mysteries mystery

Hardcover. Boston, G K Hall & Co, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 585 pages. Lists and provides the reader with descriptions of 1440 titles, 121 authors, with a brief plot summary. If you love the classic English mystery novels of the first half of the 20th century, this is a great book to have on your shelf. It chronicles all of the authors, novels and lead characters from these books. Special features include a list of 100 classics of the genre, explanations and charts of England's Police and class system, and maps of Great Britan and Ireland. Dust jacket with minor edgewear, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The sequel to A Real Shot in the Arm which won the 1989 John Creasey Award for best crime novel. It features the heroine Chris, a middle-aged housewife turned local journalist/sleuth, determined to uncover a murder mystery. Clean copy.

Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 190 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #B150. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Light crease and fade to spine and front cover. Small notation on first page.

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Hyperion, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Caught up in the family drama involving his childhood friends, the Sonniers, Cajun sleuth Dave Robicheaux discovers that the family may be involved with the powerful Bobby Earl, a Klansman-turned-politician.

Softcover. NY, Mulholland Books, reprint, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 208 pages. It was supposed to be only a temporary job -- something to pay the bills until Dusty could get his feet back on the ground and raise enough money for medical school. After all, there's nothing wrong with being a bellboy at a respectable hotel like the Manton -- that is, until she came along. Marcia Hillis. The perfect woman. Beautiful. Experienced. Older and wiser. The only woman to ever measure up to that other her -- the one whose painful rejection Dusty can't quite put from his mind. A richly-imagined crime narrative of the Oedipal and betrayal, A Swell-Looking Babe is Thompson at his very best -- a cornerstone in Thompson's enduring legacy as the Dimestore Dostoyevsky of American fiction. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. The second novel in Friedman's highly-praised mystery-suspense series featuring Georgia Lee Maxwell set in France. Remainder line to top edge. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner's, 1st, 1905, Hardcover, black cloth with 3-color decoration of horseman's carriage on front cover, red lettering on spine, 372 pages plus publisher's ads in rear. Illustrated with ten plates in b&w by Cyrus Cuneo. Some of the white ink on cover appears to have flaked off. The are 4 lines in pencil on inside front cover. There are several dog-earred pages just before page 300. Otherwise a very nice copy of this first edition by Hornung.

Hardcover. NY, The Literary Guild of America , BC Ed., Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. Book Club edition. The 2nd Tommy Hambledon adventure. When it was first published in 1941 in the U.S., A Toast to Tomorrow ( Pray Silence in Britain), along with its predecessor Drink to Yesterday, was heralded by famed critic Anthony Boucher as "a single long and magnificent novel of drama, intrigue and humor." Howard Haycraft, the dean of mystery historians, called the two books "superior" examples of the new wave of realistic spy-and- intrigue. Clean copy.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Chuck Pyle. When Lee Scarborough came upon the brunette sunbathing topless in her back yard, getting involved in a heist was the last thing on his mind. But somehow that's where he found himself--sneaking through a stranger's house, on the hunt for $120,000 in embezzled bank funds. It looked like an easy score. But one thing stood between him and the money: the beautiful and deadly Madelon Butler. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Chuck Pyle. When Lee Scarborough came upon the brunette sunbathing topless in her back yard, getting involved in a heist was the last thing on his mind. But somehow that's where he found himself--sneaking through a stranger's house, on the hunt for $120,000 in embezzled bank funds. It looked like an easy score. But one thing stood between him and the money: the beautiful and deadly Madelon Butler. Like new.

Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press , 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This first American edition of collected true-crime pieces from the '50s and '60s by the master author of Epitaph for a Spy, Journey Into Fear, The Light of Day et al. belongs on every fan's bookshelves. Ambler's polite, leisurely stroll down memory lane is a delight. He deals with classic villains from England (Jack the Ripper), Scotland (William Burke and William Hare) and France (Marcel Petiot) along with more recent miscreants: England's James Hanratty (1961) and America's Raymond Finch and Carole Tregoff (1960). Ambler also turns his good-natured, sharp eye on film-writing and the pleasures of Maxim's, and there are lovely semifictional pieces on spies and spy-spotting. Especially delicious is the tale of "Annettee" in 1937 Tangier. There's nothing heavy here, and even Ambler's opposition to the death penalty is quietly posited. His new introduction has its share of graceful nuggets, too.

Hardcover. London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1st, ND (1915), Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 55 pages, 6 b&w tipped-in illustrations by Raemaekers. English and French rendered in black and red calligraphy by Margaret Calkin. Thin white cloth covers with gilt design, light soil. A short mystery play written by the noted Belgian playwright and Great War poet, inspired by a visit he paid to the Belgian trenches during Christmas week and written in the style of a Nativity Play: it depicts the Virgin and Child amongst ordinary soldiers in a miserable Western Front dug-out.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stroughton, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 312 pages, light blue cloth covers with dark blue lettering. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Eleven stories featuring detective Baroness Clara Linz.

Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1945, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 238 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #75. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Light crease to front cover.Spine heavily faded, chipped and worn. Cover art by Gerald Gregg.

Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 133 pages. William Collins is very handsome, very polite, and very friendly. He is also dangerous when aroused. Now Collins, a one-time boxer with a lethal "accident" in his past, has broken out of his fourth mental institution and met up with an affable con man and a highly arousing woman, whose plans for him include kidnapping, murder, and much, much worse. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Forge/Tom Doherty Associates, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Quinn Fawcett is the name used by Bill Fawcett and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Their first novel, featuring Sherlock Holmes's older brother Mycroft. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pegasus Crime, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 544 pages. It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie's books still sell over four million copies each year--more than thirty years after her death--and it shows no signs of slowing. But who was the woman behind these mystifying, yet eternally pleasing, puzzlers? Thompson reveals the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, explores her relationships, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates the many mysteries still surrounding Christie's life, most notably, her eleven-day disappearance in 1926.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Eleven stories of suspense illustrated by Arthur Shilstone, 208 pages. Collected are the following: The Day the Children Vanished by Hugh Pentecost, Through a Dead Man's Eye by Cornell Woolrich, The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim by Agatha Christie, Green Ice by Stuart Palmer, The Grave Grass Quivers by MacKinlay Kantor, The Case of the Irate Witness by Erle Stanley Gardner, Adventure of the Grice-Paterson Curse by August Derleth, The Headmaster by Michael Gilbert, The Adventureof the Seven Black Cats by Ellery Queen, The Wicked Cousin by Leslie Charteris, The Footprint in the Sky by John Dickson Carr. Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. New York, Popular Library Mystery, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 142 pages. Popular Library Mystery # G269. Moderate wear to paper wrappers. Pages tanned. Moderate soil on rear.

Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated boards. Three complete unabridged mysteries in one volume. Detective Book Club Edition. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday and Co., 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, gray cloth with orange stamping on spine. Tommy Hambledon, a British secret agent, investigates a case that includes stolen jewels, secret airplane plans, gangsters, and international assassins. Cheap paper tanned, dust jacket worn with chipping but no markings. Despite dj, a sound copy. One of the scarcer title by this author (actually a married couple).

Hardcover. New York, Morrow, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Beautiful copy in clear mylar sleeve.

Hardcover. New York, Doubleday , 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a very good dust jacket. 342 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Clean, bright copy. A Kat Colorado mystery.