707. Carey, Peter: Oscar and Lucinda
Published by Faber and Faber, 1988
Hardback reprint in very good condition. The price clipped dust wrapper is also very good. Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed . . . Daring, rich, intense and bizarre, Peter Carey's Booker prize-winning novel is a brilliant achievement - a moving love story and a historical tour de force that is also powerfully contemporary.
708. Carey, Peter: True History of the Kelly Gang
Published by Faber & Faber, 2000
1st edition hardback in very good condition. There are no previous owner names. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. 'I lost my own father at 12 yrs of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false.' In a dazzling act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey gives the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly a voice so wild, passionate and original that it is impossible not to believe that the famous bushranger himself is speaking from beyond the grave. Carey gives us Ned Kelly as orphan, as Oedipus, as horse thief, farmer, bushranger, reformer, bank-robber, police-killer and, finally, as his country's beloved Robin Hood. In 1878 Francis Harty, a poor farmer, said, 'Ned Kelly is the best bloody man that has ever been in Benalla, I would fight up to my knees in blood for him - I have known him for years, I would take his word sooner than another man's oath'. By the time of his hanging in 1880 a whole country would seem to agree - and it is a measure of Peter Carey's achievement that he has not only made art from his country's great story but that he persuades us all to understand the true measure of that 'best bloody man'.
709. Carey, Peter: My Life as a Fake
Published by Faber & Faber, London. 2003
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. There are no previous owner names or other marks. In Melbourne in the late 1940s, a young conservative poet named Christopher Chubb decides to teach his country a lesson about pretension and authenticity. But over the ensuing years his audacious act of literary ventriloquism takes on a much darker resonance. Having fled Melbourne for the seedy, sweaty streets of Kuala Lumpur, Chubb finds himself, just as Frankenstein was, haunted and pursued by his own creation.
Published by Canongate, Edinburgh. 2009 UK
hardback edition, 4th printing. The book is in fine/as new condition so too is the unclipped dust wrapper. There are no previous owner names or other marks. The Death of Bunny Munro recounts the last journey of a salesman in search of a soul. Following the suicide of his wife, Bunny, a door-to-door salesman and lothario, takes his son on a trip along the south coast of England. He is about to discover that his days are numbered. With a daring hellride of a plot The Death of Bunny Munro is also a modern morality tale of sorts, a stylish, furious, funny, truthful and tender account of one man's descent and judgement. The novel is full of the linguistic verve that has made Cave one of the world's most respected lyricists. It is his first novel since the publication of his critically acclaimed debut And the Ass Saw the Angel twenty years ago.
710. Chatwin, Bruce: The Songlines
Published by Jonathan Cape, London. 1987
Hardback first edition, first impression of what is probably the author's best regarded book. Very near fine in condition. The page edges are slightly browned otherwise fine. There are no previous owner names or marks. The dust wrapper is not clipped retaining the original £10.95 net price to the front flap. The rear flap shows reviews for his first three books. The jacket is only very slightly sunned at the spine, hardly noticeable but I like to be honest in my descriptions. Scarce and collectable. Chatwin's fourth book, and by general consensus his best -- a "novel of ideas," as the publisher puts it, of Australian aborigines, and the questions about man that arise from the vast gulf that separates the culture of contemporary, Western civilized man from that of the wandering tribes of Australia, whose "dream tracks" or "songlines" delineate both a physical and a psychic geography.
711. Chayefsky, Paddy: Altered States
Published by Hutchinson, 1978
Hardback 1st edition. Very slightly edgeworn d/w has 1/4" nick at base of spine otherwise very good+ and unclipped. The book is very good+. Altered States is the ultimate horror story - the story of one young scientist's terrifying experiement to find the origins of his own consciousness. Entombed in an isolation tank, fed with powerful hallucinogenic drug, he experiences finally the supreme moment of terror that is the beginning of life.
712. Clancy, Tom: Op-Centre3: Games of State
Published by Harper Collins, 1996
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is also fine. In the third volume in the bestselling series of action-packed high-tech thrillers, the Op-Centre team come up against neo-Nazis using cutting-edge technology to spread their message to the world.
