Jean Ross Justice

Collected works in the Unsung Masters series, includes fiction, essays, and photos. The other book in the photo is also available, happy to bundle. Ships from a non-smoking home.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Illinois

On the Life and Work of an American Master

This is the thirteenth volume in the Unsung Masters Series, a book series that brings the work of great, vastly under-appreciated authors to new generations of readers. It includes a large selection of Jean Ross Justice's work alongside essays, photographs, and an interview with her son.

Although she began publishing fiction in magazines in the 1950s, Jean Ross Justice's first short story collection, The End of a Good Party, appeared in 2008, when she was 84 years old. It was followed by another collection of stories, Family Feeling (2014), and the novel Till My Baby Comes Home (2016). She died in 2019.

Fiction. Literary Criticism.

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Tom Postell

Like-new collected works, rare, ships from a non-smoking home. The other book in this photo is also available, happy to bundle.

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Laura Esquivel

Sturdy paperback with sticker residue over the ISBN on the back cover. Ships from a non-smoking home. Spanish edition.

Terrenal, mágico y absolutamente encantador, este relato de la vida familiar en el México finisecular se convirtió, con la mezcla acertada de romance doloroso e ingenio agridulce, en un fenómeno de best-seller.

La clásica historia de amor se sitúa en el rancho De la Garza, mientras la dueña tiránica Mamá Elena corta cebolla en la mesa de cocina durante sus últimos días de embarazo. Aún dentro del útero de su madre, la futura hija llora tan violentamente que causa un parto prematuro y la pequeña Tita nace entre las especies para preparar sopa de fideos. Este temprano encuentro con la comida pronto se convierte en una forma de vida. Tita se convierte en una chef maestra y, a lo largo de la historia, comparte puntos especiales de sus recetas favoritas con los lectores.

La edición en español del best-seller Como agua para chocolate es, con toda razón, un notable éxito. Ahora, en esta edición en pasta blanda, miles de nuevos lectores podrán participar en el suntuoso, romántico y divertido relato de Tita, la extraordinaria cocinera que siempre pone algo extra especial en su salsa. 

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The bestselling phenomenon and inspiration for the award-winning film.

Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico blends poignant romance and bittersweet wit.

This classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef, using cooking to express herself and sharing recipes with readers along the way.

Como Agua para Chocolate / Like Water for Chocolate

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Burton Watson

Like new paperback ships from non-smoking home

Asian Writings on the Simple Life

The short works collected in Four Huts give voice to one of the most treasured aesthetic and spiritual ideals of Asia—that of a simple life lived in a simple dwelling. The texts were written between the ninth and the seventeenth centuries and convey each author's underlying sense of the world and what is to be valued in it. Four Huts presents original translations by Burton Watson—one of the most respected translators of Chinese and Japanese literature. The qualities that emerge from these writings are an awareness of impermanence, love of nature, fondness for poetry and music, and an appreciation of the quiet life. Four Huts features eleven brush paintings by artist Stephen Addiss.

Four Huts

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Karl Ove Knausgaard

Don Bartlett

First Archipelago hardcover edition in like new condition, wrapped in protective Mylar. Comes from a smoke-free home.

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

At eighteen years, old Karl Ove moves to a tiny fisherman's village in the far north of the arctic circle to work as a school teacher. No interest in the job itself, his intention is to save up enough money to travel while finding the space and time to start his writing career. Initially everything looks fine. He writes his first few short stories, finds himself accepted by the hospitable locals, and receives flattering attention from several beautiful local girls. But as the darkness of the long arctic nights start to consume the landscape, Karl Ove's life takes a darker turn. His writing repeats itself, his drinking escalates to some disturbing blackouts, his attempts at losing his virginity end in humiliation and shame, and to his distress, he also develops romantic feelings towards one of his students. Along the way, there are flashbacks to his high school years and the roots of his current problems. Ever present is the long shadow cast by his father, whose own sharply increasing alcohol consumption serves as an ominous backdrop to the author's lifestlye.

My Struggle: Book Four

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#AmericanGirls #Felicity #PleasantCompany #collectible #firstprinting #firstedition First edition, 1st printing of the American Girl Felicity series, book two, highly collectible. In very good/excellent condition, ships from a smoke-free home.

Book Two: A School Story

Felicity Learns a Lesson

#AmericanGirl #AmericanGirls #Felicity #firstedition #firstprinting 1st printing of the classic American Girl books from the 1980s, highly collectible. Book One in the Felicity series. Excellent condition, pages clean, binding tight. Ships from a smoke-free home.

Book One: An American Girl

Meet Felicity

#AmericanGirl #AmericanGirls #Molly #firstedition #firstprinting First printing of the classic American Girl series, highly collectible, from the 1980s. Second book in the Molly stories, in very good condition, save for some marks on the front cover (see photo). Pages inside are clean and binding is tight. Ships from a smoke-free home.

Molly Learns a Lesson

#AmericanGirl #AmericanGirls #Kirsten #classics #collectible #firstedition #firstprinting First printing from the 1980s of the collectible American Girl books. Very good/excellent condition, ships from a smoke-free home.

