term Fiction term

Softcover. NY, Carroll & Graf, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback, 298 pages. Beside the dead body of Sir Maurice Lawes are the shattered fragments of a snuff-box that once belonged to Napoleon. These fragments tell a tale, or rather two tales, one true and one false. Now, an English expert in criminology forces the evidence to tell the truth about what happened and to point out the real murderer. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Thomas Dunne Book/St. Martin's Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 356 pages. SIGNED BY CRABBE on the title page. August, 1889. A man lies dead in a darkened construction site near Madison Square Park. The murderer, Jim Tupper, a Mohawk of the Iroquois nation, flees back to the vast Adirondack wilderness. But he has left a trail of death behind, pointing north, straight to where Tom Braddock and his family are vacationing. Worlds collide when Tom's son is caught up in the murder of a young maid at the hotel. To clear him, Tom must capture the killer, whom he believes to be Tupper, launching an epic chase across more than a hundred miles of lakes, rivers, and forest. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st US, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Thriller, featuring 'Limpie' and a wealthy Emir.

Hardcover. Boston, L.C. Page & Co., 1st, 1906, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light green cloth with dark green, red, and gold gilt design of automobile with three angels with red lettering to front cover and spine. A lazy, discontented little prince and princess have been sent an enchanted automobile by their fairy godmother to take them to fairyland. 6 color illustrations including frontispiece by Edna M. Sawyer.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, reprint, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn and chipped dust jacket. Gray illustrated cloth, red letters and decoration of a teapot to upper cover, illustrated in b&w by Hugh Troy, 128 pages. Young Irish lad Brian Boru travels to the United States with a wee fairyman to give him courage. Book is clean, bright copy. Dust jacket flap indicates book club edition.

New York, W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket with light chipping, 183 pages. Illustrations by Charles Geer. Bess Ridgeway spends a magical summer on her uncle's farm in West Virgina complete with exploring caves, searching for hidden treasure and riding horses. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 2nd pr., 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 432 pages. James Ellroy--Demon Dog of American Letters--goes straight to the tragic heart of 1962 Hollywood with a wild riff on the Marilyn Monroe death myth in an astonishing, behind-the-headlines crime epic. Ellroy dissects 1960s LA, the failing Hollywood studio system, the American addiction to porn and drugs, our willingness to defame and dethrone and murder, and in doing so writes his most relevant novel in years. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Sheed and Ward, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with faded spine, 480 pages. Richard Kostelanetz's monumental evisceration of the American book world circa 1974--the self-appointed backslapping elites, the perpetual disdain for the unconventional, the laziness in book reviewing and fear of losing one's status when criticising the wrong thing--remains, as a final sadness, itself a rare out of print tome. Kostelanetz has written perhaps the most fearless exploration of literary politics in print, taking on and naming the titans at the top of the heap, dissecting the power structures that emerged in the 1950s and 60s, and the emergence of the plutocratic hierarchies that continue to dominate publishing. Outing the various cliques as mobs, and using apt and amusing mafia parallels, Kostelanetz is unrelenting in his meticulousness, and counteracts the status quo with a passionate defence of the avant-garde, using the second half of the book to bring light to the various emerging authors of experimental poetry, fiction, and mixed media works around the time. At times a touch long-winded and overfed with quotes, this nevertheless is an essential read for those requiring a hard slap as to the inherent evil of the corporate book world and why indie is the only way forward. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Riverhead Books, 1st US, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The secrets people kept, the lies they told. In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve. Here, women are domestically trapped by predatory men. Ireland's folklore and politics loom large, and poverty, emotional and material, seeps through every crack. By an award-winning Irish writer, her second book. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Allison & Busby Limited, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY MARSTON on the title page. In Victoria's England, a rowdy crowd boards the Great Western Excursion train on their way to an illegal bare-knuckles fight in Maidenhead north of London . A brutal murder on the train brings Scotland Yard's Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck to stop the train murders, by a murderer who uses a noose as a death weapon--is this a 'public execution, a retribution killing? Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. In this unique blend of historical fiction and cutting-edge suspense, author Diane Wei Liang succeeds in delivering an incredible mystery veiled behind the red curtain of contemporary Chinese life and culture. Set in Beijing "The Eye of Jade" introduces readers to the enigmatic Mei Wang, the country's first successful female private investigator, and her struggle to uncover the location of a rare and treasured artifact that is believed to have been absconded from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution. For Wang this is a task of special importance, and can only stand to make her later life and reputation glimmer, but as she soon finds in the back alleys, this is not going to be easy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED by the author on the title page, without dedication. Signed with upper case signature JASPER to the title page. Complete with 2 limited edition postcards (Dodo Manual/Speed Camera Photo), upgrade and instruction leaflet for upgrade. Very light age toning to the text block although this is an as-new, unread copy. The first of the "Thursday Next" novels. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st US, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED by the author on the title page, without dedication. Jasper Fforde's novel introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England. In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world's Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. London, Ingram, Cooke, and Co., 1st transl. thus, 1853, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, marbled boards with black leather spine and corners. 100 pages, illustrated frontis, drawing on title page. Preface on Fable, The Fabulists and La Fontaine by the translator, text is formatted in double columns per page. Name on inside front cover, otherwise a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket that's price-clipped, 316 pages. This book is a fascinating combination of literary detection and biography, capturing lives of extraordinary people who inspired memorable characters in ficiton.

