Literature
Crime & Detective
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Spies Espionage James Bond 007
Austen Bronte
Conrad & Kipling
Dickens & Shakespeare
Greene & Orwell
Hemingway & Steinbeck
Maugham & Waugh
Wodehouse
Antiquarian
Modern
American
Poetry
The Man With the Golden Arm -
Nelson Algren
1949 - Doubleday & Company, New York - First Edition
‘There’s people in hell who want ice water…’
Algren’s shockingly brilliant novel of the disinherited, The Man With the Golden Arm tells the sordid tale of Frankie Machine, the ‘golden arm’ dealer of a back street Chicago gambling den, whose heroin addiction and failing marriage drive him to the depths of despair.
The character of Frankie Machine was memorably brought to life on the silver screen by Frank Sinatra, in Otto Preminger’s 1955 film adaption of the novel, which co-starred Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker.
More details
Price HK$ 2,600
1949 - Doubleday & Company, New York - First Edition
‘There’s people in hell who want ice water…’Algren’s shockingly brilliant novel of the disinherited, The Man With the Golden Arm tells the sordid tale of Frankie Machine, the ‘golden arm’ dealer of a back street Chicago gambling den, whose heroin addiction and failing marriage drive him to the depths of despair.
The character of Frankie Machine was memorably brought to life on the silver screen by Frank Sinatra, in Otto Preminger’s 1955 film adaption of the novel, which co-starred Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker.
More details
Price HK$ 2,600
The Splendid Idle Forties. Stories of Old California -
Gertrude Atherton, Harrison Fisher (illustrator)
1902 - The Macmillan Company, New York - First Edition
‘Perhaps the best known collection of stories of that romantic period of California history when the incoming Americans were first intermingling with the Californians of rancho and presidio...’ – The Zamorano 80: A Selection of Distinguished California Books Made by Members of the Zamorano Club.
A fine bright example, of this collection of short stories, illustrated with eight plates by Harrison Fisher.
‘The finest stories ever written about early California’ – Phil Townsend Hanna.
The stories are: The Pearls of Loreto; The Ears of Twenty Americans; The Washtub Mail; The Conquest of Dona Jacoba; A Ramble with Eulogia; The Isle of Skulls; The Head of a Priest; La Perdida; Lukari's Story; Natalie Ivanhoff: A Memory of Fort Ross; The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo; The Bells of San Gabriel; and When the Devil was Well.
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
1902 - The Macmillan Company, New York - First Edition
‘Perhaps the best known collection of stories of that romantic period of California history when the incoming Americans were first intermingling with the Californians of rancho and presidio...’ – The Zamorano 80: A Selection of Distinguished California Books Made by Members of the Zamorano Club.A fine bright example, of this collection of short stories, illustrated with eight plates by Harrison Fisher.
‘The finest stories ever written about early California’ – Phil Townsend Hanna.
The stories are: The Pearls of Loreto; The Ears of Twenty Americans; The Washtub Mail; The Conquest of Dona Jacoba; A Ramble with Eulogia; The Isle of Skulls; The Head of a Priest; La Perdida; Lukari's Story; Natalie Ivanhoff: A Memory of Fort Ross; The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo; The Bells of San Gabriel; and When the Devil was Well.
More details
Price HK$ 3,500
The Adventures of Augie March -
Saul Bellow
1953 - The Viking Press, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that sombre city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted.’
Saul Bellow’s masterful novel, tells the story of the eponymous Augie March, a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Depression, whose numberless occupations and diverting encounters offer startling extremes of vivid realism and bravura philosophising.
‘The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further.’ – Martin Amis.
Winner of the National Book Award, 1954. Named by Time magazine as one of the best 100 novels in the English language published since 1923.
More details
Price HK$ 7,000
1953 - The Viking Press, New York - First Edition, First Issue
‘I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that sombre city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted.’Saul Bellow’s masterful novel, tells the story of the eponymous Augie March, a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Depression, whose numberless occupations and diverting encounters offer startling extremes of vivid realism and bravura philosophising.
