895. Newman, Robert: Dependence Day

Published by Century, London. 1994

1st edition trade paperback in very good condition being slightly knocked at the corners and edges. This copy is boldly signed in black marker by the author at the half title page. Pages slightly browned. This part-autobiographical tale of paranoia, loneliness and sexual obsession by comedian Rob Newman turns on a drug-related murder in a Manchester pub. The cast of characters - from the angst-ridden hero and his girl to a Pakistani who believes he is Morrissey - find their lives transformed.

896. Nicol, Mike: The Powers That Be

Published by Bloomsbury, London. 1989

1st edition hardback in fine condition. There are no previous owner names or other marks. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. The first novel from poet Mike Nicol, is a story of myth and magic, fact and fiction, where sorcerers, angels and pirates conspire to bewitch the central figure, Captain Sylvester Nunes. Nicol's was winner of the 1980 Ingrid Jonker Award for "Among the Souvenirs".

897. Norman, Philip: Everyone's Gone to the Moon

Published by Hutchinson, 1995

1st edition hardback in very good condition with very good jacket. A panoramic comedy set in and around the trendiest Sunday newspaper in the London of the Swinging Sixties. Under its new editor, Jack Shildrick, the news section becomes famous for its campaigning journalism, but one thing Jack cannot control is the paper's extravagant, pacesetting colour magazine.

898. North, Sam: The Automatic Man

Published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1989

1st edition in very good condition, in a very good dust wrapper. In a bare flat in a city tower block, a young man is engaged in a struggle for survival. The victim of a particularly vicious mugging, he is in the grip of fear - a fear with a smell and a presence. Violence seems to stalk him, waiting to happen, places must be avoided and people kept at a distance; even certain words are unsayable. He is forced into bizarre deceptions and desperate stratagems to conceal his vulnerability, until finally - after the reader has been drawn inexorably into a world distorted by imagination - he reaches a form of resolution. A terrifying portrayal of urban paranoia, utterly original and often very funny. The Automatic Man is an astonishing debut.

899. Nye, Robert: Falstaff

Published by Hamish Hamilton, 1976

Hardback 1st edition, very good book and unclipped d/w. Jacket is very slightly colour faded to top of spine with slight wear to both top and bottom. Winner of the Hawthornden and "Guardian" Fiction prizes, this book is the unexpurgated memoir of the fat knight, transcribed and edited in modern spelling. In 100 chapters, covering the period from Sir John's improbable begetting to his unexpected demise, the reader learns all about Falstaff.

380. O'Brian, Patrick: Hussein

Published by Harper Collins, London, 2000

This 1st thus, modern trade edition book is in fine condition. There are no owner names or inscriptions. The dustwrapper in in near fine condition and has not been price clipped. There is a little rubbing to the spine ends. This was Patrick O'Brian's second novel and was originally published in 1938. This is an Indian Adventure, of Hussein, a young mahout (elephant master) who has many adventures.

2116. O'Brian, Patrick: The Nutmeg of Consolation

Published by Collins, London, 1991

1st edition hardback. Both the book and the unclipped dust wrapper are in fine condition. The fourteenth novel in the classic Aubrey-Maturin series finds Aubrey and Maturin shipwrecked, harassed by pirates and then in the brutal penal colonies of New South Wales. Patrick O'Brian is regarded by many as the greatest living historical novelist writing in English. In The Nutmeg of Consolation, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin begin stranded on an uninhabited island in the Dutch East Indies, attacked by ferocious Malay pirates. They contrive their escape, but after a stay in Batavia and a change of ship, they are caught up in a night chase in the fiercely tidal waters and then embroiled in the much more insidious conflicts of the terrifying penal settlements of New South Wales. It is one of O'Brian's most accomplished and gripping books.

2163. O'Brian, Patrick: The Road to Samarcand

Published by HarperCollins, London. 2007

Hardback, 1st thus. Both book and unclipped dust wrapper are in fine condition. A classic Patrick O'Brian novel, back in print after many years. When Derrick's missionary parents are tragically murdered he is entrusted to his gruff uncle Sullivan, Captain of The Wanderer. After surviving a killer typhoon on the South China Sea, and accompanied by their eccentric elderly cousin, they set off across land to discover the treasures of Central Asia. Derrick befriends a fierce Mongol warrior and must help him battle a ruthless Chinese warlord. Given a gift of priceless jade, the group is pursued into the inhospitable mountains of Tibet where they are caught between fierce mountain monks and a terrifying unnamed creature that stalks them through the snow.