Kirsten Learns a Lesson

#GreatAmericanLiterature #AmericanClassics #classics #HenryJames #novel Cute pocket-sized hardcover of Henry James’ classic, in like new condition. Book comes wrapped in a protective Mylar cover and includes a ribbon bookmark. Text block has gilt edges, binding is tight. Ships from a smoke-free home.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Portrait of a Lady

#photography #NationalGeographic #nature #adventure #travel

This superb practical guide to travel photography combines the best of all worlds: convenient size, comprehensive coverage, and useful, straightforward advice from the experts of National Geographic Traveler, the highest circulation magazine in its field. It's the perfect "how-to" for anyone seeking to master the veteran photographer's trademark skills: a strong sense of place; a swift, decisive eye; and a sure instinct for the dramatic scene.Be it a weekend escape or far-flung adventure, every occasion promises the chance for a great photograph. Whether you're after that once-in-a-lifetime shot or just want a vivid travelogue to share with friends, The Ultimate Field Guide to Travel Photography will help you achieve your goals. It explores such key genres of photography as panoramas, portraits, and creating a narrative in photographs. Always, the focus is on engaging your subject and working--often quickly--to get the best shots. Chapters cover everything from inspiration and research to the practicalities of purchasing the right equipment. Practical information including checklists, essential contents of a camera bag, and other helpful resources are listed in the back. Designed especially for active travelers, the book fits easily in a backpack or pocket for handy access.

National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Travel Photography

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#AfricanAmerican #AmericanHistory #classic Stained front cover, pages slightly yellowed, ships from a smoke-free home

A Novel

In 1830, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave leading a dissolute life in New Orleans, finds himself forced into marriage.

Middle Passage

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#twonovels #translation #Japanese Original 1969 Knopf edition of two novels by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward Seidensticker. Comes with original DJ though worn and chipped, condition consistent with age. Binding good. Ships from a smoke-free home.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Snow Country and Thousand Cranes

#classics #mystery #detective #BritLit #FirstEdition 1st edition of Daphne DuMaurier’s Rule Britannia offered in condition consistent with age. DJ a bit torn, spotting and yellowing on inside pages but otherwise in good shape. Ships from a smoke-free home.

A political/economic alliance between the United States and England leads to open hostility when Marines land in Cornwall.

Rule Britannia

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#translation #Slovak #EasternEurope #experimental #feminism Fine paperback from a wonderful independent press, ships from a non-smoking home.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

My Life with the Bard

Fiction. Women's Studies. Translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood. ILONA: MY LIFE WITH THE BARD is a fictionalized biography of Ilona Nováková (1856- 1932), wife of Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav (1849-1921), one of Slovakia's most revered poets. By reconstructing the minutiae of Ilona's everyday domestic routines and envisioning her thought processes, Jana Juráňová paints a vivid and subtly ironic portrait of a woman who spent her life in the shadow of her husband. Juráňová debunks the myth of the great artist, showing instead a vain and self-centred man, unwilling to take criticism and oblivious of his wife's needs. Wittily recreating or imagining Hviezdoslav's real-life encounters with fellow writers and literary scholars—based on careful research in historical and literary sources—Jana Juráňová weaves a rich tapestry of cultural, social and political life in fin-de-siècle Slovakia.

"Beginning in reverie and a nostalgic glance back at the protagonist's early life and dreams, Jana Juráňová's ILONA: MY LIFE WITH THE BARD subtly shifts to a tone of gentle and increasingly piercing irony towards Slovakia's national poet, with moments of almost nightmarish confinement, as it becomes clear that there was a heartlessness at the very heart of the burgeoning national liberation movements taking place throughout Central Europe, for they blatantly didn't include half of the people they claimed to unshackle. Yet Ilona's tenderness toward her husband, the loving eye with which she views the surrounding landscape and her determined if often uncertain attempts to insist on the significance of her life keep bitterness at bay."—Michael Stein

Ilona

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#French #translation #contemporarylitintranslation Fine paperback, ships from a non-smoking home.

Carl Malmberg, an older married man who works as a doctor at the hospital, stands out. Our protagonist enters into a passionate affair with him, though struggles with the knowledge that he may never be hers. At the same time, she finds her life further complicated as she wonders whether Dr Malmberg's sexual interest in her might be centred around the lopsided power dynamic between them, and whether a mysterious girl named Alex might be in love with her. Therese Bohman's The Other Woman is a passionate psychological drama with questions of power and sexuality.

The Other Woman

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#comedy #philosophy #academia #satire Like new hardcover comes wrapped in protective Mylar cover. Ships from a smoke-free home.

The writer Hari Kunzru says "made me feel better about the Apocalypse than I have in ages" is back--with a hilarious coming-of-age love story

The unruly undergraduates at Cambridge have a nickname for their new lecturer: Wittgenstein Jr. He's a melancholic, tormented genius who seems determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought.

