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, 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.

London, Skeffington, [c.1932].

First edition, early impression (Skeffington's Popular Novels series). 8vo. Original cloth. Presumed second issue dust-jacket, priced 2/6.

One of a series of nautical mystery titles by this author, uncommon in the jacket.

London, Jonathan Cape, 1967.

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

Nine of Ballard's short stories, drawn largely from the late 1950s and early 1960s, including 'The Concentration City,' 'Manhole 69' and 'Mr F. is Mr F.,' pieces generally regarded as key examples of his early psychological science fiction. The collection's story 'Minus One' was later adapted by documentary filmmaker Simon Brook as a short film.

London, John Murray, 1926.

Murray's 2/- series. 8vo. Original cloth blind-stamped to upper cover and stamped in gilt to spine. Dust-jacket.

Murray's cheap "2/-" reprint of the fourth and final Holmes novel.

...A Gaumont All-Talking Picture starring Henry B. Walthall
London, Readers Library Publishing Company, [1930].

Film tie-in edition. Small 8vo. Original cloth stamped in gilt to upper cover. Dust-jacket.

Soutar was a prolific popular novelist several of whose books were adapted for the screen in this period, including Butterflies in the Rain (1926) and Worldly Goods (1930). The plot follows a man who takes the blame for a killing actually committed by his wife, and its long consequences.

London, Putnam, 1936.

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.

A survey of Price's cases since Leaves from a Psychist's Case-Book (1933), including the 'Talking Mongoose,' Kuda Bux's fire-walking, and - heavily disguised - his first two visits to Borley Rectory in 1929 and 1931. The first edition's closing line on Borley, in which Price then doubted any supernatural cause, was quietly dropped from later printings to avoid offending the Foysters.

or Impressions of a Stretcher-Bearer
Manchester, The Blackfriars Press, [1918].

First edition. 8vo. Original printed wrappers with illustration to upper wrapper, priced 2 shillings.

Massie (1880–1964) served with the RAMC in the First World War and later became a genuinely notable, if now obscure, novelist (his 1941 novel Corridor of Mirrors was filmed in 1948 in a "gloriously bizarre" production now with a cult following).

London, Heinemann, 1899.

First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.

This is the first English edition, translated from Nordau's German novel Drohnenschlacht (Carl Duncker, 1898). Nordau (1849–1923), born Simon Maximilian Südfeld, is far better known as co-founder of the World Zionist Organization alongside Theodor Herzl and as the author of the hugely influential cultural polemic Degeneration (1892); he coined the term "muscular Judaism" at the 1898 Zionist Congress. His fiction is now a minor footnote to a major political and intellectual career.

London, Collins, n.d. [1930s?].

8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, contemporary newsagent's sticker to upper cover and spine.

The last of Crofts's four standalone novels before he introduced Inspector French, its plot splits between a South African railway murder investigated by Inspector Vandam and, some years later, a linked Scottish case taken up by Inspector Ross.

London, Collins, 1934.

First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7d.

The sixth Inspector French novel, set largely in Crofts's native Belfast, centres on the disappearance of a retired linen magnate en route from London to Northern Ireland. Widely reported as Crofts's own favourite of his books and among his most admired "unbreakable alibi" plots.

London, Collins, 1934.

First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.

The seventh Inspector French novel, first published by Collins in 1931, concerns the murder of two company directors aboard their yacht in the Channel, killed just ahead of their firm's collapse and their own planned escape abroad with the proceeds. Contemporary reviewers ranked it among Crofts's strongest French titles.

London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1940.

First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.

Inspector French investigates the disappearance of Dr James Earle from his Surrey cottage on the Hog's Back ridge, a case that deepens as further disappearances follow. Published in 1933, it was the tenth Inspector French novel and Crofts's first for Hodder & Stoughton, and is widely regarded by genre historians as Crofts near the peak of his craft.

London, Collins, n.d. [1937].

"The Bob Novels" edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.

The third Inspector French novel (1927): three people die in a Yorkshire house fire, initially ruled accidental, until banknotes supposedly destroyed in the blaze resurface, exposing arson, murder and body-snatching. Regarded as one of Crofts's best-known and most admired titles. Issued here in "The Bob Novels," an interwar cheap-reprint format.

A problem in autobiography
London, Allan Wingate, 1955.

First edition, first impression. With related postcard loosely inserted. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.

Hamnett (1890–1956), the Welsh painter known as the "Queen of Bohemia," moved in the Paris circle of Modigliani, Picasso and Cocteau and was closely associated with Gaudier-Brzeska, who sculpted her. This is her second memoir, following the bestselling Laughing Torso (1932); it carries a real poignancy as her last book: she died the year after publication, having fallen from the window of her London flat.

London, The Book Club, 1980.

Foyles Book Club issue. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.

Opens the 'Levant Trilogy' (1977–80), the second half of Manning's six-novel 'Fortunes of War' sequence tracing the Pringles' wartime displacement from the Balkans to wartime Cairo. Anthony Burgess ranked the sequence among the finest fictional treatments of the war in Europe and the Middle East, alongside Waugh and Powell.

London, Collins, [1932].

8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.

