Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 11th pr., Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Novelist, essayist, and public intellectual James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the postwar era, and one of the greatest African-American writers of this century. "Early Novels and Stories" presents the novels and short stories that established Baldwin's reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism with rare verbal eloquence. This volume includes his first novel, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (1953), "Giovanni's Room" (1956), and other early works. 970 pages, Remainder mark to bottom edge otherwise like new.
Hardcover. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1902, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 365 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Colored decoration on front cover, light rubbing. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf.
Hardcover. NY, Library of America, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 860 pages. Writing with equal insight about New York City, Hollywood, and the small-town Pennsylvania world where he grew up, John O'Hara cultivated an unsentimental and often unsparing realism, aiming, he said, "to record the way people talked and thought and felt . . . with complete honesty." Praised by contemporaries including Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, he wrote about sex, drinking, and social class with a frankness ahead of its time. The fiction he published in The New Yorker (more than any other writer to this day) came to epitomize the kind of short story featured in that magazine, and his impeccable ear and skillful dialogue have influenced later writers such as Raymond Carver. Bringing together sixty stories written over four decades--the largest, most comprehensive collection of O'Hara's stories ever published--former New York Times Book Review editor Charles McGrath presents a fresh and arresting new perspective on one of American literature's master storytellers. Clean copy.
Softcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin , proof wraps, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, an uncorrected proof in green wrappers, great condition. A collection of three novellas, one of which features Harrison"s memorable character, Brown Dog.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2nd pr., 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. An excellent copy of the Nobel laureate's eighth collection of shorter fiction.
Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran and Company, reprint, 1923, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with tan cloth spine with a blue title label. Preface By Hillaire Belloc. 'Bramah attained commercial and critical success with his creation of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller. He first appears in The Wallet of Kai Lung which was rejected by eight publishers before Grant Richards published it in 1900. It was still in print a hundred years later. The Kai Lung stories are humorous tales set in China, often with fantasy elements such as dragons and gods." Numeral 1 on copyright page, no date on title page, so suspected 2nd printing. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. First published in Norway in 2004, Knots is Gunnhild Oyehaug's radical collection of short stories that range from the surreal to the oddly mundane, and prod the discomforts of mental, sexual, and familial bonds. In both precise short-shorts and ruminative longer tales, Oyehaug meanders through the tangled, jinxed, and unavoidable conflicts of love and desire. From young Rimbaud's thwarted passions to the scandalous disappearance of an entire family, these stories do the chilling work of tracing the outlines of what could have been in both the quietly morbid and the delightfully comical. A young man is born with an uncuttable umbilical cord and spends his life physically tethered to his mother; a tipsy uncle makes an uncomfortable toast with unforeseeable repercussions; and a dissatisfied deer yearns to be seen. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, NA, ND, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-paginated. Black & white illustrations. Pink endpapers. Preliminary page missing. Inscription at top of title page. Cover features image of girl and boy near a tree; decorated in red, blue, black, and gold. Some light rubbing at top and base of spine, and corners. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Six novellas, one written for this edition, about Brooklyn cop Abe Levine.
Hardcover. New York, William Morrow & Co, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 250 pages, spotless and tight copy with dust jacket. Pulitzer Prize winner's debut collection of short stories, set in his native Washington, D.C.
Softcover. London, Faber and Faber, 1st paperback., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 257 pages. Softcover. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Minor corner and edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket, 248 pages. This short story collection contains: A Time of Learning; The Mysteries of Life in an Orderly Manner; Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team; Home Coming; The Battle of the Suits; Tom Wolfe's My Name; Learn to Say Good-by; A Little Collar for the Monkey; Public Address System; Foot-Shaped Shoes; Horace Chooney, M.D.; The Linden Trees; Breach of Promise; and The Singing Lesson. Stated first edition. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, W.W. Norton, 1st, August 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, SIGNED BY AUTHOR. 224 pages. Newspaper clippings laid in. Light edge wear to price-clipped dust jacket. Else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. N Y, Random House, 1st, 1940, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Previous owner's sticker, name blacked-out on front end papers. Spine with light fade. Internally very good.