But Peters--a working-class student surprised to find himself among the elite--soon discovers that there's no place for logic in a Cambridge overrun by posh boys and picnicking tourists, as England's greatest university is collapsing under market pressures.

Such a place calls for a derangement of the senses, best achieved by lethal homemade cocktails consumed on Cambridge rooftops, where Peters joins his fellows as they attempt to forget about the void awaiting them after graduation, challenge one another to think so hard they die, and dream about impressing Wittgenstein Jr with one single, noble thought.

And as they scramble to discover what, indeed, they have to gain from the experience, they realize that their teacher is struggling to survive. For Peters, it leads to a surprising turn--and for all of them, a challenge to see how the life of the mind can play out in harsh but hopeful reality.

Combining his trademark wit and sharp brilliance, Wittgenstein Jr is Lars Iyer's most assured and ambitious novel yet--as impressive, inventive and entertaining as it is extraordinarily stirring.

Wittgenstein Jr

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#translation #FrenchLiterature #philosophy #hybrid #experimental Like new hardcover wrapped in protective Mylar cover, ships from a smoke-free home.

'HHhH blew me away. Binet's style fuses it all together: a neutral, journalistic honesty sustained with a fiction writer's zeal and story-telling instincts. It's one of the best historical novels I've ever come across.' Bret Easton Ellis

Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Nazi secret services, 'the hangman of Prague', 'the blond beast', 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich'.

His boss is Heinrich Himmler but everyone in the SS says 'Himmler's brain is called Heydrich', which in German spells HHhH.

All the characters in HHhH are real. All the events depicted are true. But alongside the nerve-shredding preparations for the attack runs another story: when you are a novelist writing about real people, how do you resist the temptation to make things up?

HHhH is a panorama of the Third Reich told through the life of one outstandingly brutal man, a story of unbearable heroism and loyalty, revenge and betrayal. It is improbably entertaining and electrifyingly modern, a moving and shattering work of fiction.

HHhH

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#translation #Spanish #EdithGrossman Excellent condition paperback with sturdy inner flaps, from the groundbreaking independent press Two Lines. Ships from a smoke-free home.

And Other Stories

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize-winner and Granta "Best Young Spanish- Language Novelist" Santiago Roncagliolo returns with his acclaimed translator Edith Grossman with a raucous phone sex novella and three dark, entrancing stories.

Told entirely in dialog, "Hi, This Is Conchita" is a virtuosic comic novella about men pushed past their breaking point--and the women who drive them crazy. Peru's heir to the incisive social literature of Mario Vargas Llosa weaves a complex tale of an office worker hiring a hitman to kill his mistress, a man leaving feverish messages on his beloved's answering machine, and a phone sex worker whose client is literally crazy about her.

The three stories that follow reveal Roncagliolo's masterful range. "Despoiler" is the claustrophobic tale of a Carnival in Barcelona that brings one middle-aged woman face-to-face to her childhood demons. "Butterflies Fastened with Pins" is the perversely comic account of a man whose friends keep killing themselves. And "The Passenger Beside You" is a surreal story narrated by a woman with a gaping bullet wound right through her heart.


Hi, This Is Conchita

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#translation Excellent condition paperback with sturdy inner flaps. Ships from a smoke-free home.

Compared to Kafka and a member of the Surrealists, Richard Weiner is one of European literature's best-kept secrets. The Game for Real marks the long overdue arrival of his dreamlike, anxiety-ridden fiction into English.

The book opens with The Game of Quartering, where an unnamed hero discovers his double. Surely, he reasons, if he has a double, then his double must also have a double too, and so on . . . What follows is a grotesquely hilarious, snowballing spree through Paris, where real-life landmarks disintegrate into theaters, puppet shows, and, ultimately, a funeral.

Following this, The Game for the Honor of Payback neatly inverts things: instead of a branching, expanding adventure, a man known as "Shame" embarks on a quest that collapses inward. Slapped by someone he despises, he launches a doomed crusade to return the insult. As the stakes grow ever higher, it seems that Shame will stop at nothing -- even if he discovers he's chasing his own tail.

Blending metaphysical questions with farcical humor, bizarre twists, and acute psychology, The Game for Real is a riveting exploration of who we are -- and why we can't be so sure we know.


The Game for Real

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#translation #Brazil #BrazilianLiterature #contemporary #beach 

The End

Excellent condition paperback #oryxandcrake

A novel of the future explores a world that has been devastated by ecological and scientific disasters.

Oryx and Crake

c635ea84-9519-4a36-ac3f-bf2c9c83441f

#fantasy #surrealism #novel #AngelaCarter #feministliterature Hardcover which comes in protective Mylar wrapping. Excellent condition.

Nora and Dora Chance, the twin illegitimate daughters of a British theater legend, ring in their father's hundredth birthday by remembering the special family moments that forged the bond between them

Wise Children

b65288a0-a2e7-46f5-9474-e7c83bb160bc-1

A month-by-month account of the author's experience in the first year of restoring a two-centuries old stone farmhouse in back country Provence, France.

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