Softcover. Ann Arbor MI, University of Michigan Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. The first known mystery written by an African-American, set in 1930s Harlem. Rudolph Fisher, one of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, weaves an intricate story of a native African king, who, after receiving a degree from Harvard University, settles into Harlem in the 1930s. He becomes a "conjure-man," a fortune-teller, a mysterious figure who remains shrouded in darkness while his clients sit directly across from him, singly bathed in light. It is in this configuration that one of these seekers of the revelation of fate discovers he is speaking to a dead man. Thus a complex mystery begins, involving suspects and characters who are vividly and richly portrayed, and who dramatically illuminate for the reader a time, a place, and a people. Clean copy.
Softcover. Lincoln NE, University of Nebraska Press, reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 311 pages. A 1913 novel about a black homesteader in South Dakota based on the author's experiences in the midwest as a young man. He later went on to fame as a celebrated early filmmaker. Clean copy.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. Compared to the $40 million the cops think he stole, seventy-five thousand dollars may not sound like much. But it's all the money in the world to the struggling Cuban exiles of Miami who rescued Morgan the Raider. So when it's snatched by a man the Cubans trusted, Morgan sets out to get it back. A simple favor--but as the bodies pile up...dead men and beautiful women...the Raider wonders what kind of Latin hell he's gotten himself into, and just who or what is the mysterious Consummata? Begun by mystery master MICKEY SPILLANE in the late 1960s and completed four decades later by his buddy MAX ALLAN COLLINS (Road to Perdition), The Consummata is the long-awaited follow-up to Spillane's bestseller The Delta Factor--a breathtaking tale of treachery, sensuality, and violence, showcasing two giants of crime fiction at their pulse-pounding, two-fisted best. Like new.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A Scotland Yard procedural with the New York Mafia moving in on a pair of psychotic London supercriminals, the Magnus cousins, modeled on the infamous real-life Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie. The lead is Detective Inspector Derek Torry, a lapsed Catholic whose fiancee dumps him because of his guilts (he hasn't bedded her once in their two-year engagement). Soon Torry is making it with Jenny, a suspect in a triple bomb-murder, whose former boyfriend was arrested at Dover for smuggling 150 pounds of heroin into the country in his Bentley (she tipped the coppers). Vendettas explode left and right. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Franklin Center PA, Franklin Library, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, full bright red leather with vibrant gilt lettering and embellishments. All edges gilt, raised bands on spine, silk bookmark, marbled endpapers. SIGNED BY ROTH on a blank prelim page. Nathan Zuckerman's account of his younger brother Henry and the story about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. Norfolk VA, Crippen & Landru Publishers, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 249 pages. Best-known for her novels, Margaret Millar also wrote a handful of short stories, tales much admired by peers (including her husband Kenneth Millar, who used the pseudonym Ross Macdonald) but never collected in book form. Now Macdonald's biographer Tom Nolan has gathered and introduced those stories in this volume, which includes two all-but-unknown novellas from the 1940s. Here are half-a-dozen exhibits in evidence of the case made by English author and critic H.R.F. Keating, who judged: "No woman in twentieth-century American mystery writing is more important than Margaret Millar." Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket with wrap-around art by Trina Schart Hyman. Clean copy.
New York, J.B. Lipincott, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 248 pages. Dust jacket price clipped, otherwise like new. In search of a less restrictive way to live, two young people break away from their colony of Persons on the planet Earth, become involved with the inferior Creatures who inhabit Earth, and are thrust into the forefront of a revolution.
Softcover. Berkeley CA, Black Lizard Books, reprint, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, mass market paperback, 125 pages. A teenage girl is raped and murdered. A father turns his back on his son. A vicious press lord turns justice into a carnival. A terrified boy is railroaded. In the twisted world of Jim Thompson, everyone is guilty, and the worst crimes are unpunishable. Bookseller's stamp on inside front cover, price stamp on first page.
Hardcover. Chicago, A.C. McClurg, 1st, 1907, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in red cloth with 3-color decoration on front cover. The design and color frontispiece are by J.C. Lyendecker. Hinges cracked and front fly leaf gone, but a solid, clean copy otherwise.
Softcover. Sydney AU, Angus & Robertson, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers. INSCRIBED BY SAYER on the title page. An inner-city community is under threat from the developers and their crooked friends. One woman leads the battle against them, a battle fought in nightclubs and council chambers, in hotel rooms and high on rooftops. Juanita Neilson disappeared from Kings Cross 20 years ago and became part of an urban legend. This is a fictionalized account of what might have happened to this beautiful woman, campaigner, political journalist and society heiress. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1st, 1868, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 221 pages plus 2 w/ads. Hardcover. "Helping Hand Series". Red cloth boards of inlaid design, gilt lettering. Pen & ink etched frontispiece w/tissue guard, & decorated half-title. In remarkable shape considering age, still a tight book. Edges and pages yellowed a bit with age.