2165. O'Brian, Patrick: The Chian Wine and Other Stories

Published by Collins, London. 1974

Hardback 1st edition in very good condition. The dust wrapper is a little chipped at the top and toe of the spine which is also sun faded, also a tear at the top front corner and a little creasing otherwise very good. It is clipped but retains a publisher's price sticker at the front flap. The book is just about fine. Patrick O'Brian's success as a historical novelist and his distinction as a translator have made some people forget that he first established his reputation as a writer of short stories. The present collection confirms his place in the front rank of contemporary short-story writers. His mastery is shown in the sheer excellence of the writing and the effortless variety of mood and tone. The Virtuous Peleg is enchantingly funny: A Passage of the Frontier and The Chian Wine in different ways exciting and terrifying; The Rendezvous and On the Wolfsberg quiver with disquiet. And nowhere in contemporary fiction have the passions aroused by field sports been better portrayed than in The Curran wood Badgers, The Long Day Running and The Last Pool. But of all the stories it is The Handmaiden that delivers most perfectly the concealed coup de grace that only the master-craftsman can bring off. Of the seventeen tales here printed, six appear for the first time. Nearly all the others have been extensively rewritten.

901. O'Connor, Joseph: Desperadoes

Published by Flamingo, 1994

1st edition hardback in price clipped dust wrapper otherwise fine. A telephone call shatters the calm of a Dublin summer morning bringing terrible news from war-torn Nicaragua: Johnny Little has been caught up in a mysterious skirmish and killed. Grief-stricken, his estranged parents Frank and Eleanor set out on the arduous journey to bring their wayward son home. It's a quest that will have profound consequences: in this hauntingly beautiful land of poetry, guns and frantic salsa music, nothing is quite what it seems ...

2145. O'Connor, Joseph: Cowboys and Indians

Published by Sinclair-Stevenson, London. 1991

1st edition paperback. Large trade size book in very good condition. Page edges browned, cover corners slightly curled and light creasing at the spine. Scarce. All alone, with only his electric guitar and his overactive ego for company, Eddie Virago, proud owner of the last mohican haircut in Dublin, leaves his home town to find fame in the wild world of the London rock scene. Things don't quite go as planned, however, and he finds himself living in a ramshackle hotel with a neurotic girl he met on the ferry over while a bewildering array of acid-house ravers, saloon-bar revolutionaries, music biz wideboys and media primadonnas all seem oh-so-anxious to help Eddie on his way...

2425. O'Connor, Joseph: True Believers

Published by Sinclair-Stevenson, London. 1991

1st edition hardback in very good condition. There is a previous seller's sticker at the front paste down. There are no previous owner names or other marks. The dust wrapper is not clipped. In this collection of well-written short stories, O'Connor links together a series of tales concerning such domestic crises as abortion, infidelity and separation. The most exciting is ''The Long Way Home,'' a title with a Celtic ring but a plot reminiscent of a Rod Serling scenario, in which a man leaves his wife one night and picks up a very strange hitch-hiker. Most of the protagonists are Irish men or women considering big changes in their lives. Some look to England for it, as in ''Last of the Mohicans'' and ''Mothers Were All the Same,'' and almost all are detached from the familiar landscape of Irish fiction. An exception is ''The Hills Are Alive,'' which examines the strange double life of IRA volunteer Danny Sullivan. O'Connor's style is terse and graphic, attuned to the voices of his young characters. At times, as in the title story, ''True Believers,'' it proves a powerful literary tool; more often it shows off a tiresome alienation that works well when a story's plot is strong enough to justify it, but sags when the story is no more than a portrait of several sad characters, as in ''The Bedouin Feast.''

