes was one of the most iconic films of the 1960s. Starring Hollywood stalwarts Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, the movie captivated audiences and sparked a franchise that included eight sequels, two television series, and a comic strip. Now, five decades after its theatrical release, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Rinzler tells the thrilling story of this legendary Hollywood classic-a film the book's author thought would be impossible to make. Clean, bright copy. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. University of Nebraska Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 512 pages. Historians, biographers, and scholars of John James Audubon and natural history have long been mystified by Audubon's 1843 Missouri River expedition, for his journals of the trip were thought to have been destroyed by his granddaughter Maria Rebecca Audubon. Daniel Patterson is the first scholar to locate and assemble three important fragments of the 1843 Missouri River journals, and here he offers a stunning transcription and critical edition of Audubon's last journey through the American West. Patterson's new edition of the journals--unknown to Audubon scholars and fans--offers a significantly different understanding of the very core of Audubon's life and work. Readers will be introduced to a more authentic Audubon, one who was concerned about the disappearance of America's wild animal species and yet also loved to hunt and display his prowess in the wilderness. This edition reveals that Audubon's famous late conversion to conservationism on this expedition was, in fact, a literary fiction. Maria Rebecca Audubon created this myth when she rewrote her grandfather's journals for publication to make him into a visionary conservationist. In reality the journals detail almost gratuitous hunting predations throughout the course of Audubon's last expedition.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 368 pages. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) was an important and fascinating figure in German philosophy in the early twentieth century, founding the well-known journal Kantstudien. Yet he was overshadowed by the burgeoning movements of phenomenology and analytical philosophy, as well as hostility towards his work because of his defense of Jewish scholars in a Germany controlled by Nazism. However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of 'As If' is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in face of an overwhelmingly complex world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if" a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behavior, we must act "as if" ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Hermes Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Music inspired, science fiction and fantasy combined in a way that revolutionized poster art of the Psychedelic 1960's-era. Famous for his rock posters, The Psychedelic Rock Art of Carl Lundgren, a Detroit, Michigan based artist, showcases his posters which were as important to the Detroit Music and Art history as were the music legends themselves; The Who, Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floyd to name a few. The book's forward is written by Mitch Ryder, who was lead vocalist of a Detroit 1960's rock group The Detroit Wheels. The introduction is by Russ Gibb, a former radio personality and rock promoter from Dearborn, Michigan, who played a major role in the late sixties/early seventiesMotor City music scene.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, BC Ed., 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 254 pages. Published in England as "A Wrinkle in the Skin." A post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, the story of a natural catastrophe that wipes out 10,000 years of human history overnight...and what happens to a man who searches this shattered world for his lost daughter.

Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 191 pages. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 222 pages. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY , Norton, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with fading to spine, 253 pages. This series of sketches captures Stalin with irony, humor and pathos. The author calls his fictionalized version of Stalin "artistic documentation" in the spirit of reality based on research, personal experience and conversations with others. Yuri Krotkov, a Soviet Georgian, as was Stalin, was a prominent dramatist and screenwriter in the Soviet Union before his defection. As a member of the Russian intelligentsia, he was in the confidence of top-ranking Soviet and party officials in Moscow. Review slip laid in. Foxing to top edge otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Frederick A. Stokes, 1st illust thus, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, geen cloth with 4 color decoration on front and spine. Color frontispiece, numerous black and white illustrations by Gordon Browne, No date (circa 1910). Tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Allison and Busby, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1857. Only when the bonfire finally dies down, the charred remains of his body are found. Who would possibly want to murder a man so universally liked? It's the question Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Lemming ask when they arrive in Exeter at the request of the South Devon Railway. Yet, as they investigate the stationmaster's life, they realize he is not as popular as they first believed. With a scorned jilted lover, a resentful colleague and a violent elder brother among the many suspects, the detectives must use all their skill and wit to solve the case. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Gardner, Darton and Co., 1st, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in a light blue pictorial binding. 379 pages with 68 b&w illustrations by Gordon Browne. Top edge gilt. 20 pages of publisher's ads in rear. Front hinge cracked, creasing to front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, tight copy. The story of two brothers; a young boy's fantasy life, rich with humor and creativity amidst a world of annoying adults and their societal expectations.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st thus, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Two volumes in a pictorial cardboard slipcase, quarter bound in purple cloth and decorated boards without jackets, as issued. The Tale of Genji was written in the eleventh century by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of the Heian court. It is universally recognized as the greatest masterpiece of Japanese prose narrative, perhaps the earliest true novel in the history of the world. Until now there has been no translation that is both complete and scrupulously faithful to the original text. Edward G. Seidensticker's masterly rendering was hailed as a classic of the translator's art. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Middlebury VT, Vermont Folklife Center, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 24 pages illustrated in color by Michael Donato. Award-winning author William Jaspersohn brings American history alive in a moving immigrant tale. The story retells the amazing, true saga of the Eurich brothers from Prussia, who arrive five years apart in America in the 1880s and who miraculously end up on neighboring farms in central Vermont. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Nottingham Society, Ltd Ed., 1900, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, marbled boards with 3/4 leather, gilt lettering on spine, top edge gilt. B&w frontis. First published in 1846, The Two Dianas is among the most well-known work in Dumas' Valois romances- which dramatize the intrigues & debacles of the real-life Royal House of France during the fourteenth-sixteenth century. His 1891 novel, The Page of the Duke of Savoy is the fictionalized tale of a woman who is forced to impersonate a man in order to remain by the side of her beloved Duke. Page 15 has a couple tape repairs where page was opened carelessly, several dog-eared pages, otherwise clean 12th volume from the set. Limited to 1000 copies.

Hardcover. London, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Limited to 504 signed copies, this being no 265. Bound in original publishers quarter vellum, with green cloth boards, vellum dusty, cloth faded. An anthology of the author's writings from 1921 to 1930. The work concerns the history of an unnamed fictional village, and is divided into alternating chapters with different headings. Vellum-backed cloth, lettered in gold at the spine and with Williamson's familiar owl logo gold-stamped to the upper board. With a portrait frontispiece and two brief sketches by the author. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Some uneven fading to the cloth and a little darkening to the vellum backstrip, as is common with this production.

Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Two lifelong lovers sort through their shared history of secrets and suspicions, dating back to World War II, to find the truth behind a fatal weekend that became a public scandal. Clean copy.