Hardcover. NY/London, Overlook Duckworth, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Sven Norberg searches for his mezzo-soprano wife in the midwestern town of Trude. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 136 pages. Minna wishes for many things. She wishes she understood the quote taped above her mother's typewriter:Fact and fiction are different truths. She wishes her mother would stop writing long enough to really listen to her. She wishes her house were peaceful and orderly like her friend Lucas's. Most of all, she wishes she could find a vibrato on her cello and play Mozart the way he deserves to be played. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 184 pages. INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front fly leaf, in addition the there is a handwritten greeting card from Losure. The author presents this enthralling true story as a fanciful narrative featuring the original Cottingley fairy photos and previously unpublished drawings and images from the family archives. A delight for everyone with a fondness for fairies, and for anyone who has ever started something that spun out of control. Back matter includes source notes, a bibliography, and an index. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 3rd pr, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 262 pages. A very clean, tight copy. Told through weddings, deaths, holiday dinners, and dreams, the story of three generations of the Markowitzes is revealed.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt and Co., 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Rikki Ducornet's boldest imaginative act yet-a brilliant novel about the Marquis de Sade that will forever change the way we regard one of history's most notorious men. Picture a dramatic courtroom scene: during the French Revolution a fan-maker is on trial because of a manuscript seized in her rooms and her friendship with the Marquis de Sade, the notorious author of Justine, who has already been condemned and imprisoned by the same court for his sexual transgressions. Not only has she made exquisite and sexually provocative fans for her friend, but she has also coauthored with the Marquis a book about the infamous Spanish missionary, Bishop Landa, accusing him of massacres and other hideous abuses against the native population of the New World. The men of the court are so consumed with punishing the authors of this scandalous book that they are blinded to the folly of their own accusations against the Marquis. 212 pages, clean copy.

Hardcover. Flame Tree Publishing, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 128 pages. From classic Star Wars, Blade Runner and Matrix all the way back to The Day the Earth Stood Still sf movie posters have lurked and flickered across our subways, streets and bedroom walls since the early 1950s. From the kitsch of the Attack of the 50ft Woman, through to the many versions of Time Machine or War of the Worlds the 1980s hailed a more sophisticated filmic appeal for our sf dollar, with the onset of green screen and cgi. The films may change, but somehow the posters remain the same: geeky, powerful, escapist fantasy, and we love them all! The book features an arguable, quirky selection of what we think are the best.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The three stories in The Farmer's Daughter display a writer whose gift is in full flower. The title novella is the uncompromising, heartbreaking tale of Sarah, a home-schooled fifteen-year old girl recently transplanted by her somewhat oblivious parents to rural Montana, who is learning that the world is larger than her fundamentalist mother wants her to know. In the rapture of playing music, riding her horse, and enjoying the natural world, Sarah searches for clues to understand her own coming of age. But when her mother runs off with another man, the girl is left to deal with an act of unexpected brutality that will test her faith in the world she is starting to embrace. In Brown Dog Redux, Harrison shifts to the lighter side. The beloved recurring character Brown Dog is killing time in Toronto where he's fled to save his adopted daughter, Berry, from being locked in an institution. But Toronto has run out of welcome and BD, still looking for love, enlists the help of an unexpected benefactor to sneak Berry back into the States on the tour bus of an Indian rock band called Thunderskins, with riotously funny results. Harrison's final tale, Games of Night, is the witty, ribald, and occasionally harrowing memoir of a retired werewolf in contemporary times. Misdiagnosed with a rare blood disorder brought on by the bite of a Mexican hummingbird, he attempts to lead a normal life, but is nevertheless plagued by hazy, feverish episodes of epic lust, physical appetite, athletic exertions, and outbursts of violence under the full moon. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Soho Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. In a 1930s Dominican Republic village, the scream of a woman in labor rings out like the shot heard around Hispaniola. Every detail of the birth scene--the balance of power between the middle-aged Senora and her Haitian maid, the babies' skin color, not to mention which child is to survive--reverberates throughout Edwidge Danticat's Farming of Bones. In fact, rather than a celebration of fecundity, the unexpected double delivery gels into a metaphor for the military-sponsored mass murder of Haitian emigrants. As the Senora's doctor explains: "Many of us start out as twins in the belly and do away with the other." But Danticat's powerful second novel is far from a currently modish victimization saga, and can hold its own with such modern classics as One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Color Purple. Danticat writes one of the most lovely portrayals of the dynamics between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share an island and have engaged in conflict since before the independence of Haiti. The author is able to paint a picture that does not seem to me to take sides, but simply states the reality of what happened through the fictional lives of the characters. I am interested in the way that the relationships between the Haitians and Dominicans are not always strained, and sometimes are extremely close, but those relationships are challenged in the middle of the political strains.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author's second novel, featuring Marina Robinson, a 'failure analyst' engineer, who heads to India to investigate the 10-year past death of her sister.