[some wear to book at spine ends, small bookstore stamp on front pastedown; jacket heavily worn, spine sunned, irregular fading to front panel, small pieces missing at top corner of front panel and top corner of rear panel near spine, top half-inch of spine missing, crescent-shaped stain on front panel, various small tears along bottom edge, etc.]. The author's first novel, set in a veteran's hospital. View More...
[light shelfwear only, one-time owner's signature at top of ffep; jacket somewhat age-toned, with a few tiny tears and minor paper loss surrounding top of spine, short tears at bottom hinges, one additional tiny closed tear at top of front panel]. Bates's second published novel, "the story of a woman's passionate love for her husband's romantic and shiftless brother. There are three major characters, Catherine -- Charles, her husband -- and Andrew, the lover. Their story is acted out against the background of the English countryside ablaze with the beauty which Catherine sees and feels ... View More...
[nice tight copy, very slight bumping to bottom corners, vintage price sticker (The White House) at upper corner of rear pastedown; jacket lightly soiled, a handful of tiny nicks in bottom edge of rear panel]. An early work by Bates, "a novel of life in the poor quarter of an industrial town" in the English Midlands, the titular street being "a narrow cul-de-sac surrounded by factories, breweries, and sordid streets of houses." According to at least one critic, this was the book with which the author really began to find his voice, drawing on his family history and his own No... View More...
[solid copy, slight dust-darkening to top edge, top of spine lightly bumped/faded, faint bookseller's stamp on front pastedown; jacket worn along hinges, a few tiny tears/chips, slight paper loss at top of spine and at a couple of corners, old price sticker on rear flap]. The author's first novel, set in Germany during the Allied occupation immediately following World War II, and dealing with conflicts between the members of a British Intelligence Unit. The author was the devoted husband of the late Iris Murdoch, whose literary fame ultimately eclipsed his own, and has published a pair of mo... View More...
(price-clipped) [slightly bumped at bottom corners, otherwise a nice clean copy with minor shelfwear; jacket has a number of small chips along top and bottom edges and at top of spine]. The fantasy author's "serious" book, a small-racist-Southern-town novel that served as the basis for a remarkably effective low-budget, shot-on-location film adaptation by Roger Corman, released in 1961, with William Shatner as a rabble-rousing outsider who comes into town and makes a whole lotta trouble for everybody. View More...
[nice copy, square and solid, faint shelfwear at top and bottom edges; jacket edgeworn, various small tears, still attractive]. "Against an authentic background of war-torn Spain, [the author] tells of a struggle for a tremendously important military secret -- pitting the secret agents of four nations against one another and ranging in his story from Madrid to Seville, from underground dugouts to airplanes above the battle lines." One of numerous thrillers by this pseudonymous authorial team to feature Colonel Alastair Granby, D.S.O., of the British Intelligence Service. View More...
[nice clean book, appears unread, a bit of wear to spine ends and bottom corners, bottom rear corner bumped; jacket has some minor chipping at spine ends, one-inch closed tear and associated creasing at top of rear panel, irregular light dust-soiling to rear panel]. "The hero of this romance is a man on horseback, vigorous young Brian, Duke of Malvern in Illyria. Illyria is the kingdom of earth, empire of the illusions essential to human happiness; the arena, therefore, of youth's battle for his dreams." The author's very uncommon first novel, a piece of pseudo-historical-fictional ... View More...
[moderate wear at all corners, very slight fraying to cloth at bottom corners, very light foxing to page edges; jacket worn and soiled, with a few small tears, and a very amateurish tape-repair along the top edge (including a shallow chip at top of rear panel replaced with a piece of white paper, like nobody'd ever notice THAT)]. A sequel to the author's 1929 novel "Duchess Laura, Certain Days of Her Life" (published in the U.S. as "The Duchess Intervenes"), recounting more "episodes and adventures of the Duchess of Richborough, affectionately known as Duchess Laura."... View More...
[light shelfwear to book, top edge of text block a bit dust-soiled, small bookseller's rubber stamp at bottom corner of front pastedown (Bertrand Smith Acres of Books, Long Beach, California); jacket is worn and moderately soiled, with a small ragged chip at right side of top edge, and a large-ish chunk torn out of the rear panel (unfortunately taking quite a bit of the rear-jacket text with it)]. (color drawings) A curious piece of juvenile (I guess) fiction, about a little boy named Billy, who is seven years old when America enters World War I. (At least that's what the jacket blurb says; ... View More...
[minor shelfwear, small faded spot at base of spine cloth; jacket has a few small tears, some soiling/rubbing, small chip at base of spine, tiny chip at bottom of rear panel]. "A powerful story of modern China," centering around the mixed-race son born of a forced marriage between a Chinese woman and an American sea-captain. "With character and mind complicated by this conflicting blood, Hen-li develops into a leader of New China. The narrative of his passionate and all but tragic career, his vacillation between Western and Eastern viewpoints, becomes not only an unusual human do... View More...