902. O'Hanlon, Ardal: Knick Knack Paddy Whack

Published by Henry Holt, 2000

Hardback, 1st us edition. Originally published in the uk under the title "the talk of the town". Fine book in a like unclipped d/w. The author is probably best known for his part in TV's "Father Ted" this is his first novel about a frustrated young working-class man in Dublin.

903. Okri, Ben: The Famished Road

Published by Jonathan Cape, 1991

1st paperback, very good. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the painful world of the living, when Azaro is born he chooses to fight death: "I wanted", he says, "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." Survival in his chaotic African village is a struggle, though. Azaro and his family must contend with hunger, disease and violence, as well as the boy's spirit- companions, who are constantly trying to trick him back into their world. Okri fills his tale with unforgettable images and characters: the bereaved policeman and his wife, who try to adopt Azaro and dress him in their dead son's clothes; the photographer who documents life in the village and displays his pictures in a cabinet by the roadside; Madame Koto, "plump as a mighty fruit", who runs the local bar; the King of the Road, who gets hungrier the more he eats.

904. Ondaatje, Michael: Anil's Ghost

Published by Bloomsbury, 2000

Hardback 1st edition. A fine book and unclipped d/w. Anil Tissera, a forensic anthropologist, has returned to Sri Lanka, a land steeped in culture and tradition, to investigate organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. This is a story of love, family, and identity, set in a country torn apart and ravaged by civil war.

905. Ondaatje, Michael: The English Patient

Published by Bloomsbury, London. 1992

Hardback third printing of the 1st edition. Price clipped dust wrapper and a tidy previous owner gift inscription at the front end paper otherwise in fine condition. The final curtain is closing on the Second World War, and Hana, a nurse, stays behind in an abandoned Italian villa to tend to her only remaining patient. Rescued by Bedouins from a burning plane, he is English, anonymous, damaged beyond recognition and haunted by his memories of passion and betrayal. The only clue Hana has to his past is the one thing he clung on to through the fire - a copy of The Histories by Herodotus, covered with hand-written notes describing a painful and ultimately tragic love affair. Winner of the Booker Prize1992.

1218. Page, Martin: Set a Thief

Published by Bodley Head, 1984

1st edition hardback. A very good book in very good dust wrapper with a few creases to top edge. A brilliant historical thriller which begins in 1911. John Pierpoint Morgan, the world's richest man, eighty-one and dying, obsessed with his own ugliness, has one last unfinished piece of business on earth: to procure the Mona Lisa. Since the French Government refuses to sell it, Morgan hires the world's most accomplished thief, Adam Worth.

1665. Palahniuk, Chuck: Haunted

Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2005

Hardback edition, later printing, 5th impression. Both book and unclipped dust wrapper are in near fine condition, the jacket having some areas of sticker paste residue at the front. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter - sometimes all at once. They are told by the people who have all answered the ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

906. Palmer, Thomas: Dream Science

Published by Collins Harvill, 1991

1st edition hardback, fine with a fine dust wrapper. Poole's life was normal enough, divided between the home he shared with his wife and small daughter and his office in Stamford, Connecticut, where he pursued a successful career as a mutual funds manager. The day came, though, when he first crossed a line into a paranormal world, inhabited by people generally considered to have died. This disastrous facility to break through the wall and cross back and forth between the one world and the other unleashes cataclysmic forces which are beyond anyone's power to control - Poole's, his wife's, his analyst's, the police's or that of the puzzled experts in the paranormal.

907. Parks, Tim: Europa

Published by Secker & Warberg, 1997

1st, paperback original in very good condition. A brilliantly comic, dark and dyspeptic novel about an obsessive love gone sour. Jealousy and revenge, passion and dread intertwine in one man's soul as he's trapped in the awful claustrophobia of a three-day coach journey across Europe with a group of people he loathes - and the woman who broke his heart.

908. Parsons, Tony: One for My Baby

Published by Harper Collins, 2001

Hardback 1st edition. Both book and unclipped dust wrapper are in fine condition. Alfie Budd found the perfect woman with whom to spend the rest of his life, and then lost her. He doesn't believe you get a second chance at love. Returning to the England he left behind during the brief, idyllic time of his marriage, Alfie finds the rest of his world collapsing around him. He takes comfort in a string of pointless, transient affairs with his students at Churchill's Language School, and he tries to learn Tai Chi from an old Chinese man, George Chang. Will Alfie ever find a family life as strong as the Changs'? Can he give up meaningless sex for a meaningful relationship? And how do you play it when the woman you like has a difficult child who is infatuated with a TV wrestler known as The Slab?

