Hardcover. New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 292 pages. Translated from Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden. Black cloth, gilt lettering to spine. Mylar cover. Light wear to dust jacket, else like new. Released as a translated to English novel in 1978 as a follow up to the monster epic historical fantasy "Terra Nostra," Fuentes displays his versatile written skills with adept perception. This is a captivating spy novel that features many characters but focuses on Felix Maldonado who is a low level Mexican bureaucrat. Maldonado is portrayed as a sort of everyman who suddenly finds himself thrust into bigger than life circumstances. On a day when the president of Mexico is making an appearance Maldonado, who was looking forward to the day suddenly finds himself being involved unvoluntarily into an assassination plot. He is declared dead and given a new identity, a sly bit of writting to create another faceless citizen of Mexico. From here the novel takes off into twists and turns to unravel the mystery and Maldonados and others role in the assassination attempt.
Hardcover. Chiselbury, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in glossy pictorial boards, 356 pages. An amazing real-life story of espionage, of courage and resistance, and of friendship and love. It pulls back the veil on the hidden history of the struggle for the identity of the Resistance in France. The life of 'André' Joseph Scheinmann is more intriguing and compelling than any work of fiction. His true-life story of derring-do starts as a Jewish youth in Munich, whose family moves to France in 1933 to escape the Nazi tide. He joins the French army at the outbreak of WW2 and escapes from a prisoner-of war camp after the bitterly brief fight for France in the summer of 1940. André becomes a spy and saboteur for the British and Free French whilst working undercover as translator and liaison with the German high command at the Brittany headquarters of the French National Railroads. Summoned by the British, he clandestinely crosses the Channel for initiation and training as an MI6 agent in England. His network betrayed during his absence, he is arrested on his return to France. André then begins an even more perilous journey with interrogation in Gestapo prisons and the little-known Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace, before being transferred to Dachau and Allach, ahead of the advancing Allies. Illustrated with over 120 vintage and color photographs and letters. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Remainder mark on bottom edge, light shelf-wear, else a clean, tight copy. A lively non-fiction account of an art dealer's long quest to own an original painting by Andy Warhol. An illuminating view of the inner workings of the art world and the interplay of artists, collectors, galleries, auction houses, etc.
Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Teenager Patrick Gates considers himself a future millionaire and irresistible to girls. When suddenly Mum moves out, things change. Paper tanning, otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. London, Harvill Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a translucent dust jacket, 165 pages. Illustrated with Steve Pyke's b&w photographs. SIGNED BY BOTH O'GRADY AND PYKE on the title page. Stranded in a dismal flat in England, the protagonist remembers his happy childhood in Ireland, the rough living and working conditions in England, and his only love. The language is quite simple and often Hiberno Irish, but deeply imaginative and so lyrical, that the line between prose and poetry gets blurred. The beautiful black/white pictures added to this book, and the author's ability to portray Irish music help to give an insight into Irish culture. Clean copy.
Softcover. New York, Popular Library, 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 126 pages. Paperback. Popular Library Mystery #763. Mild soil. Ink notation on front page. Light creasing to paper wrappers.
Hardcover. Guilford CT, Lyons Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Burned out by working the baseball beat for years, in the summer of 1922 Damon Runyon was looking for a new sport to cover for The New York American as a change of pace. Having pilloried golf just a few years before, he went to Saratoga that August to sample horse racing and found that "There, right in front of him, were so many of the characters he so loved from his time covering the comings and goings of the Manhattan night crowd." This was just the tonic Runyon needed to emerge from his malaise. Runyon didn't just cover the great races and which horse won: he would get to the track days before and roam along the backstretch, speaking with the trainers, the gamblers, the rich owners, and the wise guys, many of which became model characters in his fiction and in the musical Guys and Dolls. This book collects the best of Runyon's horse racing columns to 1936, when he moved on to other beats. 391 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Free Press, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls. Mining that same fertile soil, his debut collection, I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, brings together thirteen stories charting the pathos of interior lives. Among the colorful people readers meet are: old man Meecham, who escapes from his nursing home only to find his son has rented their homestead to "white trash"; Quincy Nell Qualls, who not only falls in love with the town lothario but, pregnant, faces an inescapable end when he abandons her; Finis and Doneita Beasley, whose forty-year marriage is broken up by a dead dog; and Bobby Pettijohn -- awakened in the night by a search party after a body is discovered in his back woods. William Gay expertly sets these conflicted characters against lush backcountry scenery and defies our moral logic as we grow to love them for the weight of their human errors. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, D. Appleton-Century, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardbound, 132 pages. Black & white illustrations by Reginald Birch. Light soiling to covers, endpapers. Soiling & chipping to dust jacket. Brodart cover.
Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Books , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Presents the author's reflections on small-town America, current affairs, and insights and anecdotes from his personal life. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Doubleday Doran, 1st US, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 326 pages, green cloth covers, gilt lettering on spine. Dust jacket with edgewear, darkening to endpapers.
Hardcover. NY, Clarion Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A young Jewish girl from a middle-class Russian family recalls the events of her childhood, both good and bad, in a small village just before the Revolution of 1917. Though classed as fiction, this reads more like a vivid memoir of the author's childhood. B&w drawings by Gennady Schikarioff.
Hardcover. New York, George H. Doran, 1st, 1914, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray paper-covered boards with titles stamped in gilt. Orange and white pictorial paste-on cover. Orange and white pictorial endpapers. 36 illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg. Includes a section of Flagg illustrations spoofing other contemporary colleagues in their styling, including Howard Chandler Christy, Harrison Fisher, Charles Dana Gibson, among others. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 103 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black & white illustrations by Richard Egielski. Very nice, clean condition. Price-clipped dust jacket.
Hardcover. London, Gollancz, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Brown is a pseudonym for an Australian academic. Red boards, yellow dust jacket with black titles. Very slight rubbing and edgewear to dust jacket, pages clean, crisp and unmarked; a very clean, tight copy in great condition.
Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 157 pages. The classic novel of sexual obsession and murder amid the star-making machinery of Hollywood in the 1950s. "She was as white as marble, but she looked lovely.Her hair was splayed out in fine strands of gold, and her lips were bright, rich red, and there was a green eye shadow on her eyelids You could see that because her eyes were closed and she was lying very still. She was lying still and she wasn't breathing." With its portraits of washed-up directors, jaded leading men, and a ruthless cop whose one-track mind leads straight to a cyanide pellet, I Wake Up Screaming is a magnificent thriller by a Hollywood insider whose screenplays included Lady in the Lake. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York , Orchard Books, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 128 pages, illustrated with b&w photographs and sketches by Lewin. A memoir of his brief stint as a professional wrestler.
Hardcover. NY, Beginner Books/Random House, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 62 pages. Illustrated with b&w photos by Lynn Fayman. An early reprint of this classic Beginner Book authored by the wife of Dr. Seuss. Flap price of $2.50.
Hardcover. New York , Viking, 1st, 1962, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 208 pages. Illustrations by Corydon Bell. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half title page. Light wear, rubbing and foxing to price clipped dust jacket. Faint foxing to edges, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 188 pages. His second collection of short stories - 'quick and precise. . . obsessed with city life and the sexual body/erotic mind.' (His first collection was nominated for the National Book Award and this was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the six best works of fiction published that year). Price sticker on front flap otherwise a clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 1945, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, tan cloth with spine label lightly chipped. 315 pages, two short novels in one book. Inscription on front fly leaf. Otherwise clean, no dust jacket.
Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #814. Cover art by Milton Charles. Light creasing to paper wrappers.