Books for Sale!

I'm slowly but surely adding books to my primary website: eBay. The first eleven books are now available.

As the days pass I'll add more. By the end of this month there ought to be close to 100 books uploaded.  Auction items that do not sell after the initial listings I will move those books to Biblio.com.  Still have to create that account and upload anything there, but rest assured I will be there within two months.

 Currently, I have a small variety of vintage 20th century mystery novels. Some of the authors include John Rhode, Joan Fleming, Manning Long, James Ronald (writing as "Michael Crombie"), and the usual obscure and forgotten writers. The copy of Lady in A Wedding Dress I mentioned in my first post last week is there now waiting for a buyer. (Hurry, Scott!) Future writers include Bruce Graeme, B. L. Farjeon, Carol Carnac (aka E.C.R. Lorac), Francis Gerard, Miles Burton, Georgette Heyer, George Baxt, Dorothy Bowers, and Ann Rowe.  The majority of the books I am currently selling have been reviewed on this blog or appear in the essays I contributed to the Edgar nominated non-fiction work Murder in the Closet (Macfarland, 2017).  

You can quickly access all my eBay listings by clicking HERE. When you get there, please make a note of my eBay seller name if you are interested in returning. Or better yet mark the page in your browser's Favorites.

Happy hunting!  Hope you become one of my regular customers as well as a regular reader.

NEWS FLASH: Jean Potts, Attention Getter

As many of you already know Go, Lovely Rose/The Evil Wish will soon be available for purchase from Stark House (release date Feb 15, 2019). Greg, the publisher, received a lovely notice from Booklist -  one of their treasured starred reviews.  Here it is:

Go, Lovely Rose / The Evil Wish.
by Jean Potts
Feb. 2019. 304p. Stark House, paper, $19.95
(ISBN: 9781944520656)
Stark House's ongoing project—reissuing high-class crime fiction from a vanished time—strikes gold with this double-decker release of two fine novels by the nearly forgotten Potts. Go, Lovely Rose dates from 1954; The Evil Wish from 1962. Employing techniques both classic and contemporary, the two tales share the meticulous build-up of tension typical of the Golden Age and the modern tendency to use a crime as an excuse to explore the lives affected. The "Rose" of the first novel is dead when the narrative begins, a crumpled heap with her skull bashed in. There's some detective work here—keep an eye on that headband—but Potts uses rich, vivid language to examine the damage Rose did to a handful of people with their own secrets. If Hitchcock had written a novel, it would have been similar to The Evil Wish, with its study of the corroding effects of guilt. Two sisters plot to murder their father and his fiancée. Turns out they don't have to, but their obsessions—What did the neighbors overhear? What's in that diary?—lead them to near madness. And real crime. Two masterpieces here.    — Don Crinklaw

As the editor of Booklist told us in his cover letter: "A star beside the title indicates a work judged to be outstanding in its genre." More importantly, Booklist is the reviewing and news journal of the American Library Association, the magazine which thousands of librarians across the US use to make their decisions in purchasing new books for their collections. Let's hope that the review can drum up sales for libraries all over the USA. That would make me immensely happy!

From the Department of Life's Unexpected Ironies: The author of this review is writer and English professor Don Crinklaw who not only is the husband of mystery writer Elaine Viets, he also used to be a somewhat regular customer of mine over ten years ago when I was selling books as the owner of Pretty Sinister Books, my former online bookstore.

Bookselling Absurdity #57: Buy My Prize, Please!

I went looking for a cheap copy of a very easy to find John Dickson Carr book today and stumbled across this absurd listing on eBay. If you've been having a bad day, then prepare yourselves for a well deserved fit of hysterical laughter this will no doubt unleash.

This edition, I believe, is printed on gold leaf pages with platinum ink.

The shipping price is to the US, by the way. We always get the shaft from eBay sellers on international shipping fees even for a paperback that weighs about 5.5 ounces (155 g). You'd hope that this avaricious madman of a bookseller would at least give you free shipping if you live in Australia. But of course if you had this amount of spare Australian cash to spend on a paperback book published in 1986 (or thought you had it) you'd probably be living in a private sanitarium somewhere in Alice Springs.

The Hex Murder has been reprinted!

Back in October 2016 I wrote an enthusiastic review on an obscure mystery novel about the Amish and powwow men. It's called The Hex Murder by Forrester Hazard who in reality was Alexander Williams, Jr. Much to my surprise the book has been reprinted by Coachwhip Publications thanks in large part to my review. It's been reissued under Williams' real name rather than his pseudonym, something of a standard practice in vintage mystery reprinting these days.

