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The Case of the Journeying Boy -
Michael Innes (Pseud. John Innes Mackintosh Stewart)
1949 - Dodd, New York - First Edition
‘It is not easy to run full tilt through pitch darkness, it outrages an instinct against which the will can scarcely urge the muscles on. Much less is it easy in the knowledge that ice-cold waters, through which a corpse is drifting, await one at the length of an extended arm.’
When Humphrey Paxton accompanies his father to the movies, his hopes of a quiet afternoon are dashed by a murder, conspiracy, and an explosion, all before the final credits roll. The resulting investigation will take Humphrey and half of Scotland Yard on a series of escapades through London, Wales, and Ireland in order to catch the perpetrators. Written with Innes’s characteristic wit and humour, the novel has since been listed as one of the Crime Writer Association’s top 100 crime novels of all time.
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Price HK$ 1,500
1949 - Dodd, New York - First Edition
‘It is not easy to run full tilt through pitch darkness, it outrages an instinct against which the will can scarcely urge the muscles on. Much less is it easy in the knowledge that ice-cold waters, through which a corpse is drifting, await one at the length of an extended arm.’When Humphrey Paxton accompanies his father to the movies, his hopes of a quiet afternoon are dashed by a murder, conspiracy, and an explosion, all before the final credits roll. The resulting investigation will take Humphrey and half of Scotland Yard on a series of escapades through London, Wales, and Ireland in order to catch the perpetrators. Written with Innes’s characteristic wit and humour, the novel has since been listed as one of the Crime Writer Association’s top 100 crime novels of all time.
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Price HK$ 1,500
The Phone Booth Mystery -
John Ironside (psued. Euphemia Tait)
1924 - Henry Holt and Company, New York - First American Edition
Rare in dust jacket. The best known of John Ironside’s nine detective novels, published in England as ‘The Call-Box Mystery’ and in France as ‘La Cabine 19’.
‘The wife of a famous diplomat is found murdered in a telephone booth after the theft of confidential documents her husband kept in secret in his home office. An obviously innocent suspect is imprisoned and can only count on his wife and friends to exonerate him before he is hanged.’
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Price HK$ 5,000
1924 - Henry Holt and Company, New York - First American Edition
Rare in dust jacket. The best known of John Ironside’s nine detective novels, published in England as ‘The Call-Box Mystery’ and in France as ‘La Cabine 19’.‘The wife of a famous diplomat is found murdered in a telephone booth after the theft of confidential documents her husband kept in secret in his home office. An obviously innocent suspect is imprisoned and can only count on his wife and friends to exonerate him before he is hanged.’
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Price HK$ 5,000
The Van Beck Will. A Novel -
Henry Wynans Jessup
1928 - Walter Neale, New York - First Edition
A rare first edition in dust jacket.
‘Shall a son be robbed of his rightful inheritance and a murderer go unwhipped of justice to satisfy a strict rule of legal ethics?
Shall a lawyer be compelled by the law to hold inviolable under all circumstances the information imparted to him buy his client?
Shall a priest be prevented by law, as well s by his church, from revealing the secrets of the confessional, even if he learns that a crime will be committed or a criminal escape justice if he rem,ains silent?
Shall a physician be forced by law to remain mute while he sees his patient rob a friend of a vast estate?...’
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Price HK$ 4,000
1928 - Walter Neale, New York - First Edition
A rare first edition in dust jacket.‘Shall a son be robbed of his rightful inheritance and a murderer go unwhipped of justice to satisfy a strict rule of legal ethics?
Shall a lawyer be compelled by the law to hold inviolable under all circumstances the information imparted to him buy his client?
Shall a priest be prevented by law, as well s by his church, from revealing the secrets of the confessional, even if he learns that a crime will be committed or a criminal escape justice if he rem,ains silent?
Shall a physician be forced by law to remain mute while he sees his patient rob a friend of a vast estate?...’
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Price HK$ 4,000
Transition - A Complete Run - Numbers 1-27. -
Eugene Jolas (editor)
1927 to 1938 - Transition Press, Paris - First Editions
A rare complete set of the most influential and important literary magazine between the wars. Edited by Eugene Jolas, contributors are a whose who of writers, poets and artists of this magnificent period, including but not limited to James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Georges Braque, Kay Boyle, Elliot Paul, Man Ray, Robert McAlmon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Picasso, André Breton, William Carlos Williams, Robert Graves, Hart Crane, André Gide, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Malcolm Cowley, Djuna Barnes, Franz Kafka, Harry Crosby, Archibald MacLeish, Samuel Beckett, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Cartier-Bresson, Dylan Thomas, Louis Aragon, Le Corbusier and Aaron Copland.
