Some discoloration and starting on cloth cover 
Pages are yellowed with age 

Riverside Press, 1942, 679 pages 

1655-1714 Paris. Follows two sisters, both beautiful through the trials if their life in Paris high society. Their affairs both literally and figuratively were shocking but mostly because their societal 'friends', took great pleasure in seeing them touted by the pamphleteers, even though they themselves were doing much the same thing. All persons and circumstances in the book are real. Private dialogues are the authors.

An intricate, gossipy novel of manners set in the 17th century.

The best part is the author's note at the beginning: "None of the characters in this novel is imaginary."

All the people, all the affairs, all the adulteries, all the backbiting, all the clothes and vacations and furniture, all the social ins and outs--the author took these delicious things straight from the many memoirs and letters of the social and literary lights of Louis XIV's Paris.

The main characters are the beautiful de la Loupe sisters, Catherine and Magdelaine--and if there had been reality shows in the 1600's, theirs would have run for decades. (They both lived into their eighties.)

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

California

The Ivory Mischief 

Mary Higgins Clark

Simon & Schuster, 2000, 332 pages 

A young woman probing into the mysterious circumstances of her husband's death receives a message from a medium claiming to be his channel in Mary Higgins Clark's #1 bestselling thriller, Before I Say Good-Bye.

When Nell MacDermott learns that her husband, architect Adam Cauliff, and three of his business associates have died in an explosion of his new cabin cruiser, she is not only devastated but wracked with guilt. The last time she saw Adam, they had a bitter quarrel over her plan to run for the congressional seat long held by her grandfather; she had told him not to come home.

As the investigation into the boat's explosion proceeds, Nell learns that it was not an accident but a bomb. Despite her skepticism, Nell is swayed by her great-aunt Gert, a believer in psychic powers, to see a medium claiming to be Adam's channel.

While trying to unravel the threads of Adam's past and his violent end, Nell consults the medium, who transmits messages to her with instructions from Adam. The story reaches a powerful climax in Nell's final encounter with the medium, in which she learns the truth about the explosion--a truth she can't be allowed to live to tell.



Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A top suspense writer returns with a tale of treachery and deceit in which a sinister psychic manipulates a potential congresswoman by claiming to be in contact with her missing husband. Lit Guild & Doubleday Main.

Before I Say Good-Bye

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Robert Hicks

Some shelf wear on book jacket 

Warner Books, 2005, 418 pages

Tennessee, 1864. On a late autumn day, near a little town called Franklin, 10,000 men will soon lie dead or dying in a battle that will change many lives for ever. None will be more changed than Carrie McGavock, who finds her home taken over by the Confederate army and turned into a field hospital. Taking charge, she finds the courage to face up to the horrors around her and, in doing so, finds a cause.

Out on the battlefield, a tired young Southern soldier drops his guns and charges forward into Yankee territory, holding only the flag of his company's colours. He survives and is brought to the hospital. Carrie recognizes something in him - a willingness to die - and decides on that day, in her house, she will not let him.

In the pain-filled days and weeks that follow, both find a form of mutual healing that neither thinks possible.

In this extraordinary debut novel based on a true story, Robert Hicks has written an epic novel of love and heroism set against the madness of the American Civil War.


A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers.

The Widow of the South

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Nelson DeMille

Some staining on book ledge 

Warner Books, 1990, 500 pages 

Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world.

Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, and laced with sexual passion and suspense, The Gold Coast is Nelson DeMille's captivating story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal.




Welcome to the fabled Gold Coast, that stretch on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America. Here two men are destined for an explosive collision: John Sutter, Wall Street lawyer, holding fast to a fading aristocratic legacy; and Frank Bellarosa, the Mafia don who seizes his piece of the staid and unprepared Gold Coast like a latter-day barbarian chief and draws Sutter and his regally beautiful wife, Susan, into his violent world. Told from Sutter's sardonic and often hilarious point of view, and laced with sexual passion and suspense, The Gold Coast is Nelson DeMille's captivating story of friendship and seduction, love and betrayal.

