Stewart Gordon

Spine creased but minimal wear otherwise. No marks, tears or stains. 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the &quot;&quot;Riches of The &quot;&quot;East&quot;&quot;

While European civilization stagnated in the “Dark Ages,” Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of spiritual, commercial, and intellectual connections, the distant regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with trade, international diplomacy, and the exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a compelling and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500—a time when Asia was the world—by relating the personal journeys of Asia's many travelers.

When Asia Was the World

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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Author signed copy. See pic. Clean copy with no tears, stains or marks. Read twice. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom. When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfilment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved? Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you’ve ever read—and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.

Catalina

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Gabriel García Márquez

Gregory Rabassa

Clean condition light wear to the cover or spine. Pages intact no marks, stains or tears. 

The Nobel laureate weaves a story of a fantastic wedding, the return of the bride to her parents, her brothers' resolve to murder her corruptor, and the townspeoples' refusal to depart from routine.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

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Rosemary Mahoney

Light yellowing of pages approx 1/4" from edge. Minimum wear of cover, no creases, tears, marks or stains. Paperback, not hardcover. 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff

Rosemary Mahoney was determined to take a solo trip down the Egyptian Nile in a small boat, even though civil unrest and vexing local traditions conspired to create obstacles every step of the way.

Starting off in the south, she gained the unlikely sympathy and respect of a Muslim sailor, who provided her with both a seven-foot skiff and a window into the culturally and materially impoverished lives of rural Egyptians. Egyptian women don't row on the Nile, and tourists aren't allowed to for safety's sake. Mahoney endures extreme heat during the day, and a terror of crocodiles while alone in her boat at night.

Whether she's confronting deeply held beliefs about non-Muslim women, finding connections to past chroniclers of the Nile, or coming to the dramaticm realization that fear can engender unwarranted violence, Rosemary Mahoney's informed curiosity about the world, her glorious prose, and her wit never fail to captivate.

Down the Nile

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Tana French

Light cover wear but spine uncreased. Interior clean and white pages, no marks, stains, dog ears. 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past. Richly atmospheric, stunning in its complexity, and utterly convincing and surprising to the end, In the Woods is sure to enthrall fans of Mystic River and The Lovely Bones.

In the Woods

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Mario Vargas Llosa

Helen R. Lane

Light cover wear and spine has one crease. Interior is clean and pages are white. No marks, stains or dog ears. 

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant, multilayered novel is set in the Lima, Peru, of the author's youth, where a young student named Marito is toiling away in the news department of a local radio station. His young life is disrupted by two arrivals.

The first is his aunt Julia, recently divorced and thirteen years older, with whom he begins a secret affair. The second is a manic radio scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho, whose racy, vituperative soap operas are holding the city's listeners in thrall. Pedro chooses young Marito to be his confidant as he slowly goes insane.

Interweaving the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, Vargas Llosa's novel is hilarious, mischievous, and masterful, a classic named one of the best books of the year by theNew York Times Book Review.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

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Maggie O'Farrell

Light cover and spine wear. Interior white, unstained and unmarked. Light denting of top third corner of some pages. See pic. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

An irresistible love story, an unforgettable family. The New York Times bestselling author of Hamnet captures an extraordinary marriage with insight and laugh-out-loud humor in what Richard Russo calls "her breakout book."
 
Daniel Sullivan leads a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and his wife, Claudette, is a reclusive ex-film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Together, they have made an idyllic life in the country, but a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home. Shot through with humor and wisdom, This Must Be the Place is an irresistible love story that crisscrosses continents and time zones as it captures an extraordinary marriage, and an unforgettable family, with wit and deep affection.

Don't miss Maggie O'Farrell's new novel, The Marriage Portrait, coming in September!

This Must Be the Place

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Raymond Carver

Robert Altman

Light creasing of front and back covers but interior is clean and unmarked. 

Selected Stories

The nine stories and one poem collected in this volume formed the basis for the astonishingly original film "Short Cuts" directed by Robert Altman. Collected altogether in this volume, these stories form a searing and indelible portrait of American innocence and loss. From the collections Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Where I'm Calling From, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and A New Path to the Waterfall; including an introduction by Robert Altman. With deadpan humor and enormous tenderness, this is the work of "one of the true contemporary masters" (The New York Review of Books).  

Short Cuts

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Mick Herron

Slight cover crease as shown in picture. Spine is uncreased, no tears or stains. Used book pricing in pencil as shown. 