Numbers 1-20 published between April 1927 and June 1930 by Transition with Shakespeare and Co., in Paris. Numbers 21-24 published between March 1932 and June 1936 by The Servire Press in The Hague. Volumes 25-27 published between fall 1936 and May 1938 by Transition in New York.
Included with the set is the Gertrude Stein’s ‘An Elucidation, printed in Transition, April 1927’ in original wrappers, and ‘Transition Pamphlet No 1’ (supplement to Transition no 23, 1934-35) containing the ‘Testimony against Gertrude Stein’.
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Price HK$ 45,000
1927 to 1938 - Transition Press, Paris - First Editions
A rare complete set of the most influential and important literary magazine between the wars. Edited by Eugene Jolas, contributors are a whose who of writers, poets and artists of this magnificent period, including but not limited to James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Georges Braque, Kay Boyle, Elliot Paul, Man Ray, Robert McAlmon, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Picasso, André Breton, William Carlos Williams, Robert Graves, Hart Crane, André Gide, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Malcolm Cowley, Djuna Barnes, Franz Kafka, Harry Crosby, Archibald MacLeish, Samuel Beckett, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Cartier-Bresson, Dylan Thomas, Louis Aragon, Le Corbusier and Aaron Copland.Numbers 1-20 published between April 1927 and June 1930 by Transition with Shakespeare and Co., in Paris. Numbers 21-24 published between March 1932 and June 1936 by The Servire Press in The Hague. Volumes 25-27 published between fall 1936 and May 1938 by Transition in New York.
Included with the set is the Gertrude Stein’s ‘An Elucidation, printed in Transition, April 1927’ in original wrappers, and ‘Transition Pamphlet No 1’ (supplement to Transition no 23, 1934-35) containing the ‘Testimony against Gertrude Stein’.
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Price HK$ 45,000
transition stories Twenty-three Stories from transition -
Eugene Jolas, Robert Sage (editors)
1929 - Walter V. McKee, New York - First Edition
‘It is necessary to break up the word, to construct an organic world of the imagination, and to give life a changed and spontaneous reality.’ – Eugene Jolas, from his preface.
The first collection of stories from avant-garde, inter-war literary journal, transition, featuring works by Kay Boyle, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Eliiot Paul, and Philippe Soupault and others, together with segments of James Joyce’s then-unfinished novel, Finnegan’s Wake, published here as ‘A Muster from Work in Progress.’
Founded in 1927 in Paris by poet Eugene Jolas (himself aided by expatriate bookseller Sylvia Beach and ‘lost generation’ bon vivant Harry Crosby), transition ran until the spring of 1938. In that 11 years and 27 issues – its experimental bent always unapologetically overt – the journal amassed an astounding pool of works by a trans-national cadre of writers, Surrealists, political activists, Dadaists, critics, and artists including Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, William Carlos Williams, Juan Gris, Man Ray, Dylan Thomas, Joan Miró, and Paul Bowles, among many others, and as such, publishing for the first time some of the most linguistically and visually innovative art of the modern era.
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Price HK$ 3,500
1929 - Walter V. McKee, New York - First Edition
‘It is necessary to break up the word, to construct an organic world of the imagination, and to give life a changed and spontaneous reality.’ – Eugene Jolas, from his preface.The first collection of stories from avant-garde, inter-war literary journal, transition, featuring works by Kay Boyle, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Eliiot Paul, and Philippe Soupault and others, together with segments of James Joyce’s then-unfinished novel, Finnegan’s Wake, published here as ‘A Muster from Work in Progress.’
Founded in 1927 in Paris by poet Eugene Jolas (himself aided by expatriate bookseller Sylvia Beach and ‘lost generation’ bon vivant Harry Crosby), transition ran until the spring of 1938. In that 11 years and 27 issues – its experimental bent always unapologetically overt – the journal amassed an astounding pool of works by a trans-national cadre of writers, Surrealists, political activists, Dadaists, critics, and artists including Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, William Carlos Williams, Juan Gris, Man Ray, Dylan Thomas, Joan Miró, and Paul Bowles, among many others, and as such, publishing for the first time some of the most linguistically and visually innovative art of the modern era.