Softcover. NY, American News Company, reprint, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Original pictorial green wrappers. 32 pages. BAL 3360, state 2, with the Aetna Life insurance ad on the back cover. B&w line illustrations R.T. Sperry. The copyright page states 1874, The Aetna ad claims assets of Jan. 1 1877 in it's ad. Front wrapper with moderate size chunk gone from top spine edge (see pic), chip to top right corner, small tear to bottom at center with mnor paper loss. Includes such works as The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract, The Undertaker's Chat, and ten other stories. The upper wrapper features Sperry"s illustration of the Jumping Frog seated beneath a mushroom while smoking a cigarette and reading a copy of this very pamphlet. Overall, good plus copy of this fragile item.
Softcover. Freedom CA, Crossing Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 150 pages. The author's second book. In 10 astute, mildly zany and often wickedly funny stories, Kirshenbaum peers at a multifaceted assortment of modern relationships. A wife who decides to organize her life by making lists of "Things to Do" discovers she married not for love, but for a good health plan. If you are a woman with a past, there is no point to an attachment with a man who thinks only of the future, according to "Past Perfect." Reality may encompass a gray Honda Civic in suburban Connecticut, but to the narrator of "Wheels," true love is a sleek, cobalt-blue Alfa Romeo on the open road. "Pravda" describes two women, friends of many years, who spend a fall afternoon outdoors on a bench discussing Marxism, men and amorality. An American couple who have come to Romania in search of romance to save their marriage find only "Travail"; the highlight of their vacation is the sight of three stuffed goats in pink tutus.
Hardcover. London, UK, Jonathan Cape, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 279 pages. Blue cloth, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket, else a very nice, tight, clean copy. This story collection contains: First Love; The Butcher's Daughter; The Whore Mother; The Garden of Eden; Northern Summers; The Dead; The Enemy; The Man Who Dreamt of Lobsters; and The Meat Eaters.
NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray paper covered boards with gilt lettering, top edge gilt, spine ends and corners with light wear, First Edition, frontispiece portrait of author with tissue guard. INSCRIBED BY DASKAM on front fly leaf and dated May 1903. Daskam(1876-1961) was a prolific author of adult and children's fiction whose best-known work was MEMOIRS OF A BABY (1904), a satire on modern methods of child training. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Tucson AZ, Dennis McMillan, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Firmly rooted in the hard-boiled tradition, these 13 stories from Phillips showcase the cool exuberance of black Los Angeles PI Ivan Monk, whose family connections tend to prod him into taking cases no one in his right mind would investigate. Nostalgia is a recurrent theme, as in "Through the Fog Softly," which introduces Monk's father, Josiah Monk, as a soldier in Korea, and in Monk's love of 1950s and '60s cars. Some tales verge on fantasy, such as "The King Alfred Plan," which imagines a scheme to round up blacks into concentration camps. A pseudo-screenplay, "Bring Me the Head of Osama Bin-Laden," is the weakest effort in an otherwise strong collection. At his best, Monk displays something of the cockiness of Robert Parker's Spenser and the racial awareness of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. Monk has a toughness all his own, however, and a noir sensibility shines brightly in stories like "Lowball" and "The Raiders." Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, reprint, 1836, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue textured cloth with decorative gilt title on spine. Vol. 2 ONLY of a ten volume set. This book combines the 3rd and 4th volumes in the original 18 volume set. 213 + 238 pages. Frontis. engraving and illustrated title page reprinted from the 1832 edition. This collection of moral tales written by Maria Edgeworth explores themes of education, family relationships, and social issues in 19th century Ireland. The stories are entertaining and engaging while also providing valuable lessons about life and morality. Edgeworth was a significant figure in the development of the novel as a literary form and her work is still widely read and admired today. Solid binding, mild foxing. Previous owner's name on title page.
Hardcover. London, Constable, 1st UK, 1937, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, orange cloth covers with blue titles to spine and drawing on front. 312 pages, 10 b&w plates by Nicolas Bentley. A marvelous collection by one of America's most colorful and gifted writers. Contents: Breach of promise -- Romance in the roaring forties -- Dream street rose -- The old doll's house -- Blood pressure -- The bloodhounds of Broadway -- Tobias the terrible -- The snatching of bookie bob -- The lily of st. pierre -- Hold 'em yale! -- Earthquake -- "Gentlemen, the king!" -- A nice price -- Broadway financier -- The brain goes home. Previous owner's bookplate inside front cover. Otherwise clean. Mild shelfwear.