a novel in drama reconstructing Genesis 38, 11-26
London, Ghetto Press, 1931.

First edition. Signed by the author on front free endpaper. 8vo. Original blue cloth stamped in green. Dust-jacket, 6/-.

A dramatic reworking of the biblical Genesis 38 narrative. Goller, a rabbi who served congregations in Manchester, London and finally Liverpool's Hope Place Synagogue - from which his outspoken social views got him dismissed in 1926 - was a significant Anglo-Jewish poet and playwright of the interwar years, his verse denouncing pogrom violence against Eastern European Jews and his plays, including this one and the better-known Cohen & Son, staged in London in the early 1930s. A signed copy, from a small specialist press (Ghetto Press) aimed at an Anglo-Jewish readership.

Another adventure of Sherlock Holmes
New York, Grosset & Dunlap, n.d. [c.1939].

Film tie-in edition. 8vo. Original red cloth lettered in black. Dust-jacket.

First serialised in the Strand in 1901-02, this remains the most celebrated tale in the Holmes canon - the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville and the curse said to stalk his heir across the Dartmoor fens. An attractively jacketed edition featuring Rathbone and Bruce as Holmes & Watson respectively, from the 1939 film directed by Sidney Lanfield.

A Sherlock Holmes novel
New York, A.L. Burt, n.d. [c.1920].

Early US printing. 8vo. Original brown cloth lettered in off-white. Dust-jacket.

The fourth and final Holmes novel (1914-15), its flashback half loosely dramatising the real Pinkerton infiltration of the Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania coalfields - the Birdy Edwards character standing in for the actual agent James McParland. A.L. Burt reprint of the 1915 first (George H. Doran/Smith, Elder). This edition was issued around 1920, so a scarce find in the original jacket in such good condition.

Another adventure of Sherlock Holmes
New York, Grosset & Dunlap, n.d. [early 1930s].

8vo. Original red cloth lettered in black. Dust-jacket.

First serialised in the Strand in 1901-02, this remains the most celebrated tale in the Holmes canon - the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville and the curse said to stalk his heir across the Dartmoor fens. An attractively jacketed edition depicting the scene on Dartmoor.

New York, George H. Doran, [1919].

8vo. Original brown cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $1.50.

An early, little-read Doyle novel (sometimes cited as a precursor of steampunk) about a reclusive millionaire who has discovered how to transmute lead into gold, and whose philanthropy corrodes rather than improves those he tries to help. This George H. Doran issue of 1919 reissues the American edition first published in 1892.

New York, A.L. Burt, n.d. [c.1923].

8vo. Original pictorial grey cloth. Dust-jacket.

A.L. Burt was a New York reprint house that issued Doyle's work under licence from the early 1890s into the 1930s, this being one of their later printings of the 1892 collection rather than a true first edition (Newnes/Harper, 1892). Unusually fresh for a common reprint format.

New York, A.L. Burt, n.d. [c.1922].

8vo. Original pictorial light grey cloth. Dust-jacket.

The second Holmes story collection (1893), closing with 'The Final Problem,' in which Holmes apparently dies fighting Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls - a twist that provoked public outcry and forced Doyle to revive the character a decade later.

New York, Grosset & Dunlap, n.d. [c.1940].

'Madison Square Books' edition. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket.

A Grosset & Dunlap compilation combining 'A Study in Scarlet', 'The Sign of Four' and several short stories; this printing's jacket, carrying a photograph of Basil Rathbone as Holmes, dates it to around the 1939–40 Rathbone film tie-ins.

London, Rider, 1911.

First edition. 8vo. Original bright red cloth titled in gilt to spine and front board, decorated in blind.

Stoker's final novel, The Lair of the White Worm is a vivid and imaginative work of Gothic horror, blending ancient evil, supernatural intrigue and mythic transformation. Set in rural Derbyshire, it follows the enigmatic Lady Arabella March, whose connection to a monstrous serpent suggests a battle between primeval forces. Though canonically overshadowed by Dracula (1897), the novel remains a fascinating piece of late Gothic fiction and has inspired adaptations, most notably Ken Russell's 1988 film.

One of the slightly "fatter" copies, which we instinctively feel might denote an earlier part of the print run.

London, Hutchinson, [1938].

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.

McKenna (1888–1967) was a prolific chronicler of English upper-class society whose 1917 novel Sonia: Between Two Worlds was a major bestseller (the tenth-best-selling novel in the US in 1918, filmed in 1921, and running through numerous UK printings). Breasted Amazon is one of several later McKenna novels centring on a highly cultured artist-protagonist with feet of clay, a recurring preoccupation of his 1930s work.

London, Robert Hale, 1966.

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 15/-.

Lawrence (1889-1969) was primarily known for ghost stories and occult fiction, but this is her only science-fiction novel, narrated by a Martian observing and "uplifting" primitive humanity, whose descendants go on to found and lose Atlantis. Jacket by Val Biro, the prolific and highly regarded postwar illustrator and jacket designer, who worked on several of Lawrence's Robert Hale titles.

Chicago & New York, Rand, McNally & Company, 1895.

First US edition. 8vo. Title printed in red & black. Original red cloth, gilt.

Generally credited as the first full-length locked-room mystery novel, written by Zangwill in two weeks for serialisation in the radical London evening paper The Star in 1891 before UK book publication the following year. Zangwill (1864–1926), sometimes called "the Dickens of the Ghetto" for his novel Children of the Ghetto, was a major figure in Anglo-Jewish letters and an early, influential voice for Zionism and Jewish immigrant life in London's East End.