London, Allan Wingate, 1959.

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

The author's own account of his alcoholism. Albert Raymond Blackburn (1915–1991) was a Labour MP who had been an alcoholic, later campaigned against alcohol abuse, and wrote this book in 1959. He won King's Norton for Labour in 1945 and moved to the new Northfield seat in 1950. The jacket back describes him as a solicitor, law lecturer and author of a legal textbook, and for one year the only Independent in the Commons. It also covers Rugby, Sandhurst, Wormwood Scrubs and Maidstone, and his claim that alcoholism is incurable.

...Translated from the Russian by Eden & Cedar Paul
London, George Allen & Unwin, 1928.

First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, neatly price-clipped to inside front flap.

The first English appearance of Stalin's K voprosam leninizma (1926), a foundational exposition of "Leninism," collecting lectures and articles delivered between 1924 & 1926 as he sought to define and consolidate his authority after Lenin's death. A second volume was added by Allen & Unwin in 1933. Some later editions, sometimes incorrectly taken to be the first editions, were published in the 1940s in the UK by Lawrence & Wishart. Uncommon.

A Record of Unspeakable Suffering [with] Escape from Russian Chains. Together 2 vols. Translated by Warren Harrow London, Williams & Norgate, 1938.2 vols. First UK editions, first impressions. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jackets, priced 12s6d.One of the earliest accounts of the Soviet labour-camp system, published decades before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago revealed the Gulags to a much wider audience. The first volume's direct translation is 'Russia in Concentration Camp'; it describes the conditions of Soviet imprisonment and forced labour; the second volume recounts Solonevich's extraordinary escape from the Soviet Union on his fourth attempt, escaping with his son Yuri (who illustrates the striking dust-jacket to Russia in Chains) from a labour camp on the White Sea–Baltic Canal. They succeeded in reaching Finland and eventually made their way to Bulgaria. Solonevich's subsequent anti-Soviet activities made him a target of Soviet intelligence. In 1938, a bomb intended for him in Sofia killed his wife, Tamara, and his secretary; Yuri survived. Scarce in dust-jackets. Escape from Russian Chains with the ex-libris of notable Russian literature collector Bayard L. Kilgour Jr.

London, Collins Crime Club, 1943.

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.

The thirty-seventh in the Priestley series. In theme and plot it closely resembles the author's earlier Tragedy on the Line (1931). Priestley works towards the solution by recalling an earlier deduction from a similar case.

London, Peter Garnett, 1949.

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.

First edition of this crime novel, by an author who also wrote under the pen-names with the names Peter Conway, George Sava and Alec Redwood. Uncommon.

London, Geoffrey Bles, 1959.

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

A Dr Priestley case. One cousin seems to have killed himself, the second dies in a knife attack, and the third in a puzzling car accident, and Priestley establishes the common factor without leaving his chair. "John Rhode" was one of several pen names of Cecil John Charles Street (1884–1964), a British Army officer. He also wrote as Miles Burton and Cecil Waye, and the Priestley books are described as classics of scientific detection.

London, Smith, Elder, 1896.

First edition. 8vo. Original cloth lettered in gilt with anchor device.

A Regency novel of the prize-ring, narrated by a Sussex boy taken to London by his uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, a fashion arbiter. Doyle first conceived it as a play and began the novel in summer 1895; it was serialised in The Strand Magazine through 1896 with illustrations by Sidney Paget.

London, Methuen, 1925.

8th edition. 8vo. Original gilt-pictorial blue cloth.

Milne's first book of children's verse, decorated by E.H. Shepard. It is a best-selling book of poetry, first published in 1924, and several of the verses were set to music by Harold Fraser-Simson. It appeared in November 1924 and was such a success that the other three Pooh-related titles followed in quick succession.

London, Hurst & Blackett, [1949].

First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price sticker 6/- to front inside flap.

A Peter Clancy mystery, mentioned by Addy as a locked room mystery. Lee Thayer was the pen name of Emma Redington Thayer (1874–1973), an American artist who wrote mystery novels about the well-mannered private investigator Peter Clancy and his valet, Wiggar. She published sixty mystery novels between 1919 and 1966, and all but one feature Clancy.

Revolutionary Terrorist.
London, Methuen, 1935.

First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

A biography of the Socialist Revolutionary terrorist Maria Spiridonova, translated and edited by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher, with an introduction by Henry W. Nevinson. Spiridonova (1884–1941) was a Socialist Revolutionary terrorist and Left SR leader who spent most of her life in prison or exile, and her lifelong concern for the peasants ultimately turned her against the Bolsheviks. The jacket styles the author as Commissar for Justice in the First Soviet Cabinet.

A Sheep Detective Story. Translated by Anthea Bell
London, Doubleday, 2006.

First UK edition. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.

A flock of anthropomorphic sheep set out to solve the murder of their shepherd in the Irish village of Glennkill. It was first published in German in 2005 as Glennkill: Ein Schafskrimi, with Anthea Bell translating. It has been translated into sixteen languages. The source for the 2026 film starring Hugh Jackman with the voice talents of the recently-deceased Patrick Stewart, amongst an all-star cast.

London, Arthur Barker, 1938.

First edition, first impression. Inscribed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

Striking jacket artwork on this inscribed first edition of a novel set in Provence about the unwanted son of a poor woman who attaches herself to a travelling troupe of bullfighters; it was the author's third novel. Alun Llewellyn (David William Alun Llewellyn, 1903–1988) was a lawyer and author who worked in several genres, with nonfiction generally focused on Wales. He is best remembered for the scientific romance The Strange Invaders (1934), set after a world war and a new ice age. His other fiction includes the political satires Confound Their Politics, also 1934.