909. Parsons, Tony: Stories We Could Tell

Published by Harper Collins, 2005

Hardback 1st edition. Both book and unclipped dust wrapper are as new in condition. Sometimes you can grow up in just one night. It is 16th August 1977 - the day that Elvis dies - and Terry is back from Berlin, basking in the light of his friendship with legendary rock star Dag Wood. But when Dag arrives in London he sets his sights on a mysterious young photographer called Misty, the girl that Terry loves. Will the love of Terry's life survive this hot summer's night? Ray is the only writer on the inky music weekly 'The Paper' who refuses to cut his hair and stop wearing flares. On the eve of being sacked, Ray finds comfort in the arms of an older woman called Mrs Brown. But John Lennon is in town for just one night and Ray believes that if he can interview the reclusive Beatle, he can save his job. Can John Lennon and the love of an older woman really save a young man's soul? Leon is on the run from a gang called the Dagenham Dogs who have taken exception to one of his bitchy reviews. Hiding out in a disco called The Goldmine, Leon meets Ruby - the dancing queen of his dreams. But will true love or the Dagenham Dogs find Leon before the night is over?

322. Pasternak, Boris: Doctor Zhivago

Published By Collins, London, 1958

Hardback, 10th impression, book in VG condition, browning/ foxing to page edges, there are no previous owner names or inscriptions, the dustwrapper is in good condition, fading to spine, rubbing to edges especially the spine and corners which have small closed tears, it has not been price clipped and still retains the 21s net price. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a medical doctor and poet. It tells the story of a man torn between two women, set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The book was made into a film by David Lean in 1965: Doctor Zhivago, and has also been adapted numerous times for television, most recently as a mini-series for Russian TV in 2005.

910. Patterson, Glenn: Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain

Published by Chatto & Windus, 1995

Hardback 1st edition. D/w has a 1/2 inch tear to the foot at the spine and is slightly rubbed at the edges otherwise very good. The book is very good. It is November 1991. Euro Disney is under construction, rising like a fantastic beacon out of the mud of Marne-la-Vallee. And three people are sitting in the cavernous interior of Big Thunder Mountain, waiting. Sam believes himself to be on a mission to depose Mickey Mouse and to restore to Disney World its 'lost' figurehead. Ilse Klein - a German canteen assistant who can fry fifty eggs at once - and Raymond Black - a Northern Irish construction worker - are his hostages. As a siege develops round the mountain, the novel reaches back into the lives of these three characters, from post-war Stuttgart to sixties Berlin; from latter-day Belfast, to present day Los Angeles and Paris.

913. Patterson, Richard North: Exile

Published by Macmillan, London. 2007

1st UK hardback edition. There is a small felt tip mark at the top of the front endpaper otherwise fine in condition, possibly unread. The dust wrapper is unclipped and also fine. David Wolfe is an ambitious former homicide prosecutor who is planning to run for Congress. A political dinner for the Israeli Prime Minister is hosted by his current girlfriend, Carole Shorr, a liberal supporter of both the Palestinian and Israeli causes. But when David receives a call from Hana Ashawi, a Palestinian woman who was David's classmate at Harvard Law School, he is rattled. Hana was more than a peer - she was his lover. Suddenly David finds himself in a situation with enormous global and political implications as well as emotional ones. A new pact between the rival factions in Palestine is planned, and David and Carole decide to watch the historic moment when the parties will all meet. It turns out to be an occasion of desperate, tragic and far reaching consequences...

