War, Invasion & Spy
London, Collins Crime Club, 1970.First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on front free endpaper. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced £1.25/25s.Signed first edition of Christie's political/spy thriller (rather than a crime whodunnit). It follows Sir Stafford Nye, a British diplomat, who meets a mysterious woman at Frankfurt Airport. Drawn into a web of international conspiracy involving neo-Nazism, youth unrest, and global destabilisation, he uncovers a plot to seize world power.
Detective Fiction
London, W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1927.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth blocked in dark orange.
Hercule Poirot confronts a dangerous quartet of global power-seekers. A cryptic dying message propels Poirot and his loyal companion Hastings into a worldwide conspiracy of murder and high-stakes chess, pushing Poirot's detective skills to their utmost limits.
Manuscripts & Typescripts
[London], , n.d..
Original typescript with author's manuscript edits and underlining. 4to. Bound in contemporary boards with title label and label from the Apex Literary Agency to upper board.
A seemingly unpublished novel by an author whose other works were published posthumously in the 1940s (the author was killed in action during a raid on Hamburg in 1942). The work is described on a preliminary page as a romance, with period and location given as '3409 B.C. - Ancient Egypt / 1942 A.D. - London, England', and seems to be in the style of H. Rider Haggard, as Fox had originally given the 'author' of the work as Allan Quartermain [sic], but has subsequently scored that out and added by hand 'Leo Rex', presumably a character of his own invention (possibly a recurring character, as the author's last advertised work to be published seems to be Rex on the Trail - cf. Bear Alley Books blog).
Detective Fiction
London, George Newnes, 1893.
Second edition. Royal 8vo. Original pictorial bevelled cloth.
Conan Doyle's famous collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, first published in book form by George Newnes in 1892. The stories, originally serialised in The Strand Magazine, splendidly showcase Holmes' unparalleled deductive reasoning, as well as his ability to navigate London's criminal underworld.
Horror & Gothic
and other Ghost Stories
London, Edward Arnold, 1926.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
A collection of ghost stories. Among the stories are "A Warning to the Curious", "The Haunted Doll's House", "An Evening's Entertainment", etc. In the titular story, Paxton, an antiquarian, unearths one of the legendary lost crowns of East Anglia, which leads to a supernatural guardian following him, with fatal consequences.
Modern Literature
London, Harrap, [1937].
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.
A roman-à-clef based on the life and discovery of radium, dramatising the scientific, political and moral implications of radioactivity. Originally published in German (Radium, 1936).
Detective Fiction
London, Rider & Company, 1952.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
'A blood-chilling novel of Black Magic, sorcery, and intrigue...' (jacket blurb).
Detective Fiction
London, Sampson Low, Marston, [1935].First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Early issue dust-jacket priced 5/-.Striking jacket artwork on this interwar crime thriller set in London.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1953.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s 6d.
The first of Asimov's influential science fiction series, a cornerstone of modern speculative fiction and of course the basis for a relatively popular recent streaming series. The UK edition came out two years after the US.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1950.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A local legend of a murdered parson's ghost in a woodland known as "Groaning Spinney" becomes connected with a real corpse and a murder investigation for Mrs Bradley.
London, John Bale, 1894.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt.
A medical-historical treatise published in 1894 by John Fletcher Horne that surveys the practice of trepanning (drilling holes in the skull) from ancient times through late-19th-century medical contexts.
Modern Literature
London, Jonathan Cape, 1951.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
The author recounts his attempt in the 1930s to train a wild goshawk ("Gos"), using outdated manuals, entering a psychological and physical battle of wills with the bird and himself.
London, Putnam, 1948.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Set in a small English post-war town ("Otterbury"), a gang of schoolboys accidentally break a classroom window and then unite both rival companies in an enterprise to raise money - only to uncover a local criminal racket and embark on a daring rescue and detective-raid.
Weird & Supernatural
Price (Harry) and R.S. Lambert. The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap.
A modern 'miracle' investigated
London, Methuen, 1936.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A purported true-life investigation of the 'Gef the Talking Mongoose' case on the Isle of Man in the 1930s.
Edinburgh & London, Oliver and Boyd, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
The story of a motor trip through Europe.
Modern Literature
London, The Bodley Head, 1959.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue boards. Dust-jacket, priced 13s 6d.
Detective Fiction
London, Crimetec, 1946.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2s6d.
A short-story collection by the Coles, best known for their joint detective novels featuring Superintendent Wilson. As with their novels, these tales blend crime, mystery and social observation.
Weird & Supernatural
London, Herbert Jenkins, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original orange cloth blocked in black. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6.
Attractive jacket artwork graces this uncommon, posthumously published mystery novel by Marxist writer, literary critic, intellectual and activist St John Sprigg.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
An enquiry into the limits of the possible
London, Gollancz, 1962.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 21/-.
Non-fiction essays where Clarke speculates on scientific and technological advances, from space flight and telecommunications to bioengineering, and coins the celebrated 'Clarke's Third Law' ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic").
Detective Fiction
London, The Thriller Book Club, [1938].