London's Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what's left of their failed careers. The 'slow-horses', as they're called, have all disgraced themselves. Some messed up an op badly and can't be trusted anymore. Others got in the way of an ambitious colleague and had the rug pulled from under their feet. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle. All have one thing in common: they all want to be back in the action and they'll do anything to get there, even if it means actually cooperating.

Dead Lions

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Julie Clark

Clean copy, dust jacket intact. No tears, creases or marks. 

"Fans of Lisa Jewell and Liv Constantine will love The Last Flight, a novel focusing on two women who meet in an airport, both alone, both scared, and both urgently needing an escape from their lives. Claire Cook has a husband whose temper burns as bright as his promising political career, and she has worked for months on a plan to get out. A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a stranger equally as desperate. Together they hatch a plan to switch tickets - Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. But then one plane crashes, and it's clear that one of them wasn't telling the truth"--

The Last Flight

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Tania Kindersley

Sarah Vine

Clean copy, mild cover wear. No marks, tears or dog ears. 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Impossible Art of Being Female

This smart and frank collection distills the trials and triumphs of being a woman, all in a gifty volume filled with whimsical fullcolor illustrations. In 15 subject-driven chapters relevant to women of all ages, authors Tania Kindersley and Sarah Vine's essays cover topics ranging from feminism to face cream, motherhood to money, and politics to perfection. Titles like “The Danger of Romantic Love,” “Why There is No Such Thing as a Guilt-Free Working Mother,” “How Not to Go Mad,” parts 1 and 2, and “Why There is No Excuse for Bad Sex” develop into a tuned and sophisticated voice that is at once a mother, best friend, and shrink, revising expectations, bashing stereotypes, and illuminating the experience of life. This is the ultimate sophisticated gift for any woman of any age. Both young and old will find familiarity in the admonitions, recollections, and powerful advice of two writers who have done it all. This “brilliant feat of realism,” so called by the Sunday Times Magazine, gently guides the way without claiming to have all the answers.

Backwards in High Heels

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Thomas Hardy

Margaret Randolph Higonnet

Cover wear, slight page yellowing approx 1/4" at edges. No marks, tears or dog eared pages. A good reading copy. 

A heartbreaking portrayal of a woman faced by an impossible choice in the pursuit of happiness When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, subtitled "A Pure Woman," is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels. Based on the three-volume first edition that shocked readers when first published in 1891, this edition includes as appendices: Hardy's Prefaces, the Landscapes of Tess, episodes originally censored from the Graphic periodical version, and a selection of the Graphic illustrations. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

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James Purdy

Light cover wear. Interior clean no marks, tears or creases. Spine uncreased. 

The Candles of Your Eyes

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Henry Fielding

Keith Carabine

Doreen Roberts

Clean inside and out. Slight yellowing around page edges. Spine uncreased.

The protagonist, Tom Jones, is introduced to the reader as a ward of a liberal Somerset squire, appearing a generous but slightly wild and reckless boy. Misfortune, followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to London to seek his fortune, teach Tom wisdom to go with his good-heartedness.

Tom Jones

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Janina Ramirez

Clean inside and out. No marks, tears or creases. 

A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

Through examination of artefacts, writings, and possessions, this reappraisal of medieval femininity presents countless cases of influential women such as Jadwiga, the only female King in Europe, whose names were struck from history.

Femina

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Jenny Jackson

Birthday inscription on first page- see pic. Otherwise clean inside and out. 

A deliciously funny, sharply observed debut of family, love, and class, this zeitgeisty novel follows three women in one wealthy Brooklyn clan

"A vibrant and hilarious debut...Pineapple Street is riveting, timely, hugely entertaining and brimming with truth." --Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest

Darley, the eldest daughter in the well-connected old money Stockton family, followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood but giving up far too much in the process; Sasha, a middle-class New England girl, has married into the Brooklyn Heights family, and finds herself cast as the arriviste outsider; and Georgiana, the baby of the family, has fallen in love with someone she can't have, and must decide what kind of person she wants to be. 

Rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York's one-percenters, Pineapple Street is a smart, escapist novel that sparkles with wit. Full of recognizable, loveable--if fallible--characters, it's about the peculiar unknowability of someone else's family, the miles between the haves and have-nots, and the insanity of first love--all wrapped in a story that is a sheer delight.

Pineapple Street

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Stephen King

Cover and spine uncreased, pages clean with no marks or stains. In "read once" condition. 