Curt Evans had a hand in it all, of course. I give him yet another digital standing ovation for his great work in reissuing out of print books -- especially very rare titles -- for the readers and fans like you who crave them.

Go buy a copy now!  (I've been saying this a lot lately.)

And to make it all the easier for you just click on this link and you'll be taken to the page instantly.

O Rare Arthur Bray!

I maintain a list of wants of extremely obscure books and rare titles on several bookselling websites. Periodically, I get an exciting email that one of those books is being offered for sale. I usually hold my breath, close my eyes and hit the link. Then I slowly exhale and open my eyes to see if the price is something I think is not only reasonable but affordable. More often than not I can afford the book and I buy it without hesitation. A few days ago I got an alert that one of those very rare "wants" turned up.

Here's the listing (with some typos corrected):

Title: The Clue Of The Postage Stamp

Author: Arthur Bray

Publisher: Alex Thom and Co, London and Dublin

Publication Date: 1913

Binding: Hardcover

Edition: 1st Edition

First edition. in original illustrated boards as issued. With original 'fake' postage stamp to front board as required. 8vo, frontispiece,371pp. Showing overall wear, rubbing to spine. edges and corners. Inner hinges firm, some wear and tenderness to outer. Overall marking and discolouration. Pencil annotation to f.e.p. stating 'very rare and almost unobtainable'. More images available on request. 9370. Eric Quayle p.88 the Collector's Book Of Detective Fiction.

And the price? A mere £2400 or $3535.61. Plus shipping! (the tightwads)

This title had been on my want list for nearly ten years. Patience is a virtue, right? At least I know it actually exists. Perhaps I need to heed my own tongue-in-cheek advice given to one blog visitor a while ago: "Take comfort in knowing that you can't have everything." ...sigh...

SURREAL UPDATE: Another copy of this extremely elusive book has suddenly popped up for sale from a different UK dealer on the same website. Based on the photos and description this second copy seems to be in much better condition and -- bonus! -- it's signed by the author, though for some reason the seller does not offer a photograph of the signature. Remarkably, it's cheaper than the one I was alerted about. You'll save four hundred pounds if you have £2000 in pocket change to buy this more attractive second copy. Photos of the other handsome copy can be viewed at the bookseller's own website.

NEWS FLASH! Dead Man's Quarry in paperback again!

I have been checking for the past two weeks to let you know when Dead Man's Quarry would be available for purchase again in paperback.  After some rigamarole with Amazon.com the publisher finally got things sorted out and you can now order a brand new paperback copy free of printing errors. Should've taken only a few days instead of nearly three weeks.

The price is $13.99 which I think is reasonable for a trade paperback. They have only two in stock -- that might explain the delay in making it available again -- so act now. The book is really very good. Worth every penny.

Here's the direct link to the Dead Man's Quarry page to save you time. Click away to your heart's content!

ODDITIES: Department of Uncollectable Collectibles

I get a lot of book catalogs in my email and I peruse them mostly for my select interests: Victorian sensation fiction and obscure detective, supernatural and adventure fiction. Every now and then pulp magazines strike my fancy. While looking over the pulps offered by Michael John Thompson, a bookseller in British Columbia, I came across one of the most absurd catalog listings ever. It's reproduced below (with some typos fixed) along with the illustration that accompanies the listing.

I'd file this under "Why Bother?" Seems it was included in the catalog only for the amusement of the bookseller and his customers. He's right about that artwork. It's a real nightmare.


"THE NIGHT LAND" by WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON - CLASSICS OF SCIENCE - FANTASY FICTION. The cover artwork for CANADIAN FANDOM 17. September, 1951 issue.

HODGSON, William Hope [marginal interest].
$30.00 CAD

First edition. Quarto, original pictorial wrappers, stapled at spine. A fanzine, issued in an edition of 104 numbered copies, this being copy #56. 17 pp. Contains Editorials and Convention reports, no fiction. Most notably, it bears perhaps the singularly worst drawing ever to illustrate a Hodgson story, the cover artwork, which is by Bill Grant. The editor prints a long report on the convention, an SF con; and reproduces the signatures of the likes of Bok, Leiber, Williamson et al., but it is of little interest. In fact, there really is nothing of interest in this fanzine at all except for the atrocious cover artwork. It's not like anybody needs to buy this thing - it's hideous. A very good copy in original wrappers, if that matters.

You can click to enlarge this, but be prepared for a real horror show.