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
Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Part First and Part Second -
Louisa May Alcott
1870 - Roberts Brothers, Boston - Early Printing
Two matching little volumes of Alcott’s classic work, scarce in original cloth, each one illustrated with four full page wood engraved plates. An early printing of the ‘Part First’, and first edition of ‘Part Second’. Published separately in consecutive years (1868, 1869), the first part of ‘Little Women’ “did not sell at first. ‘Part Second’ was therefore also issued in a small edition, but it went like wildfire, and pulled ‘Part First’ along with it’ [Grolier 74].
‘Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth - four "little women" enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England. The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored by generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo's hand, cried over little Beth's death, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Future writers have found inspiration in Jo's devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature's most beloved women.’ [Penguin]
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
1870 - Roberts Brothers, Boston - Early Printing
Two matching little volumes of Alcott’s classic work, scarce in original cloth, each one illustrated with four full page wood engraved plates. An early printing of the ‘Part First’, and first edition of ‘Part Second’. Published separately in consecutive years (1868, 1869), the first part of ‘Little Women’ “did not sell at first. ‘Part Second’ was therefore also issued in a small edition, but it went like wildfire, and pulled ‘Part First’ along with it’ [Grolier 74].‘Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth - four "little women" enduring hardships and enjoying adventures in Civil War New England. The charming story of the March sisters, Little Women has been adored by generations. Readers have rooted for Laurie in his pursuit of Jo's hand, cried over little Beth's death, and dreamed of traveling through Europe with old Aunt March and Amy. Future writers have found inspiration in Jo's devotion to her writing. In this simple, enthralling tale, Louisa May Alcott has created four of American literature's most beloved women.’ [Penguin]
More details
Price HK$ 6,000
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
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.
‘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’.
More details
Price HK$ 70,000
1939 - Alfred A. Knopf, New York - First Edition
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.‘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’.
More details
Price HK$ 70,000
The Mutiny of the Flying Spray -
Arthur Hunt Chute, Harry H. A. Burne (illustrator)
1927 - J. H. Sears & Company, New York - First Edition
A fine example of Chute’s Conrad’esque novel of a rebellious young man who goes to sea, in the rare dust jacket. A historic maritime novel set during the gold rush days of 1849. Assumed first edition.
Canadian author Chute knew his stuff having also been a rebellious schoolboy as well as sailing around the Horn, he died at the age of forty in a plane crash over Lake Manitoba.
More details
Price HK$ 1,600
1927 - J. H. Sears & Company, New York - First Edition
A fine example of Chute’s Conrad’esque novel of a rebellious young man who goes to sea, in the rare dust jacket. A historic maritime novel set during the gold rush days of 1849. Assumed first edition.Canadian author Chute knew his stuff having also been a rebellious schoolboy as well as sailing around the Horn, he died at the age of forty in a plane crash over Lake Manitoba.
More details
Price HK$ 1,600
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