Hardcover. Franklin Center PA, The Franklin Library, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, rich maroon leather boards with decorations in gold on front and rear boards. Title in gold on spine between raised leather bands. All edges are gilt. Text is clean and crisp. Satin ribbon marker. SIGNED BY PLIMPTON on a blank prelim page. In April 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article that stunned the sports community. George Plimpton's 13-page profile of Sidd Finch, a mysterious pitcher who had been signed by the New York Mets and reportedly threw 168 mph, came complete with photos from spring training, scouting reports, and interviews with Mets players and management. A week later, SI apologized to readers around the world for their role in what is generally regarded as the greatest hoax in the history of sports journalism. The magazine had teamed up with the legendary author and Paris Review bon vivant for an April Fool's Day prank of unprecedented proportions. After the success of the article, Plimpton decided to turn the story into a novel -- a rousing baseball fairy tale that is considered one of the most memorable sports novels of the last half-century.
Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 275 pages. In April 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article that stunned the sports community. George Plimpton's 13-page profile of Sidd Finch, a mysterious pitcher who had been signed by the New York Mets and reportedly threw 168 mph, came complete with photos from spring training, scouting reports, and interviews with Mets players and management. A week later, SI apologized to readers around the world for their role in what is generally regarded as the greatest hoax in the history of sports journalism. The magazine had teamed up with the legendary author and Paris Review bon vivant for an April Fool's Day prank of unprecedented proportions. After the success of the article, Plimpton decided to turn the story into a novel -- a rousing baseball fairy tale that is considered one of the most memorable sports novels of the last half-century. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cleveland, World Publishing, 1st, 1967, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket with chunks gone from spine, 159 pages. B&w illustrations by Leonard Shortall. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Ken Laager. Mavis St. Paul had been a rich man's mistress. Now she was a corpse. And every cop in New York City was hunting for the two-bit punk accused of putting a knife in her. But the punk was innocent. He'd been set up to take the fall by some cutie who was too clever by half. My job? Find that cutie--before the cutie found me. The MWA Grandmaster's first novel--published for the first time ever under the title he originally intended it to have! When originally published as THE MERCENARIES, the book was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel Westlake has won three Edgar Awards and received numerous other honors, including an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of "The Grifters". Like new.
NY, Harper & Row, 1st US, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with some rubbing to rear panel. 133 pages. Black & white illustrations by Laszlo Kubinyi. When Bridget sees her younger brother, Simon, standing at the window under a full moon, begging unseen musicians to allow him to come back, then hears a careless remark made by an angry old woman, she begins to suspect that he is a changeling, a fairy child sent to replace her real brother, abducted in infancy. This would explain his volatile personality---sweet and coaxing one minute, angry and vicious the next---and his refusal to go near her blacksmith father's forge.Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2nd pr., 1926, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in dark blue cloth with light blue lettering. No dust jacket. A young English scholar is driven by recurring dreams to become a classical scholar, which later enables him to save a woman in Greece who, during a revival of ancient pagan rites and beliefs, is falsely accused of witchcraft. Mild shelf wear, spine shows fading, clean.
Hardcover. Lodon, Gollancz , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Jane Langton's Homer Kelly mysteries have been delighting readers for over a decade. The bumbling Harvard professor and ex-Boston detective is back, but this time he's venturing far from his usual New England stomping grounds--all the way to Florence, Italy. Sprinkled with brain-teasing clues from Dante's masterpiece, The Dante Game is a suspenseful romp in one of the world's most divine settings.
Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The sixth Joe Gunther mystery.
NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glossy pictorial boards, 32 pages illustrated in 2-colors by Bonsall. An Early I CAN READ Book. Light marking on inside front cover, otherwise clean.
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.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Chuck Pyle. Once an art smuggler, now a respectable art dealer, Ovid Wiley awoke to find his former partner stabbed to death on his gallery floor. That was strange enough--but when a CIA agent showed up to spring him from NYPD custody, things got a lot stranger. Now the CIA is offering to clear up the murder charge, but only in return for a favor: They want Ovid to fly to Vatican City and trace the trail of a renegade priest who has gone missing with millions in church funds. What's the connection? The priest's lover, a woman Ovid knew in his smuggling days. Like new.