A brutal realist portrait of small-town Ayrshire life, deliberately written against the sentimental "kailyard" school then dominating Scottish fiction. Brown (1869–1902) died the year after publication, aged 33, leaving this his sole major work; it is credited as an influence on the Scottish Renaissance and remains a landmark of early twentieth-century Scottish literature. Originally published in 1901.

London, Longmans, Green, 1944.

Early UK impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.

UK title for Scotland Yard Can Wait (1933): a bank robber released early in hopes he'll lead police to £60,000 in hidden proceeds is himself murdered, followed by his suspected accomplices. A standalone rather than a Pinkerton title.

London, Longman, Green, 1937.

Longman Thrillers edition, second impression. 8vo. Original red cloth with black device to upper board. Dust-jacket, priced 4/-.

The UK title for Mr. Pinkerton Goes to Scotland Yard (1934): timid Welsh amateur Evan Pinkerton bets Inspector Bull ten pounds that he can find a murder overlooked as natural death, and does. Brown (1898–1983), an American who lived in England 1929-31, wrote the Pinkerton books as "David Frome" and, more famously, the Grace Latham/Colonel Primrose series as "Leslie Ford."

A story of crime
London, Collins Crime Club, 1937.

First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.

Poirot, ostensibly on holiday, investigates the murder of American heiress Ruth Kettering, strangled aboard the Blue Train en route to the Riviera and robbed of her famous ruby, "Heart of Fire." By Christie's own account this was her least favourite of her books, written during the personal ordeal following her mother's death, her husband's infidelity and her 1926 disappearance.

London, Longmans, 1945.

Reissue. 8vo. Original grey/green cloth. Dust-jacket, with 5/- price-sticker to inside front flap.

An attractive reissue of this classic London-based murder mystery. UK title for Mr. Pinkerton Grows a Beard (1934): Pinkerton stumbles over the body of Carlotta Rathbone in a fog-bound London street, generally reckoned among the strongest entries in the series.

London, Collins Crime Club, 1938.First edition, ninth impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.First published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934, the novel finds Poirot's journey home from the Middle East interrupted when a fellow passenger is murdered aboard a train stranded in a snowdrift, the confined setting allowing Christie one of her most celebrated closed-circle solutions. The true first edition is notoriously scarce and expensive even lacking a jacket: Collins's initial print run was small and quickly exhausted, necessitating two further impressions within the same month of publication. This copy, a ninth impression, offers the text in a far more accessible and affordable state than the elusive first printing, and is further enhanced by the presence of a later 'Agatha Christie Society' bookplate.

A narrative...through the trance mediumship of Richard E. Pugh, Bulawayo
South Africa, Central News Agency, [1941].

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

Presented as "a true narrative" of the history of Great Zimbabwe communicated through the trance mediumship of Richard E. Pugh of Bulawayo, this is a curiosity of interwar Rhodesian spiritualism, an example of the "psychic archaeology" fringe genre that attached itself to the Zimbabwe ruins controversy of the period.

a book on babies for older children
London, Peter Davies, 1939.

First edition, first impression. Signed presentation copy from the author, with accompanying autograph letter signed by the author. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

Signed first edition of this lighthearted guide to babies aimed at older siblings, with related autograph letter loosely inserted. Illustrator James Fitton was a significant figure in British graphic art, a founder member of the Artists' International Association, wartime designer for the Ministries of Food and Information, and later a Royal Academician. Author Hutchison is a minor but genuinely interesting figure in his own right: he later became well known in transport-publicity circles as the London Underground official who dismissed Harry Beck, designer of the iconic Tube map, and who went on to commission poster work from Edward Bawden, David Gentleman, Abram Games and Enid Marx.

New York, Doubleday, Doran, 1939.

First US edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.

The novel that brings Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, Fifth Earl of Ickenham - "Uncle Fred" - to Blandings Castle for the first time, in a plot to steal back the Empress of Blandings from the egg-throwing Duke of Dunstable. Widely rated among the strongest of the Blandings sequence and a key entry point for the Uncle Fred character, who would go on to headline three further novels.

New York, Doubleday, Doran, 1940.

First US edition, first printing. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $2.00.

The US edition collects thirteen stories against the UK edition's nine, dropping 'All's Well with Bingo' and 'Romance at Droitgate Spa' while adding six others - Wodehouse's British and American publishers routinely assembled his story collections differently, which here extends to both differing in title and content from the related 1937 collection Lord Emsworth and Others (US: The Crime Wave at Blandings). Features Bingo Little, Mr Mulliner and Ukridge among others.

London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933.

First UK edition, second impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2s6d.

The third of Plum's small run of mystery novels (1930-33, plus one late title in 1945-46), featuring recurring detective John Smith of Chicago; a little-documented American genre writer.

or, the Modern Prometheus
London, John Dicks, 1884.

In Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, vol.III. 4to. Contemporary half straight-grain morocco lettered and ruled in gilt to spine.

An uncommon serialised edition of Shelley's classic of sci-fi horror; the volume also contains Percy Bysshe's Zastrozzi, both illustrated by the well-known illustrator Frederick Gilbert.

Vol.61 No.365
London, Newnes, May 1921.

8vo. Original pictorial wrappers.

Includes 'The Uncharted Coast. VI - A Worker of Wonders' by Arthur Conan Doyle and 'The Coming of Gowf' by P.G. Wodehouse.