The Gold Coast

884b1e5f-8494-4698-b7b2-799398b275e5-1

Susan Isaacs

Harper Collin’s, 2001, 358 pages 

It's been twenty years, and Judith's life has definitely changed. Now a history professor and a widow, she hasn't seen Nelson Sharpe of the Nassau County Police Department in all that time. But she still can't get her one-time lover out of her head. Her life takes an unexpected turn, however, when former investment banker turned suburban mommy extraordinaire Courtney Logan vanishes from Long Island into thin air.

Everyone suspects husband, Greg, the darkly handsome son of flashy Long Island mobster Fancy Phil Lowenstein. Ever the good neighbor, Judith offers her services to Greg, but he shows her the door, thinking she's just a nut. His father, however, isn't so sure -- he just may have other plans for the wily Judith...


Long Time No See

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Jeffrey Archer

St Martin’s Press, 2011, 386 pages 

The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the words “I was told that my father was killed in the war.” A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he’s left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys’ school, and his life will never be the same again.
As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

From the internationally bestselling author ofKane and Abel andA Prisoner of Birth comesOnly Time Will Tell, the first in an ambitious new series that tells the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph.

The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words "I was told that my father was killed in the war." A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school. But then an unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again.

As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question, was he even his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the firstborn son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?

This introductory novel in Archer's ambitious series The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler's Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City,Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined.

Only Time Will Tell

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Jodi Picoult

Slight shelfwear on cover 

Balentine Books, 2014, 405 pages

For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice’s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts.

As Jenna’s memories dovetail with the events in her mother’s journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish.

Abandoned by a grief-stricken father and accomplished-scientist mother who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, 13-year-old Jenna Metcalf approaches a disgraced psychic and a jaded detective in the hopes of finding answers. By the #1 best-selling author of The Storyteller. 500,000 first printing.

Leaving Time

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Kate Atkinson

Little Brown, 2013, 539 pages

What if you could live again and again, until you got it right?

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she?

A Novel

The award-winning author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum follows the experiences of a woman who after being born on a snowy night in 1910 repeated dies and reincarnates into the same life to correct missteps and ultimately save the world. 75,000 first printing.

Life after Life

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Jhumpa Lahiri

Knopf, 2013, 340 pages

Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are

From Subhash's earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother's sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass - as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India - their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives.

Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow.


The Lowland

413ad8f8-093f-4533-b146-0471c05a3d69-1

Wally Lamb

Some staining on book ledge 

Harper Collin’s, 1998, 901 pages 

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother, Thomas, entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut, public library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable. . . .

One of the most acclaimed novels of our time, Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True is a story of alienation and connection, devastation and renewal, at once joyous, heartbreaking, poignant, mystical, and powerfully, profoundly human.

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

I Know This Much Is True

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Missing book jacket 
Cloth spine is discolored/faded

Book of the Month Club, 1996, 981 pages

Three books in one 

The Black Tower:
Commander Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life-threatening illness when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has recently and mysteriously died, as has one of the patients at Toynton Grange. Evidently the home is not quite the caring community it purports to be. Dalgliesh is determined to discover the truth of his friend's death, but further fatalities follow and his own life is in danger as he unmasks the evil at the heart of Toynton Grange.

Death of an Expert Witness:
Dr. Lorrimer appeared to be the picture of a bloodless, coldly efficient scientist. Only when his brutally slain body is discovered and his secret past dissected does the image begin to change. Once again, Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh learns that there is more to human beings than meets the eye -- and more to solving a murder than the obvious clues.

The Skull Beneath the Skin:
Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death.

Deadly Pleasures 

Tess Gerritsen

Slight watermark on top corner trough first 150 pages 

Harlequin Books, 2006, 555 pages

Call After Midnight: 

 A suspenseful romantic thriller from the author of the bestselling Rizzoli & Isles series.
A ringing phone in the middle of the night begins a horrific journey for newlywed Sarah Fontaine when she is given the news that her husband, Geoffrey, has been killed in a hotel fire in Berlin.
Convinced that Geoffrey is still alive, she challenges special agent Nick O'Hara of the U.S. State department to prove her wrong as they crisscross Europe in a desperate search, trying to stay one heartbeat ahead of a dangerous killer and risking everything for answers that may prove fatal.


