A Deadly Shade of Gold by John D. MacDonald - 1974

New York: Delacorte/Lawrence (1979).. First Edition . Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Pages yellowing, dust jacket has a couple of very small tears. The price is intact. This award-winning author's first book by a major publisher. "These stories of America's disenfranchised - men and women light-years away from the American dream - are quite unlike any in our literature. She's an original, and this book of hers is a crooked beauty." - Raymond Carver

316+[6 ad] pages. Small octavo (7 3/4" x 5 1/2") bound in original publisher's black cloth with silver lettering to spine and cover in original jacket. Has the "A" on the title verso. First edition. Wright wrote as a critic and journalist until 1923, when he became ill from what was given out as overwork, but was in reality a secret drug addiction, according to John Loughery's biography Alias S.S. Van Dine. His doctor confined him to bed (supposedly because of a heart ailment, but actually because of a cocaine addiction) for more than two years. In frustration and boredom, he began collecting and studying thousands of volumes of crime and detection. In 1926 this paid off with the publication of his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright took his pseudonym from the abbreviation of "steamship" and from Van Dine, which he claimed was an old family name. Wright wrote a series of short stories for Warner Brothers film studio in the early 1930s. These stories were used as the basis for a… Read More

Alexandria, Va: Cottom and Stewart, 1801. Hardcover. Very Good. Full imprint: "Alexandria: Printed by Cottom and Stewart, for Robert and John Gray, Alexandria; and for Conrad and Co., Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington City." 2 volumes: 256, 248 p.; 18 cm. 12mo. Contemporary full calf with six spine compartments between gilt rules. Gilt-tooled title on red morocco spine label in second compartment of each volume. Gilt-tooled volume number in fourth compartment of each volume with gilt-tooled decoration in the first, third, and fifth compartments. All page edges yellow. This is the First American edition, after the British 1799 edition. Each volume has a label on the front fixed endpaper indicating that the volumes were given in 1855 to the Union Philosophical Society of Dickinson College by Samuel M. Dickson (1837-1866) and John W. Cornelius (1835-1894), graduates of the college who became Methodist ministers. Dickinson College Library oval stamp also on front fixed endpapers and embossed… Read More

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976. Signed on the second blank page following the free end-paper by the author. First U.S. edition / First printing. Plum cloth spine, red paper-covered boards. Fine in near fine to very good dust jacket, with abrasion to the lower spine around the publisher's name. The author's masterpiece, and one of the most important books of the seventies.

John Lehman, London, 1952. First edition, UK. Condition: Very good in good dust jacket. Book has light toning, unobtrusive previous owners name in ink on last page, slight bumping at corners and spine. Dust jacket has edge wear and creasing, dust shadow and light soiling on rear cover, tears at top edge, price clipped. Blue-gray cloth, with titles stamped in maroon on spine.In Let It Come Down, Paul Bowles plots the doomed trajectory of Nelson Dyar, a New York bank teller who comes to Tangier in search of a different life and ends up giving in to his darkest impulses. Rich in descriptions of the corruption and decadence of the International Zone in the last days before Moroccan independence, Bowles's second novel is an alternately comic and horrific account of a descent into nihilism.

John Major, London.,1824. SECOND MAJOR EDITION. Illustrated with 14 copper engraved plates and several woodcuts throughout the text. Two small patches of browning affecting the top outer corner of ten leaves, otherwise a very good copy in fine nineteenth century binding by Thomson of Exeter, with binders ticket on front paste down. Full tan calf, raised bands, compartments fully gilt. Red title label, gilt. Boards with double blind ruled and one gilt ruled borders. Marbled endpapers. School prize plate on front paste down shows that this copy was given as a prize in January 1842. Previous owners name(dated 1881) and ink name stamp on blank endpapers. Front hinge neatly repaired. Some minor rubbing to edges but generally a very good copy in an attractive nineteenth century binding.:

Hodder & Stoughton. London. 1901. FIRST EDITION. 8vo. (7.6 x 5.3 inches). viii,402pp, 6pp of publishers adverts. Illustrated with 12 full page mono illustrations by James Craig. Publishers 1st issue binding of grey cloth, with light green lettering and design of Marble arch, blocked in blue, green and mustard, to the front panel. The spine is lettered in gilt within a green ruled border. Top edge gilt. A little minor rubbing to the extremities and the front inner hinge is cracked but firm. Overall a better than very good copy of this uncommon novel. (Glover and Greene; Victorian Detective Fiction. No. 303). Not in Wolff.

New Orleans: W. M'Kean, 1837. Hardcover. Very Good. Imprint: "For Sale by W. M'Kean, New Orleans -- James Rice, Jr., Louisville -- Flash, Ryder and Co., Cincinnati -- Meech and Dinnies, St. Louis, and by All Booksellers." Vol. 2 only. 4, iv, [1], 14-180 p.; 20 cm. Original reddish cloth spine with plain boards; original printed spine label, erroneously stating "Vol. I." Spine title: Life in London, or The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Corinthian Tom, and Bob Logic. Four pages preceding title page contain publisher's advertisements (for all four publishers in the imprint) for this title, as well as Life in Paris, or The Rambles and Sprees, of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins & Capt. O'Shuffleton. Bookplate on front fixed endpaper and inscription on front free endpaper indicating that this book was given to the Belles Lettres Society of Dickinson College in 1854 by Talbot Murray. First American edition. Checklist Amer. Imprints, 44147. British sportswriter Pierce Egan (1772-1849) was the author… Read More

Hardback. Very Good. Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1880, [first edition, privately printed]; 8vo, pp [viii], (9)-577; good later binding in half brown pigskin, green marbled boards and end papers, spine decorated gilt and with raised bands, top edge gilt; lacks half title; slight browning or dust marking in places but nevertheless a very good copy of what was to become a minor Victorian classic, the story set in the time of Charles I. Shorthouse, 1834-1903, came from a Quaker manufacturing family in Birmingham (actually Edgbaston), duly entering the family business. However, he and his wife moved to the Church of England in 1861 identifying themselves with the "Oxford School of High Churchmen". He also began to suffer from epilepsy and duly left his industrial work to write, spending the decade to about 1876 working on "John Inglesant". As he was unable to interest a publisher Shorthouse decided to have the book printed on his own account and it appeared in 1880 in a… Read More

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. Signed on the title page by Umberto Eco. First edition / First printing. Green paper spine, blue paper-covered boards. Very fine in very fine dust jacket.