(no dust jacket) [a reading/reference copy only, heavily worn, front hinge cracked, boards exposed at bottom corners, missing ffep, need I go on?]. Novel about "a Jewess born in the slums of a Levantine seaport [who] becomes a courtesan, selling her favors in the shabby cabarets of Eastern ports." The book was filmed under the title A DAUGHTER OF ISRAEL in 1928, a late silent starring Betty Blythe, of which the New York Times opined that "the most interesting point about it is that it was filmed in the countries of its backgrounds, which include Turkey, Egypt, Palestine and France." Regardle... View More...
[slight bumping to several corners, tiny stain on bottom of text block, one-time owner's signature on top of front pastedown; jacket is quite nice, with just a bit of wear at the spine ends]. A weirdly "lost" novel about "a real American girl -- her magnificent day-dreams, her jealous boyfriends, her strange enthusiasms, her searing disappointments, her tolerant but puzzled parents." Let me explain the "lost" business. A movie called JANIE was released by Warner Bros. in 1944; it starred Joyce Reynolds, then a 19-year-old ingenue whose career subsequently went nowhere (although, to be fair,... View More...
[nice clean copy, minimal shelfwear, very slight bumping to top corners; jacket has small tears and occasional minor paper loss at most corners, light surface rubbing and moderate soiling]. An early novel by this English author, "a story of maternal greed and simplicity and their effect on the lives of the children of two widows." Among the quotes from British reviews lifted for the American jacket blurb is one positing the novel as "reminiscent in its passion and power of the Bronte Sisters" (what, all of them?) -- rather an interesting observation in light of the fact that Ms. Bentley, lat... View More...
[solid copy despite some slight deterioration to binding at spine ends, offsetting/discoloration to gutters, minor dust-soiling to top edge, one-time owner's signature on both pastedowns and on the ffep; jacket is color-faded at spine (although black lettering and graphic are still strong) but still quite attractive, and exceptionally clean given its textured surface]. The Romanian-born author's "first full-length novel of gypsy life," although he was already well-known for his short stories about these colorful folk and their exotic folkways. Set in New York City (the East Side, specificall... View More...
[some soiling to page edges and bottom edges of covers, tiny frayed nick at top of spine; jacket edgeworn with various tiny nicks and tears, minor paper loss at top of spine, age-yellowing to rear panel]. Novel about a young Italian-American girl, Maria Caproni, whose burning ambition is to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Much of the action takes place in New York's Little Italy neighborhood, and the narrative is populated with all sorts of "colorful" urban characters: Connolly and Weinstein, an Irishman and a Jew (there's an original pairing!), junk-peddling partners who become mill... View More...
(no dust jacket) [solid copy, small dent at top of front cover, light fading to spine cloth, light dust-darkening to top edge]. The author goes again to his seemingly inexhaustible well of stories based on his early life, much of which was spent wandering with the gypsy tribes of Roumania. View More...
(no dust jacket) [good solid copy, minor deterioration to cloth at top of spine, light external soiling, vintage bookplate on front pastedown]. This Romanian-born author's first book, a first-person narrative by an investigator for a New York City charity organization, recounting the corruption and inequities he discovers (and is required to perpetrate) while working on the Lower East Side. In his introduction, John Reed writes: "Every person of intelligence and humanity who has seen the workings of Organised Charity knows what a deadening and life-sapping thing it is, how unnecessarily c... View More...
(price-clipped) [solid copy, only light shelfwear but quite a bit of fading to cloth at edges and spine, slight soiling to bottom page edges; jacket edgeworn, with a few small tears, scuffing/rubbing to front panel, very faded at spine (although title, decoration, and publisher's name still stand out)]. The story of a henpecked husband who, for twenty years, "suffered the tortures of a shrill, petty and bullying wife" -- until one evening, he lost his memory! "The adventures which then befell him, his meeting with the healthy, jovial Minnie Guest, his success in business, and grad... View More...
(no dust jacket) [reading/reference copy only: shelfworn, bumped corners, spine cloth faded, slight fraying at top of spine, spine turned, light staining to both covers, etc.]. Third novel by the eventually-blacklisted screenwriter/novelist, about a ex-convict farmhand who finds love for the first time with the young widow on whose farm he's employed. View More...
(no dust jacket) [moderately shelfworn copy, light bumping at several corners, slight exposure of board at bottom front corner, some soiling to edges of text block, gilt lettering on spine and front cover rubbed but still readable; an ex-library book, with label remnants on spine and pocket remnant on front pastedown; descriptive text from dust jacket glued to ffep]. "This vital novel has for its subject the insecurity of life in a machine age economy, though it is in no sense a 'thesis novel.'" (Well, that's a relief.) The book's setting is a large engineering firm in the English Mi... View More...