Under the Knife:

For attorney David Ransom, it begins as an open-and-shut case: malpractice. Then Dr. Kate Chesne storms into his office, daring him to seek out the truth—that she's being framed. When another patient turns up dead, David starts to believe her. Somewhere in the Honolulu hospital, a killer walks freely. And now David finds himself asking the same questions Kate is desperate to have answered.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A ringing phone in the middle of the night shakes newlywed Sarah Fontaine awake. Expecting her husband's call from London she hears instead an unfamiliar voice. Nick O'Hara from the U.S. State Department is calling with devastating news: Geoffrey Fontaine, Sarah's husband of two months, died in a hotel fire ... in Berlin. Convinced her husband is still alive, Sarah forces a confrontation with Nick that finds them crisscrossing Europe on a desperate search for Geoffrey. Trying to stay one heartbeat ahead of a dangerous killer, they become quarry in the clandestine world of international espionage, risking everything for answers that may prove fatal.

Call after Midnight and under the Knife

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Nancy Pickard

Wear to cover front and edges 

Pocket Books, 2000, 264 pages 

Few killers of our time, whether real or imagined, are in the same league as Raymond Raintree. And as he stands in a Florida courtroom waiting to be convicted for the murder of Natalie Mae McCullen, Marie Lightfoot is taking it all in. Renowned for her true-crime bestsellers, Marie knows the case will make her best book yet -- because Raintree's crime, vile beyond imagining, is also impossible to turn away from. Creator of the award-winning Jenny Cain series, Pickard premieres a superb new heroine in a masterpiece of psychological suspense.

"Nancy Pickard pushes at the presumed limits of [crime fiction]" said the Los Angeles Times Book Review, praising the award-winning creator of the Jenny Cain mysteries. Now, Pickard blurs the line between fiction and reality in a novel of gripping intensity, and premieres a superb new heroine: true-crime author Marie Lightfoot. For her next surefire bestseller, Marie is covering the trial of a Florida killer -- a case that penetrates her own life, layer by disturbing layer. Whether real like Ted Bundy, or imagined like Hannibal Lecter, few killers of our time are in the same league as Raymond Raintree. And as he stands flanked by lawyers in a Florida courtroom, waiting to be convicted for the murder of Natalie Mae McCullen, Marie Lightfoot is taking it all in. A small, gutsy blonde renowned for her true-crime bestsellers, Marie knows the graphic and disturbing case will make her best book yet -- because Raintree's shocking crime, vile beyond imagining, is also impossible to turn away from. But there is something about the case -- and Raintree's involvement -- that bothers her. No one knows where Raintree, a man as slight and immature as a preteen boy, took Natalie after he abducted her. No one knows how Natalie -- bright, independent, and with no fear of the dark -- could be lured into a stranger's boat on a lonely waterway. And only one witness saw a man who may have been Raintree motoring along in a water taxi on the night Natalie disappeared. Even if the police can't provide answers, Marie intends to leave no loose ends. Starting with a prison meeting with Raintree, the steely-nerved writer follows a twisted path that leads to Natalie's parents, to a coincidence that doesn't quite gel, and to a place she has resisted all her life: the dark recesses of her own soul, where she hides the secrets of her own lost past. When Raymond escapes, Marie -- a curious contradiction of celebrity author and introspective loner -- becomes a sitting duck for a killer who just might be smart enough to outwit her. And evil enough to take her to hell before she dies. A masterpiece of psychological suspense, The Whole Truth is a compelling look at our fascination with the horrific crimes of our time. Nancy Pickard's characters are as close to flesh and blood as fiction can get -- and her writing is as close to perfection.