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Price HK$ 3,500
Memoirs of a Booklegger -
Jack Kahane
1939 - Michael Joseph Ltd., London - First Edition
Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press based in Paris, in France in 1929, he took advantage of the fact that books published in France in English were not subject to the kind of censorship practised in Britain at the time.
He published among others Henry Millers ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, which had explicit sexual passages and and could therefore not be published in the U.S. Other author’s included James Joyce, Anaïs Nin, and Lawrence Durrell.
Kahane passed away just before the outbreak of World War II, having just finished this book of his memoirs. His son took over the press which later became the Olympia Press continuing in a similar tradition, being the first to publish works such as Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ and Burrough’s ‘Naked Lunch’.
First edition in the original scarce and unclipped dust jacket, not a common book as most of the edition were destroyed when a German bomb hit the publisher's warehouse.
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Price HK$ 4,500
1939 - Michael Joseph Ltd., London - First Edition
Jack Kahane founded the Obelisk Press based in Paris, in France in 1929, he took advantage of the fact that books published in France in English were not subject to the kind of censorship practised in Britain at the time.He published among others Henry Millers ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, which had explicit sexual passages and and could therefore not be published in the U.S. Other author’s included James Joyce, Anaïs Nin, and Lawrence Durrell.
Kahane passed away just before the outbreak of World War II, having just finished this book of his memoirs. His son took over the press which later became the Olympia Press continuing in a similar tradition, being the first to publish works such as Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ and Burrough’s ‘Naked Lunch’.
First edition in the original scarce and unclipped dust jacket, not a common book as most of the edition were destroyed when a German bomb hit the publisher's warehouse.
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Price HK$ 4,500
The Nine Mile Walk: The Nicky Welt Stories -
Harry Kemelman
1967 - G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York - First Edition
‘Strictly speaking, criminal investigation is not my job... but it is only natural to seize the opportunity of showing the professional where he might have slipped up.’
A series of eight charming and quirky short stories originally published in ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’, all revolving around Nicky Welt, Professor of English, a Sherlock Holmes-esque analyst with a knack for word puzzles and etymological anomalies. Able to solve a murder simply by overhearing the sentence ‘a nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain’, Kemelman provides puzzles and enigmas that will tease even the most seasoned mystery fans.
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Price HK$ 1,500
1967 - G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York - First Edition
‘Strictly speaking, criminal investigation is not my job... but it is only natural to seize the opportunity of showing the professional where he might have slipped up.’ A series of eight charming and quirky short stories originally published in ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’, all revolving around Nicky Welt, Professor of English, a Sherlock Holmes-esque analyst with a knack for word puzzles and etymological anomalies. Able to solve a murder simply by overhearing the sentence ‘a nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain’, Kemelman provides puzzles and enigmas that will tease even the most seasoned mystery fans.
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Price HK$ 1,500
Corpse Guards Parade -
Milward Kennedy (Pseud. Milward Burge)
1929 - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of Milward Kennedy’s second solo novel after ‘The Corpse on the Mat’, and featuring John Meriman and Inspector Cornford.
‘Mr. Kennedy has one characteristic which distinguishes him from his rivals in bloodshed. He is acquainted with the English language and has apparently met (and can remember) actual living men and women. The result is that his murders have almost the thrill of local news. They happen, if not to somebody you know, at any rate in company which you might have frequented. Nor does this odd distinction rob Mr. Kennedy of an ability to invent a mystery so tortuous as to be soluble only by a woman, and yet intelligible when solved. Mr. Kennedy indeed runs a risk of burgeoning into a detective best-seller.’ – Contemporary review from the Observer newspaper.
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Price HK$ 3,200
1929 - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London - First Edition
A fine first edition of Milward Kennedy’s second solo novel after ‘The Corpse on the Mat’, and featuring John Meriman and Inspector Cornford.‘Mr. Kennedy has one characteristic which distinguishes him from his rivals in bloodshed. He is acquainted with the English language and has apparently met (and can remember) actual living men and women. The result is that his murders have almost the thrill of local news. They happen, if not to somebody you know, at any rate in company which you might have frequented. Nor does this odd distinction rob Mr. Kennedy of an ability to invent a mystery so tortuous as to be soluble only by a woman, and yet intelligible when solved. Mr. Kennedy indeed runs a risk of burgeoning into a detective best-seller.’ – Contemporary review from the Observer newspaper.
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Price HK$ 3,200