Special edition for the Thriller Book Club. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A Slim Callaghan detective novel involving London's seedy underworld, blackmail & murder, with Cheyney's trademark tough dialogue.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.Issue with 'A' on copyright page but no seal. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, clipped.Vonnegut’s first novel, set in a near-future America where automation has replaced human labour, leaving a technocratic elite and a disaffected majority. This is potentially a book club issue, as there is no publisher’s seal on the copyright page the jacket has been clipped, possibly where such a declaration would have been printed.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1962.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 15/-.
Twelve stories exploring classic Clarke themes of technology, alien contact, space exploration and human destiny.
Caribbean Fiction
London, Faber & Faber, 1955.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
The first novel by Jamaican author Hearne, and the first novel by a Caribbean author to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Detective Fiction
London, Ward, Lock & Bowden, 1894.
First edition. 8vo. Original pictorial cloth.
A solid first edition of this collection of detective stories by Arthur Morrison, featuring the titular Martin Hewitt, a private detective who uses his powers of observation and deduction to solve crimes. A Queen's Quorum Cornerstone.
Victorian Literature
or the romance and reality of the London streets. An unfashionable novel
London, Chapman & Hall, 1858.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth, spine gilt.
Descriptions of life on the streets of London, the habits & customs of donkey-drivers, the peculiarities of trampdom & vagrancy, etc., drawn apparently from long and patient inquiries among the individuals themselves. A lively insight into London lower-class life in Victorian times.
and of the councels and artifices by which they were carried on, from the year 1640. to the year 1660...printed from the author's true copy
London, for W. Crooke, 1682.
First authorised, separate edition. 8vo. Contemporary blind-tooled calf, rebacked in modern calf with morocco title label lettered in gilt.
Thomas Hobbes' (here spelt 'Hobbs') Behemoth is a dialogue on the causes and course of the English Civil Wars, composed in 1668 but long suppressed by Charles II on account of its forthright political analysis. It circulated in unauthorised continental editions in the 1670s, and in an illicit London issue of 1679/81, before appearing in its first authorised form in 1682, when the London publisher William Crooke printed it, including it at the head of his Tracts of Mr. Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury. The edition was presented as taken directly from Hobbes' corrected manuscript in an effort to supersede the corrupt earlier printings.In substance, Behemoth complements and extends the arguments of Leviathan. Where Leviathan (1651) set out Hobbes' abstract political philosophy - the need for an undivided sovereign power to prevent a "war of all against all" - Behemoth provides the concrete case study: a scathing dissection of the ideological, religious, and social divisions that, in Hobbes' view, destroyed the unity of the commonwealth and plunged England into rebellion. It is both history and cautionary tale, a practical demonstration of what occurs when the principles of Leviathan are ignored. For this reason, Behemoth has long been regarded as the essential historical companion to Hobbes' masterpiece, showing the theoretical edifice of sovereignty tested against the lived experience of revolution.
Modern Literature
London, Peter Owen, 1958.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 16s.
Set in early post-war Japan, the novel follows a declining aristocratic family - the young woman Kazuko, her opium-addicted brother Naoji and their widowed mother - as they try to adapt to societal change, westernisation and personal ruin...
Modern Literature
London, Peter Owen, 1959.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A harrowing semi-autobiographical novel by Japanese author Dazai in which the narrator, Ōba Yōzō, records his lifelong sense of alienation, his descent into addiction and despair, and his feeling of being 'disqualified as a human being'.
London, Collins Crime Club, 1946.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.
In post-war Lancashire, Chief Inspector MacDonald investigates what begins as the odd theft of two iron andirons and other items from a farmer's cottage.
Modern Literature
A Novel...
London, Peter Davies, 1952.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 11s6d.
Theodora Keogh (born Theodora Roosevelt) was an American novelist, part of the Roosevelt family, writing under the name Theodora Keogh from the 1950s; she is now regarded as an early writer of lesbian pulp-fiction and psychological novels.
Detective Fiction
London, Arthur Barker, 1958.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 11s6d.
Crime thriller set against a backdrop of City of London banking.
Modern Literature
and other stories
London, Macmillan, 1904.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original blue blind-tooled cloth lettered in yellow.
Wharton explores marriage, societal expectation and individual compromise; the title-story sees a professor publish a faux scientific work and become trapped by his own success.
Detective Fiction
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced-clipped with 4/6 price sticker to spine.
A Golden Age detective novel in which a lawyer and a married novelist couple investigate a curious murder by inhalation (a boutonnière dusted with cocaine).
Modern Literature
London, Arthur Barker, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Set in 1930s France, the novel centres on a free-spirited mother who after many years is reunited with her formerly proper daughter on a visit to assess her fiancé.
Modern Literature
London, John Murray, 1941.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 9s6d.
A wartime novel by Loveday Prior that continues themes from her earlier novel The Valley of Exile (1939) and addresses the rise of totalitarianism.
Modern Literature
A just possible story
London, Methuen, 1908.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth, spine gilt.
The Greek god Apollo returns to earth in human form to investigate the nature of mortal men.