The Whole Truth

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Small tears on top edge of book jacket 
Book jacket discoloration 

Scribner’s, 1981, 188 pages 

Inspector Thanet is called to investigate the death of a young housewife. His clues are a painting, a disc jockey, a mermaid, an estate agent, a recurring nightmare and an unsolved murder. Delving into the past he realizes he is hunting a murderer who has gone unpunished for twenty years.

The Night She Died 

Laminate on book jacket is raised along lettering 

Warner Books, 1992, 454 pages

Captain Ann Campbell is a West Point graduate, the daughter of legendary General "Fighting Joe" Campbell. She is the pride of Fort Hadley until, one morning, her body is found naked and bound on the firing range. Paul Brenner is a member of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division's elite undercover investigative unit, and the man in charge of this politically explosive case. Teamed with rape specialist Cynthia Sunhill, with whom he once had a tempestuous, doomed affair, Brenner is about to learn just how many people were sexually, emotionally, and dangerously involved with the Army's "golden girl", and how the neatly pressed uniforms and honor codes of the military hide a corruption as rank as Ann Campbell's shocking secret life.

The General's Daughter was made into a 1999 film of the same name, starring John Travolta and Madeleine Stowe. In the movie, Captain Ann Campbell's first name was changed to Elisabeth.


Here is an intriguing and sophisticated murder mystery of an upstanding military officer - the base commander's daughter - who's been leading an unsavory double life. When a professional military woman with a pristine reputation is found raped and murdered, a preliminary search turns up certain paraphernalia, and sex toys that point to a scandal of major proportions, The chief investigator is reluctant to take the case when he learns that his partner will be a woman with whom he had a tempestuous affair and an unpleasant parting. But duty calls and intrigue begins when they learn that several top-level people may have been involved with the "golden girl" - and many have wanted her dead. It's Nelson DeMille at his best - exciting, suspenseful and highly provocative.

The General's Daughter

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Dominick Dunne

Some shelf wear on book jacket

Crown, 2001, 337 pages 

Dominick Dunne's mesmerizing tales of justice denied and justice affirmed.

For more than two decades, Vanity Fair published Dominick Dunne’s brilliant, revelatory chronicles of the most famous crimes, trials, and punishments of our time. Whether writing of Claus von Bülow’s romp through two trials; the Los Angeles media frenzy surrounding O.J. Simpson; the death by fire of multibillionaire banker Edmond Safra; or the Greenwich, Connecticut, murder of Martha Moxley and the indictment—decades later—of Michael Skakel, Dominick Dunne tells it honestly and tells it from his unique perspective. His search for the truth is relentless.


Crimes, Trials, and Punishments

For more than two decades,Vanity Fairhas published Dominick Dunne's brilliant, revelatory chronicles of the most famous crimes, trials, and punishments of our time. The pursuit of justice has become his passion — a passion that began during the trial of the man who murdered Dunne's daughter and who was sentenced to six and a half years and released in less than three. Dunne's account of that trial and its shocking result became the first of his many classic essays on justice. Dominick Dunne's essays do much more than simply describe; his investigations have shed new light on those crimes and their perpetrators — and demonstrated how it is possible for some to skirt, even flout, the law. His persistence and personal involvement in the matter of Martha Moxley's murder was an important catalyst in bringing a dormant case back to life. Here in one volume are Dominick Dunne's mesmerizing tales of justice denied and justice affirmed. Whether writing of Vicki Morgan's hideous death; Claus von Bülow's romp through two trials; the media frenzy of Los Angeles in the age of O.J. Simpson; the death by fire of multibillionaire banker Edmund Safra in Monaco; or the ominous silence surrounding the death of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the indictment — decades later — of Michael Skakel, Dominick Dunne tells it honestly and tells it from his unique perspective. His search for the truth is relentless. His courage and his storytelling skills shine from every page.