1650. Patterson, Richard North: The Lasko Tangent

Published by Robert Hale, London, 1980

1st edition UK hardback in very good condition. The jacket is rubbed and worn at the edges but otherwise good or better and is not clipped. A very scarce 1st edition copy of the author's first novel. One of the wealthiest, most powerful, best-connected men in America, William Lasko gets what he wants, when he wants it, whatever it takes to get it. But now the Economic Crimes Commission wants the corrupt, untouchable Lasko brought down. Young, ambitious U.S. Attorney Christopher Paget is the man chosen to take on the job. To gather enough evidence against him without alienating Lasko's friends in the White House, Paget has to go by the book. But Lasko makes his own rules. And survival and elimination of his enemies are the most important of them all...

2193. Peace, David: The Damned Utd

Published by Faber and Faber, London. 2006

1st edition paperback, not issued in hardback. The book is fine in condition. The dust wrapper too is fine and unclipped. There are no previous owner names or other marks. 1974 was the year Britain had two general elections and there was great uncertainty in the air. Overachieving and eccentric football manager Brian Clough was on his way to take over at one of the country's most successful and most reviled football club: Leeds United, home to a generation of fiercely competitive but ageing players. Cloughie knows if this is to work, it will have to work his way. His successes, his triumphs and his trophies count for nothing in this godforsaken corner of West Yorkshire. But his dreams, as well as that of his fellow countrymen, are not well starred. David Peace's extraordinarily inventive novel tells the story of a world characterised by fear of failure and hunger for success set in the bleak heart of the 1970s.

2420. Peace, David: Tokyo Year Zero

Published by Faber & Faber, London. 2007

1st edition hardback signed by the author. The book and unclipped dust wrapper are in fine condition. There are no previous owner names or marks. It's August 1946-one year after the Japanese surrender-and women are turning up dead all over Tokyo. Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police-irreverent, angry, despairing-goes on the hunt for a killer known as the Japanese Bluebeard-a decorated former Imperial soldier who raped and murdered at least ten women amidst the turmoil of post-war Tokyo. As he undertakes the case, Minami is haunted by his own memories of atrocities that he can no longer explain or forgive. Unblinking in its vision of a nation in a chaotic, hellish period in its history, Tokyo Year Zero is a darkly lyrical and stunningly original crime novel.

Published by Serpent's Tail, London. 2001

Hardback, UK 1st edition in very good condition. The book leans slightly at the spine otherwise fine. There are no previous owner names or inscriptions. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. An uncommon true first edition and part three of the Red Riding Quartet. Winter, 1980. The Yorkshire Ripper has just claimed his thirteenth victim. Ripper thirteen, police nil. As public anger against the police mounts, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter is sent to take over the investigation. The Strafford Shootings remain unsolved, and the murders of the Jubilee summer of 1977 are still attributed to the Ripper. But Hunter soon realises that all is not as it seems - and that the police are more heavily implicated in the killings than anyone could have imagined. Jack Whitehead, alone and mad in a mental institution after trying to exorcise the demons from his head with hammer and nail, appears to hold the key. What is the connection between the Ripper and this fresh spate of violence? And what will happen when these men's separate hells collide?

914. Phillips, Jayne Anne: Black Tickets

Published by Allen Lane, 1980

1st edition hardback in very good condition with dust wrapper. With an uncanny ability to depict the lives of men and women who rarely register in our literature, Phillips writes stories that lay bare their suffering and joy. Here are the abused and the abandoned, the violent and the passive, the impoverished and the disenfranchised, those who populate the small towns and rural byways of the country. A patron of the arts reserves his fondest feeling for the one man who wants it least. A stripper, the daughter of a witch, escapes from poverty into another kind of violence. A young girl during the Depression is caught between the love of her crazy father and the no less powerful love of her sorrowful mother.

915. Phipps, Constantine: Careful With the Sharks

Published by Jonathan Cape, 1985

Hardback 1st edition. Very good in a slightly bumped and rubbed, unclipped d/w. Authors first novel. Herman Newton has long nurtured a passion for spying and had always been brilliant at math's, if a bit oafish in other respects. He finds himself hired by Major Shark of British Intelligence to bug a Barcelona sex clinic, only to uncover a Russian drugs-for-arms deal.