‘The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further.’ – Martin Amis.
Winner of the National Book Award, 1954. Named by Time magazine as one of the best 100 novels in the English language published since 1923.
More details
Price HK$ 7,000
Nova Express -
William S. Burroughs
1964 - Grove Press, New York - First Edition
‘A masterpiece of fantasy and reality, a carnival of horrors, a doomsday confrontation of man and his world.’
Burroughs’ ferociously political and prophetic novel – a parody of bureaucracy and human frailty, and the third in his linguistically ‘cut-up’ trilogy, following The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded –fires the reader into the diabolical world of the Nova Mob, poised to wreak havoc and destruction upon the planet. Can Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police stop them before it’s too late…?
More details
Price HK$ 1,600
1964 - Grove Press, New York - First Edition
‘A masterpiece of fantasy and reality, a carnival of horrors, a doomsday confrontation of man and his world.’Burroughs’ ferociously political and prophetic novel – a parody of bureaucracy and human frailty, and the third in his linguistically ‘cut-up’ trilogy, following The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded –fires the reader into the diabolical world of the Nova Mob, poised to wreak havoc and destruction upon the planet. Can Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police stop them before it’s too late…?
More details
Price HK$ 1,600
The Big Sleep -
Raymond Chandler
1939 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
‘What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.’
Chandler's first book and the introduction to the world of the famed private eye, Philip Marlowe, and established Chandler as the master of the 'hard-boiled' detective novel. The basis for the 1946 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and an endless source of private eye quotes.
‘It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in’.
A lovely bright copy, and absolutely no sign of restoration, rare and honest as you can expect this ‘dust jacket’ to be in a world where its going out of style (apologies). Housed in a custom clamshell cloth case.
More details
Price HK$ 70,000
1939 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
‘What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.’Chandler's first book and the introduction to the world of the famed private eye, Philip Marlowe, and established Chandler as the master of the 'hard-boiled' detective novel. The basis for the 1946 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and an endless source of private eye quotes.
‘It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in’.
A lovely bright copy, and absolutely no sign of restoration, rare and honest as you can expect this ‘dust jacket’ to be in a world where its going out of style (apologies). Housed in a custom clamshell cloth case.
More details
Price HK$ 70,000
Guard of Honor -
James Gould Cozzens
1948 - Harcourt, New York - First Edition
A fine copy in near fine scarce first issue dust jacket, price clipped, but with no mention of the Pulitzer Prize to front flap, no quotes from reviews of Guard of Honor and no BOMC stamps present on book or jacket.
‘Guard of Honor’ won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949. The novel balances a vast cast of intricately enmeshed characters as they react over the course of three tense days in September 1943 to a racial incident on a U.S. Army airbase in Florida. The reader is acutely aware of the war raging abroad and the effect it has had, or will have, on the multitude of servicemen who populate Cozzens's immense canvas.
‘No other American novelist of our time writes with such profound understanding of the wellsprings of human character and of the social pressures that help to form it’. - The New York Times.
‘Every page of ‘Guard of Honor’ gives the impression of a writer at the very top of his powers setting out to accomplish nothing less than his masterwork.’ - The New Yorker.
More details
Price HK$ 3,000
1948 - Harcourt, New York - First Edition
A fine copy in near fine scarce first issue dust jacket, price clipped, but with no mention of the Pulitzer Prize to front flap, no quotes from reviews of Guard of Honor and no BOMC stamps present on book or jacket.‘Guard of Honor’ won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949. The novel balances a vast cast of intricately enmeshed characters as they react over the course of three tense days in September 1943 to a racial incident on a U.S. Army airbase in Florida. The reader is acutely aware of the war raging abroad and the effect it has had, or will have, on the multitude of servicemen who populate Cozzens's immense canvas.