Justice

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Book jacket discolored 

Random House, 1978 book club edition, 250 pages

When Isabel Moore's father dies, she finds herself at the age of thirty suddenly freed from eleven years of unbroken devotion to a helpless, bedridden man. Standing at his open grave, she realizes that she has no idea what she wants now, that she must indeed "invent" a new existence. For her first tentative steps into a world now strange to her, she turns to two childhood friends - gentle, supportive Eleanor, who has an apartment in the city, and tough, strong-minded Liz, married, with two children and a farm. At the same time, almost inadvertently, she becomes involved with two men. And just when she is about to grasp her future, the past reaches out to hold her back. An exploration of the nature of friendship and of desire, of filial love and guilt, of the hold of the past, Final Payments heralds the arrival of an important new novelist with a remarkable gift for creating real and affecting characters and situations that, however unexpected, ring with authenticity.



Final Payments

Discolored book jacket with some chipping on the edges 

William Morrow and Co, 1977, 239 pages

Anna Kowalczek arrived on Capitol Hill the very day America entered World War II. She infiltrated the exclusively male domains of politics and journalism by hiding her intelligence and drive behind a façade of cheerful, irreverent innocence—playing the role men expected of bright, pretty girls in 1941. Thirty-five years later, Anna Hastings, widow of Texas Senator Gordon Hastings, is an influential columnist, powerful television personality, major political figure, publisher of one of the most respected newspapers in the country, and master of a media empire she ruled with a whim of iron.
Anna Hastings is the story of her public and personal struggles as she climbs her way from obscurity to legend, set against the backdrop of Washington during the tumultuous years of World War, Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the emergence of feminism as a distinct political force. Drawing on his years reporting on the Senate, Allen Drury again presents an "insider's view" of both the Senate and the Washington Press Corps during these decades of rapid social and political change




The story of a Washington newspaper person AH

Anna Hastings

Jean Shepherd

Pages yellowing 

Doubleday, 1980, 350 pages

With hilarious precision, Jean Shepherd remembers teenage survival in the Midwest: the almighty sacrifice of the Easter ham, taffy apple binges at the state fair, the gut-wrenching playground notist s Delbe Bunges the oemation prosing don surrounding the unapproachable Daphne Bigelow, and the sweaty glow of Wanda Hickey at the Junior Prom. These are some of the archetypal legends of childhood that Shepherd evokes from his nostalgic Indiana muse. A universal orchestration of Midwestern life and puberty rites, Wancia Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters is the sweet, cacophonous roar of youth tempered with the wit and enduring honesty of a grown boy. 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

And Other Disasters

A bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana and the basis of the movie A Christmas Story.

"Mr. Shepherd has the true satirist's grip on his pen: he is humorous, sympathetic,and ironic all at once."--Boston Globe

Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant--and utterly hilarious--works of comic art. Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations.

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories is a universal (and achingly funny) orchestration of Midwestern puberty rites. From the gut-wrenching playground antics of one Delbert Bumpus and the almighty sacrifice of the Easter ham, to taffy-apple binges at the state fair and the supernatural glow surrounding unapproachable high school beauty Daphne Bigelow, to the memorable disaster that was Shepherd's (and everyone else's) junior prom--these are some of the archetypal legends of childhood that Shepherd evokes from his nostalgic Indiana muse.

A timeless and enduring classic, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories captures the sweet cacophonous roar of youth tempered with the wit and honesty of a grown boy

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories

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Donna Tartt

Book jacket back top rolled edge 

Little Brown, 2013, 771 pages 

The novel is a coming-of-age tale told in the first person. The protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum where his mother is killed. While staggering through the debris, he takes with him a small Dutch Golden Age painting called Het Puttertje (Dutch for The Goldfinch). Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who do not know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: the small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
The painting is one of the few surviving works by Rembrandt's most promising pupil, Carel Fabritius (almost all of Fabritius's works were destroyed in the Delft explosion of 1654, in which the artist himself was killed).