2183. Pierre, DBC: Ludmila's Broken English

Published by Faber and Faber, London. 2006

1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is also fine and unclipped. Authors second novel charting the unlikely meeting between East and West that follows Ludmila Derev's appearance on a Russian brides website. Determined to save her family from starvation in the face of marauding Gnez troops, Ludmila's journey into the world and womanhood is an odyssey of sour wit, even sourer vodka, and a Soviet tractor probably running on goat's piss.

1225. Pitman, Richard and Joe McNally: Hunted

Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1993

Hardback 1st edition. Both book and dust wrapper are in very good condition. The book leans slightly and there is some browning of the page edges. The jacket is only very slightly edge worn and is slightly sunned at the spine. When jockey Tommy Gilmour fails to turn up for the big race, it seems like a golden opportunity for Eddie Mallory to ride the favourite. So when Tommy is found dead, Eddie is prime suspect. Then a second body is discovered. The hunt is on for the killer, and Eddie knows his name is on the hit list.

249. Plaidy, Jean: Myself My Enemy

Published by Robert Hale, London. 1983.

1st edition hardback in near fine condition. The book is slightly pussed at the head of the spine but is otherwise fine and unmarked. The dust wrapper has some slight surface marks but is otherwise fine and unclipped but shows no price. The first book in the Queens of England series. The story of Henrietta Maria, wife of the doomed Charles I. Fiercely loyal in love, impetuously ruthless in hatred, she stood beside her husband throughout his reign, as together they watched their downfall and the rise of Cromwell, unaware of the spies in their own household.

918. Powell, Anthony: Hearing Secret Harmonies

Published by Heinemann, 1975

Hardback 1st edition. Ex-library with usual stamps and marks. Front end paper missing otherwise very good in a fine d/w. 12th and final volume of 'A Dance to the Music of Time'

919. Powell, Anthony: The Fisher King

Published by Heinemann, 1986

Hardback 1st edition, fine in fine unclipped wrapper. Powell's first full novel since the completion of the twelve-volume dance sequence. Aboard the "Alecto," prolific romance author Valentine Beals ruminates on the ship's most seemingly incongruous couple: a graceful, ethereal, virginal dancer named Barberina Rookwood and her lover, Saul Henchman, a crippled, emasculated war hero and photographer. Fancifully, Beals imagines Henchman to be the re-embodiment of one of the most mysterious Arthurian legends, the Fisher King--the maimed and impotent ruler of a barren country of whom Perceval failed to ask the right questions. A myth with many permutations--and a blurred borderland between them--the Fisher King legend dovetails the various explanations Powell offers from his competing narrators as to why a talented young dancer would forsake her art to care for a feeble older man. Ostensibly a novel about gossip on a cruise ship, "The Fisher King" is much more: a highly stylized narrative infused with Greek mythology, legend, and satire.

917. Powell, Anthony: The Kindly Ones

Published by William Heinemann, 1962

Hardback 1st edition. Exlibrary with the usual associated faults. Overall a good copy in a very good price clipped dust wrapper. 6th volume in the Dance to the Music of Time series. In The Kindly Ones a section is devoted to the narrator Nicholas Jenkins's childhood and certain figures who reappear in his later life. The composer, Moreland, is again a main character, General Conyers ans Sir Magnus Donners are seen in new roles and Widmerpool makes a brief but significant appearance.

920. Power, Susan: The Grass Dancer

Published by Picador, 1994

1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is price clipped otherwise fine.. Back in the 1860s, Ghost Horse, a handsome young heyo'ka, or sacred clown, loved and lost the beautiful warrior woman Red Dress. Since then, their spirits have sought desperately to be reunited, and it is the ceaseless playing out of this drama that shapes the sometimes violent fate of those who have come after them. Now, in the 1980s, Charlene Thunder, a teenage descendant of Red Dress, is in love with Harley Wind Soldier, the dashing traditional dancer of Ghost Horse's lineage. When Harley's redheaded soul mate, Pumpkin, dies in a crash, Charlene guiltily suspects her own grandmother, the notorious witch Anna Thunder, of causing it - as she well may have caused the collision that claimed Harley's father and brother, which even today obsesses him. Charlene and Harley each strive in solitude to make peace with the ghosts of the old ways, while they contend with the living: Jeannette McVay, an eastern college student who has been studying the tribe; Crystal Thunder, who must escape the reservation in order to understand her past; Herod Small War, whose spiritual guidance is both revered and resented; Margaret Many Wounds, Harley's grandmother, who walks on the moon.

