The Album

New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1933. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good. 8vo, bound in full red leather gilt, very good, light rubbing and dryness to joints, some areas of discoloration to rear board. With sticker on rear pastedown from Preservation Technologies stating this was deacidified with their patented process. We purchased a large number of similarly bound Rinehart books from a local institution that was deaccessioning duplicates and were told that these were Rinehart family copies, but have no proof of this. Here's a precis of the book from the Mysterious Bookshop: "Even in the early 1930s, Crescent Place is a neighborhood out of the past. The five Victorian mansions and the remote patch of pasture placed between them have the air of the 1890s, even as the city-once miles away from this idyllic retreat-encroaches and surrounds the enclave. But while these rarified residences may appear calm on the outside, their interiors contain dark secrets, prolonged feuds, and generations of high-toned trouble. In these houses are a husband and wife who fight constantly, and another couple who hasn't spoken to each other in two decades. There is a widow in permanent mourning and a daughter whom the newspapers call psychotic. And there is a bedridden old woman who is about to be killed with an ax. When her murder shatters the well-mannered quiet of the cul-de-sac, the tabloids delight in trumpeting Crescent Place's peculiarities. But as the search for the killer intensifies, it becomes clear that the area's strangest secrets have yet to be revealed.A suspenseful mystery enriched by sly social satire and set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, The Album is a memorable whodunnit from one of the most beloved and best selling authors of the Golden Age era.