A #1 New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice! Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for that world or ours. Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from it. Charlie starts doing jobs for Mr. Bowditch and loses his heart to Radar. Then, when Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knows, and has kept secret all his long life, is that inside the shed is a portal to another world. Magnificent, terrifying, and “spellbinding…packed with glorious flights of imagination and characteristic tenderness about childhood, Fairy Tale is vintage King at his finest” (Esquire). “Good, evil, a kingdom to save, monsters to slay—these are the stuff that page-turners are made from.” —Laura Miller, Slate

Fairy Tale

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Alice Munro

Clean inside and out, pages bright white no marks, tears or dog ears. Cober intact and spine uncreased. 

Stories

A collection of short fiction explores the complexities of human relationships and emotions in stories about a housekeeper entering old-maidhood whose life is transformed by a practical joke and a lifelong philanderer who finds the tables turned.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

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Julian Barnes

Clean copy with some dog eared pages and the authors name on an unattached name plate. See pics. No stains or tears. 

From the best-selling, award-winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a magnetic tale that centers on the presence of a vivid and particular woman, whose loss becomes the occasion for a man's deeper examination of love, friendship, and biography.

"I'll remember Elizabeth Finch when most other characters I've met this year have faded." -John Self, The Times

This beautiful, spare novel of platonic unrequited love springs into being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Professor Elizabeth Finch. Neil, the narrator, takes her class "Culture and Civilisation," taught not for undergraduates but for adults of all ages; we are drawn into his intellectual crush on this private, withholding, yet commanding woman. While other personal relationships and even his family drift from Neil's grasp, Elizabeth's application of her material to the matter of daily living remains important to him, even after her death, in a way that nothing else does.
 
In Elizabeth Finch, we are treated to everything we cherish in Barnes: his eye for the unorthodox forms love can take between two people, a compelling swerve into nonfictional material (this time, through Neil's obsessive study of Julian the Apostate, following on notes Elizabeth left for him to discover after her death), and the forcefully moving undercurrent of history, and biography in particular, as nourishment and guide in our current lives.

Elizabeth Finch

ee5bded7-8747-486c-9623-9b2072f508e1-1

Kevin Barry

Pristine copy. Spine uncreased, no tears, stains or dog ears. 

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR - THE ATLANTIC - THE MILLIONS - MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE - ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH - LIT HUB - LIBRARY JOURNAL - THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen--Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs--sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are trying to locate Maurice's estranged daughter, Dilly, whom they've heard is either arriving on a boat coming from Tangier or departing on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals, and serial exiles. Rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today, Night Boat to Tangier is a superbly melancholic melody of a novel, full of beautiful phrases and terrible men.

Night Boat to Tangier

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Ronald Jager

No signs of wear, spine uncreased, pages white. No tears, marks, stains. 
 

Excursions into a Rural Past

The author describes his experiences living in rural New Hampshire and restoring an old farmhouse, whose builder was a Revolutionary War soldier

Last House on the Road

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Eugen Ruge

Anthea Bell

Pristine condition. No marks, tears, stains.

An enthrallingly expansive family saga set against the backdrop of the collapse of East German communism, from a major new international voice

* Over 450,000 copies sold in Germany alone * Rights sold in 20 countries * Winner of the German Book Prize * APW "First Fiction" pick *

In Times of Fading Light begins in September 2001 as Alexander Umnitzer, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, leaves behind his ailing father to fly to Mexico, where his grandparents lived as exiles in the 1940s.
The novel then takes us both forward and back in time, creating a panoramic view of the family's history: from Alexander's grandparents' return to the GDR to build the socialist state, to his father's decade spent in a gulag for criticizing the Soviet regime, to his son's desire to leave the political struggles of the twentieth century in the past.
With wisdom, humor, and great empathy, Eugen Ruge draws on his own family history as he masterfully brings to life the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime.

In Times of Fading Light

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Ray Nayler

Front and back cover wear as shown in the pics but interior is clean. No dogeared pages, stains or writing. 

Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future. Rumors begin to spread of a dangerous species of hyperintelligent octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, from the rest of world. Dr. Nguyen travels to the islands to join DIANIMA's team: a battle-scarred security agent and the world's first android. The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses' advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves. But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. Or what they might do about it. A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind's legacy.

The Mountain in the Sea

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Rosie Schaap

Pristine condition. Dust jacket intact. No marks, dogears or stains, inside or out. In "read once or twice" condition. 

How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country

From the acclaimed author of the "funny, smart-as-hell, and moving"* Drinking with Men comes a poignant, wrenching, and ultimately hopeful book--equal parts memoir and social history--that follows the author, after a series of tragic losses, to Northern Ireland, where she finds a path toward healing. * Salon

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