989. Willock, Colin: Gorilla
Published by Macmillan, 1977
Hardback 1st edition. Fascinating stuff from the then director of the Anglia TV survival programmes. Very near fine in a like unclipped d/w.
990. Willocks, Tim: Green River Rising
Published by Jonathan Cape, 1994
1st edition hardback in fine condition in a very good dust wrapper. After three years' hard time, minding no one's business but his own, Ray Klein wins his parole. That same day, the disciplinary perfection of Green River State Penitentiary is torn apart by tribal war, and the prison falls into the hands of its inmates. As the River sucks them all towards the abyss, Klein must choose either to claim his freedom and leave the ones he cares for to die, or risk everything and fight...
992. Willocks, Tim: Bloodstained Kings
Published by Jonathan Cape, 1995
Hardback 1st edition. A fine book and unclipped dust wrapper. From beyond the grave, legendary evil lawman Clarence Jefferson reaches out to cast a dark spell on the lives of Lenna Parillaud and Dr Cicero Grimes. Lenna - millionairess businesswoman, wrecked by grief over the loss of her daughter and maddened by lust for revenge against the husband who took her daughter away. Grimes, the unwilling agent who will help find the lost girl, and who will use the files left him by Jefferson to bring down the corrupt and powerful men who will do everything to cling on to their positions ...
993. Wilson, Robert McLiam: Eureka Street
Published by Secker & Warburg, London. 1996
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The book has no previous owner names or inscriptions. The dust wrapper has not been price clipped and still retains the original £15.99 net price. A hilarious and moving story of Belfast, in the six months just before and after the latest ceasefires, where violence and desire go hand in hand. Chuckie Lurgan, fat, Protestant and poor suddenly becomes wealthy by various legal but immoral means. His mother, Peggy, indulges in an act which causes more damage in working class Protestant Belfast then the Anglo Irish agreement. Jake, reformed tough guy, recently abandoned by his English girlfriend is looking for love. Meanwhile the strange letters 'OTG' appear on the wall, paving stones, phone box. No one knows what it means. The IRA and the UVF issue death threats, the police lay traps, all are concerned, and all are ignorant. Finally, Jake discovers the meaning. It makes some sense to him. He buys a ladder. He climbs a wall. 'OTG', he writes, 'OTG'.
2048. Wishart, David: Nero
Published by Sceptre, London, 1996
Hardback 1st edition. The book has had a very slight bump to the bottom corners otherwise fine, no previous owner names or marks. The dust wrapper is fine and unclipped but shows no price at the front flap. The one 'fact' that everyone knows about Emperor Nero is that he fiddled while Rome burned. But what elements of nature and nuture combined to make this notorious character? An entertaining view is presented by Titus Petronius, Nero's pleasure-loving Advisor on Taste, through whose eyes we see the tumultuous, and ultimately tragic, life of the emperor.
994. Wodehouse, P.G.: Ice in the Bedroom
Published by Herbert Jenkins, 1961
1st edition hardback, near fine, in a very good dust wrapper. Freddie Widgeon wants the money to buy shares in a coffee plantation in Kenya so that he can marry Sally Foster. Soapy and Dolly Molloy want to get their hands on a cache of stolen jewels hidden in the house of Freddie's neighbour in the suburb of Valley Fields. When their paths cross, the ensuing misunderstandings lead to vintage Wodehouse comedy.
995. Wodehouse, P.G.: The Clicking Of Cuthbert
Published by Herbert Jenkins, 1922
Hardback 1st edition 2nd issue green boards with dark green decoration have only very slight edge wear. A very good+ copy. A Golf collection. The Oldest Member knows everything that has ever happened on the golf course - and a great deal more besides. Take the story of Cuthbert, for instance. He's helplessly in love with Adeline, but what use are his holes in one when she's in thrall to Culture and prefers rising young writers to winners of the French Open? But enter a Great Russian Novelist with a strange passion, and Cuthbert's prospects are transformed. Then look at what happens to young Mitchell Holmes, who misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. His career seems on the skids - but can golf redeem it? The kindly but shrewd gaze of the Oldest Member picks out some of the funniest stories Wodehouse ever wrote.
996. Wodehouse, P.G.: Sunset at Blandings
Published by Book Club Associates. 1978
Book club edition hardback in fine condition. There are no previous owner names and no fading of the dustwrapper. Endpapers, plan of Blandings Castle and surroundings. Two plans of Blandings Castle, and the Station at Market Blandings. Full wrap-around cover art by Ionicus. This is Wodehouse's last, unfinished chronicle of Blandings and includes a treasure trove of detailed notes on the final stages of the plot, enabling us to watch over his shoulder to observe the master at work. The revels at Blandings Castle are now ended but, as Richard Usborne confirms delightedly, its cloud-capped towers shall not dissolve. Although written when Wodehouse was ninety-three, the pages of "Sunset At Blandings" remain 'funny, fresh, young in heart and full of hammocks, sunshine and four pairs of lovers headed for altars.'