A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

The Goldfinch

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Book jacket discolored and some small tears

Henry Regency Company, 1958, 176 pages

Protected from the grimness of World War I in Germany, a little girl and her mother find safety amid the beauty and peace of the ancient convent of Sankt Georgen. Here, among fields and rich woodlands, sheltered by old stone cloisters, nurtured by the warmly human religion of her gentle great-uncle and practical aunt, the child is cherished and loved. The grown-ups, with their concerns, their talk, and their rules, however, exist only vaguely for the little girl. Reality is the gypsy boy who lures her into the forest to show her a secret pool, the Corpus Christi lily that comes alive in the moonlight, the unseen menace that lies hidden in the grass of a sunny meadow in the stillness of noon. 
When the child's father returns from the war and the family settles down to normal living, the young girl is torn from her magic world and placed in a boarding school. How, under the rigid discipline of the school and the demands of her teachers and fellow students, she reconstitutes her earlier life of uncontrolled imagination into a more adult refuge of mind and spirit is the theme of Rings of Glass. 




Rings of Glass 

Some discoloration in book jacket 
Light staining on book cloth cover at spine 

Viking, 1978 book of the month club, 376 pages


Philippa Talbot is a successful London career woman turned forty when she feels the call of the religious life. "T thought I was very well as I was," she told the Brede Sacristan later, "a human, balanced person with a reasonable rec-ord; with the luck of having money, friends, love. Only suddenly it wasn't enough." She is one of the most attractive and sympathetic characters in Rumer Godden's long and well-loved fictional roster. This, then, is a story of the life in an enclosed house of nuns and of the relevance of this contemplative existence to our changing world—a challenging theme. The novel unfolds chiefly through Philippa, from the day of her entrance, through one crisis of mind and heart to another, until she faces an ultimate and almost unbearable sacrifice. Woven with her personal story is a much larger one-the story of the House, its history, and the present inmates who have vowed to live and die within its walls. The nuns are English Benedictines whose House is centuries old in tradi-tion, a stronghold of faith and prayer, yet they are up-to-date, alive, aware of the world-and matter of fact. In Rumer Godden's hands, they are fully realized individuals whom we come to know and care about, adding rich dimensions to the novel as they live out their vocations. 





In This House of Brede

Book jacket discolored 

Dell Book, 1983 book club edition, 408 pages

The saga of an American family divided by revolution continues in this stunning sequel to The Fires of July. 
As Drew Manning and his passionate young wife, Gwynne Templeton, enjoy a happy new life together, political matters in the Colonies threaten to explode in revolution and tear their families apart. The cry for liberty rings throughout South Carolina, and Drew openly supports the Patriots, while his aristocratic parents, and even his brother, remain staunchly loyal to the Crown. But soon the very foundations of his life will be shaken by more than revolution-Joanna Templeton Townshend, Gwynne's sister and Drew's spurned fiancée, stands ready to betray her own blood for the sake of ven-geance. Together with her British soldier hus-band, she masterminds a slave uprising on the Manning estate, killing many faithful slaves and several family members, and ultimately gaining a victory for the British king. But Drew and Gwynne will live through this bloody insurgency to continue America's fight for freedom, and Drew, torn between ties of blood and the rousing challenge of war, will come face to face with his own father and brother across a battlefield….





The Drums of December

Bookjacket chipping on edges and discolored 

Doubleday, 1968 book club edition, 287 pages 

Father Gregory Lind was thirty-two years old when he met Pamela Gibson. He was a dedicated and conservative priest, if judged by the standards of Vatican II. He was not in favor of celebrating the Mass in English. nor did he like the idea of folk Masses... and he believed strongly and seriously in the priestly vows of chastity. As assistant editor of The Catholic Star and as supervisor of a training center for the underprivileged Spanish-Americans of his town, he took a genuine, compassionate interest in people and their problems. Father Lind had seen Pamela a few times at the training center. She was the daughter of a wealthy banker, had been briefly married and divorced, and now she was devoting three evenings a week to teaching at the center. Father Lind found her pleasant and stimulating to talk to, a welcome moment of relaxation after a long day. Father Lind had hardly considered his meetings with Pamela a romance... until the day he suddenly realized how much he looked forward to seeing her... how utterly empty he felt when she was not around. And it wasn't long before Gregory Lind was forced to confront the most awesome dilemma of his life...



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