921. Priestley, J.B.: Festival at Farbridge

Published by Heinemann, 1951

Hardback reprint. Slightly browned but bright price clipped Eric Fraser pictorial dust wrapper is worn & nicked at the edges, some fading to spine panel. Blue cloth boards slightly marked. Page edges browned. Generally very good. Priestley's contribution to the Festival of Britain, amidst the post-war rationing, was his longest novel to date, Festival at Farbridge. One of his biographers, Susan Cooper thought it almost as funny as Amis's Lucky Jim.

922. Proulx, E. Annie: Accordion Crimes

Published by 4th Estate, 1996

Hardback 1st edition with dust wrapper in very good condition. 'Accordion Crimes' is a masterpiece of story-telling that spans a century and a continent. It opens in 1890 in Sicily, when an accordion-maker and his son, carrying little more than his finest button accordion, begin their voyage to the teeming, violent port of New Orleans. Within a year, the accordion-maker is murdered by an anti-Italian lynch mob, but his instrument carries the novel into another community of immigrants: German-Americans founding a new town in South Dakota. Moving from South Dakota to Texas, from Montana to Maine, the nine instantly compelling and intricately connected sections of the novel illuminate the lives of the founders of a nation, descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Germans, Irish, Scots and Franco-Canadians. Through the music of the accordion they express their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance.

923. Puzo, Mario: The Fourth K

Published by William Heinemann Ltd, 1991

1st edition hardback in very good condition. The jacket is also very good. A novel set in the near future from the author of "The Godfather". Francis Xavier Kennedy, President of the US, cousin of JFK, faces the greatest threat of his career. Theresa, his only child, has been seized by terrorists and two scientists are holding the nation to ransom with a nuclear device.

924. Pynchon, Thomas: Vineland

Published by Secker & Warberg, 1990

1st edition hardback with dust wrapper in fine condition. Vineland, a zone of blessed anarchy in northern California, is the last refuge of hippiedom, a culture devastated by the sobriety epidemic, Reaganomics, and the Tube. Here, in an Orwellian 1984, Zoyd Wheeler and his daughter Prairie search for Prairie's long-lost mother, a Sixties radical who ran off with a narc. Vineland is vintage Pynchon, full of quasi-allegorical characters, elaborate unresolved subplots, corny songs ("Floozy with an Uzi"), movie spoofs (Pee-wee Herman in The Robert Musil Story ), and illicit sex (including a macho variation on the infamous sportscar scene in V. )

925. Ransmayr, Christoph: The Last World: with an Ovidian Repertory

Published by Chatto & Windus, 1990

Hardback 1st UK edition. Very good in a like price-clipped d/w. Slightly bumped at the top corners, both back and front. Translated from the German by John Woods. A man goes in search of the Roman poet Ovid, banished to the end of the world. He finds that Ovid's personality and stories have undergone a sea-change, and have fragmented themselves into lots of clues - people, bizarre events, odd stretches of landscape, and a story emerges.

2142. Rathbone, Julian: The Indispensable Julian Rathbone

Published by The Do Not Press, London. 2003

Hardback 1st edition. Both book and the unclipped dust wrapper are in fine condition. The Indispensable...' contains rare essays, shorts stories, reviews and even the complete novel, 'Lying In State'. Julian Rathbone has published over thirty novels in sixteen different languages, been short listed (twice) for the Booker, won a Crime Writers' Association dagger and his thrillers have won prestigious prizes in Germany and Denmark. Reviewers have compared him - to his advantage - with Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, John Updike, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, John le Carre and William Burroughs. On top of that he's an accomplished reviewer and essayist and has written successfully filmed screenplays.

926. Rayner, Richard: The Elephant

Published by Jonathan Cape, 1991

Fine hardback and dust wrapper. 1st UK edition. Author's highly praised second novel, described as a "wonderfully written, vividly described, hilariously tragic and almost elegiac memorial to a childhood dominated by an unreliable father."