997. Wodehouse, P.G.: Blanding's Castle and Elsewhere
Published by Herbert Jenkins, 1935
Hardback, second printing. A fine book in a very good d/w. Variant binding with bright orange boards and black titles to the spine and upper. The rare jacket is a bit rubbed at the edges with only small areas of loss and the original 2/6 net price sticker. A Blandings collection. The ivied walls of Blandings Castle have seldom glowed as sunnily as in these wonderful stories - but there are snakes in the rolling parkland ready to nip Clarence, the absent-minded Ninth Earl of Emsworth, when he least expects it. For a start the Empress of Blandings, in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, is off her food - and can only be coaxed back to the trough by a call in her own language. Then there is the feud with Head Gardener McAllister, aided by Clarence's sister, the terrifying Lady Constance, and the horrible prospect of the summer fête - twin problems solved by the arrival of a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. But first of all there is the vexed matter of the custody of the pumpkin. Skipping an ocean and a continent, Wodehouse also treats us to some unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood.
998. Wodehouse, P.G.: The World of Jeeves
Published by Barrie & Jenkins, 1971
Hardback reprint of the 1967 first. 90th birthday edition. Boards sunned at the edges but nr very good. In a sunned and edge worn unclipped d/w, now protected. Thirty-four tales relate the adventures of Jeeves, the perfect butler, and his scatterbrained employer, Bertie Wooster, as they fumble their way through London and the English countryside in the 1920s.
2135. Wodehouse, P.G.: The World of Jeeves
Published by BCA, London. 1972
Hardback book club edition. The book is very good in a very good dust wrapper. The jacket is sunned at the spine and a little edge worn but overall very good. Thirty-four tales relate the adventures of Jeeves, the perfect butler, and his scatterbrained employer, Bertie Wooster, as they fumble their way through London and the English countryside in the 1920s.
999. Wodehouse, P.G: Cocktail Time
Published by Herbert Jenkins, 1958
Hardback 1st edition. Near fine book in a very good price clipped d/w. The jacket is only very slightly edge worn with a couple of minor nicks and a very small area of loss at the top of the spine. An Uncle Fred novel. Frederick, Earl of Ickenham, remains young at heart. So it is for him the act of a moment to lean out of the Drones Club window with a catapult and ping the silk top-hat off his grumpy in-law, the distinguished barrister Sir Raymond Bastable. Unfortunately things don't end there. The sprightly earl finds that his action has inspired a scandalous bestseller and a film script - but this is as nothing compared with the entangled fates of the couples that surround him and which only his fabled sweetness and light can unravel.
1000. Wolfe, Tom: A Man in Full
Published by Farrar, Straus And Giroux, 1998
Hardback 1st trade edition. Front board, bottom edge bumped otherwise a fine book in a fine d/w. Bold, caustic and hilarious, A Man in Full spares no one as Wolfe dissects the insatiable greed, vanity and hunger for bearings that characterise today's USA. The setting is Atlanta, Georgia - a racially mixed, late-century boom-town full of fresh wealth, avid speculators and worldly-wise politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a fabled college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real estate entrepreneur-turned-conglomerate king whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28, 0000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife - and a half-empty tower downtown with a staggering load of debt.
2049. Wolfe, Tom: I am Charlotte Simmons
Published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2004
Hardback 1st edition. The book leans very slightly otherwise near fine, no previous owner names or marks. The dust wrapper is a little rubbed at the edges with a few small nicks at the top edge otherwise very good and unclipped. Dupont University - the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition... Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from Sparta, North Carolina, who has come here on a full scholarship. But Charlotte soon learns that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.
1001. Wright, Peter: Spycatcher
Published by William Heinemann, Australia, 1987
A fine 1st edition hardback in a fine dust wrapper. The former assistant director of MI5 offers an account of British Intelligence, including his work on the Ring of Five and exposing Soviet espionage and the conspiracy to oust Harold Wilson from the office of Prime Minister in the 1970s.
1002. Wright, Stephen: M31: A Family Romance
Published by Harmony Books, 1988
Hardback 1st us edition. Very good in unclipped d/w. Water stain to back board and page edges. A disturbing, wildly funny, and bizarre novel set inside a secret America, this surreal and brutally descriptive novel is a masterwork from the author of Going Native and Meditations in Green.
1003. Yates, Paula: Village People
Published by Little, Brown & Co, 1993
Hardback 1st edition. Fine book & unclipped d/w. Nurturing the dream of a retreat where her growing family could embrace the great traditions and simple pleasures of a rural existence, the writer and broadcaster Paula Yates moved to the country. After ten years of village life, she takes readers, season by season, through a typical year, from rearing sheep to joining the Women's Institute, and from entertaining house-guests to her burgeoning relationship with the vicar. The book presents a humorous view of the eccentrics and eccentricities of English country life.
1004. Zahavi, Helen: True Romance
Published by Secker & Warberg, 1994
1st edition hardback, fine in a fine dust wrapper. By the author of "Dirty Weekend", this novel is a further melange of sex, sadism and submission.
1005. Zinik, Zinovy: The Lord and the Gamekeeper
Published by Heinemann, 1991
1st edition hardback, very good in a very good dust wrapper. Felix may be a plagiarist, and his friend Viktor may or may not be a courageous dissident. Sylva shares her favours between both of them but shudders at the memory of one particular Moscow meeting.