‘No other American novelist of our time writes with such profound understanding of the wellsprings of human character and of the social pressures that help to form it’. - The New York Times.
‘Every page of ‘Guard of Honor’ gives the impression of a writer at the very top of his powers setting out to accomplish nothing less than his masterwork.’ - The New Yorker.
More details
Price HK$ 3,000
An American Tragedy -
Theodore Dreiser, Reginald Marsh (illustrator)
1954 - The Limited Editions Club, New York - First Edition illustrated by Marsh, Number 764 of 1, 500 copies.
A large and handsomely bound limited edition of Dreiser’s ‘supreme achievement’ and the inspiration for the Oscar winning 1951 film A Place in the Sun starring Elizabeth Taylor and the perfectly cast Montgomery Clift.
With an introduction by Harry Hansen and illustrated throughout with line drawings by Reginald Marsh.
“Based on newspaper accounts of a sensational murder case, An American Tragedy is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American Dream. Extraordinary in scope and power, vivid in its sense of wholesale human waste, unceasing in its rich compassion, An American Tragedy stands as Theodore Dreiser's supreme achievement.”
This is the first edition to be illustrated by Reginald Marsh, and also his final work. Marsh died on 4 July 1954, just prior to it going to press.
‘No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions, or dramatized with such solicitousness and compassion the difficulty of breaking free from social law’ – The New Yorker [2003].
More details
Price HK$ 4,500
1954 - The Limited Editions Club, New York - First Edition illustrated by Marsh, Number 764 of 1, 500 copies.
A large and handsomely bound limited edition of Dreiser’s ‘supreme achievement’ and the inspiration for the Oscar winning 1951 film A Place in the Sun starring Elizabeth Taylor and the perfectly cast Montgomery Clift.With an introduction by Harry Hansen and illustrated throughout with line drawings by Reginald Marsh.
“Based on newspaper accounts of a sensational murder case, An American Tragedy is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American Dream. Extraordinary in scope and power, vivid in its sense of wholesale human waste, unceasing in its rich compassion, An American Tragedy stands as Theodore Dreiser's supreme achievement.”
This is the first edition to be illustrated by Reginald Marsh, and also his final work. Marsh died on 4 July 1954, just prior to it going to press.
‘No one else confronted so directly the sheer intractability of American social life and institutions, or dramatized with such solicitousness and compassion the difficulty of breaking free from social law’ – The New Yorker [2003].
More details
Price HK$ 4,500
Sister Carrie -
Theodore Dreiser, Reginald Marsh (illustrator)
1939 - The Limited Editions Club, New York - First Edition illustrated by Marsh, Number 1194 of 1500 copies.
A handsomely bound limited edition, signed by the illustrator, with an introduction by Burton Rascoe and illustrated throughout from crayon drawings by Reginald Marsh
Banned on publication for its questionable morals, Sister Carrie is the great American novel of seduction, a masterpiece of insight into appetite and innocence.
Long before she was seduced by the cautious and ordinary man whose life she would unravel with no malice and only intermittent interest, the young Carrie Meeber was seduced by the promise of the city–its vitality and reckless possibility, the thrill of material luxury, and the spectacle of power and industry.
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time.
More details
Price HK$ 4,000
1939 - The Limited Editions Club, New York - First Edition illustrated by Marsh, Number 1194 of 1500 copies.
A handsomely bound limited edition, signed by the illustrator, with an introduction by Burton Rascoe and illustrated throughout from crayon drawings by Reginald MarshBanned on publication for its questionable morals, Sister Carrie is the great American novel of seduction, a masterpiece of insight into appetite and innocence.
Long before she was seduced by the cautious and ordinary man whose life she would unravel with no malice and only intermittent interest, the young Carrie Meeber was seduced by the promise of the city–its vitality and reckless possibility, the thrill of material luxury, and the spectacle of power and industry.
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time.
More details
Price HK$ 4,000