713. Clancy, Tom: Debt of Honour
Published by Harper Collins, 1994
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is also fine. Jack Ryan defends the USA against economic sabotage from the East that escalates into war. It begins with the murder of an American woman in the back streets of Tokyo. It ends in war…Called out of retirement to serve as the new President's National Security Adviser, Jack Ryan quickly realizes that the problems of peace are fully as complex as those of war. Enemies have become friends, friend's enemies, and even the form of conflict has changed. When one of those new enemies readies a strike not only at America's territory, but at the heart of her economy, it is Ryan who must somehow prepare an untested President to meet the challenge. For there is a debt of honour to be paid - and the price will be terrifyingly high…
420. Clancy, Tom and Steve Pieczenik: Tom Clancy's Op-Centre Mirror Image
Published by HarperCollins, London, 1995
1st edition hardback book is in near fine condition, very slight browning to page edges, it has no previous owner names or inscriptions. The unclipped dustwrapper is in near fine condition and has very little shelfwear.A powerful profile of America's defence, intelligence and crisis management technology, Tom Clancy's Op-Centre is the creation of Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik - inspiring this and other gripping novels.
714. Clavell, James: Shogun
Published by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1975
1st edition UK hardback in very good condition. The dust wrapper is not clipped retaining the original £4.95 price at the front flap. There are a couple of closed tears and wear to the edges but generally very good and now protected. The book is a little soiled at the page edges with slight shelf wear to the bottom edge otherwise very good. There are no previous owner names or marks. Clavell's best novel later adapted for TV, film and computer games. Scarce. A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, two ways of love. All brought together in an extraordinary saga of a time and a place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition, lust, and the struggle for power...
2138. Coe, Jonathan: The House of Sleep
Published by Viking, London. 1997
Hardback 1st edition. Both book and the unclipped dust wrapper are in very good condition. The unclipped dust wrapper is a bit wrinkled from getting wet at some point but is otherwise very good. Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated. . . A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each other. . . Winner of the 1998 Prix Médicis Étranger, The House of Sleep is an intensely moving and frequently hilarious novel about love, obsession and sleep.
2434. Coetzee, J.M.: Summertime
Published by Harvill Secker, London. 2009
UK hardback 1st edition in fine condition. There are no previous owner names or marks. The unclipped dust wrapper is also fine. A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on a period in the seventies when, the biographer senses, Coetzee was 'finding his feet as a writer'. He embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to Coetzee - a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. Thus emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual, regarded as an outsider within the family. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, and rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.
715. Cohen, Jon: The Man at the Window
Published by Gollancz, 1991
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is very good. At 16, Louis Malone got burned. For years he hid his disfigurement, a baseball cap covering his head and a purple scarf over his face, but one day he realized that life ought to be lived, and not just watched from a bedroom window. The author also wrote "Max Lakeman and the Beautiful Stranger".
716. Collins, Norman: London Belongs To Me
Published by Collins, 1945
Hardback, very good price clipped d/w has a slightly darkened spine with a couple of small tears to top and toe. 2nd impression with a nice inscription from son to mother on front endpaper "If you stay in bed and read this you will not fall down the stairs" otherwise very good. It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mr Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lodger, a self-styled 'Professor of Spiritualism'); and flashy young mechanic Percy Boon, whose foray into stolen cars descends into something much, much worse ...
717. Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur: Great Stories
Published by John Murray, 1959
Hardback, foxing to page edges, lower corners of feps lost. Burgundy boards with white print. Un-clipped, bright, clean d/w has minor nicks & creases to edges. Both book and jacket are generally very good+. 11 shorts selected by John Dickson Carr, including 2 Holmes stories.
718. Condon, Richard: Emperor of America
Published by Michael Joseph Ltd, 1990
Fine 1st edition hardback in a very good dust wrapper. The author turns his wicked eye on the "Imperial Presidency", with a real emperor ruling America in the not-too-distant future. This humorous satire on American politics is by the author of "The Manchurian Candidate" and the "Prizzi" trilogy.
719. Connery, Tom: A Shred of Honour
Published by Orion, 1996
1st edition hardback in very good condition. The jacket is also very good. A wonderful epic of 18th century warfare - by land and sea -a first novel introducing George Markham, Lieutenant of Marines on His Britannic Majesty's frigate Hebe. Irishman, papist, reputed coward; he is a man with something to prove. As the winter of 1793 comes to the Mediterranean coast of France, so too does the chill wind of the Revolutionary terror. When the Hebe is sent to help the Bourbon city of Toulon, Markham will have to prove he is a worthy officer of marines ... or die in the attempt.
722. Conroy, Pat: The Lords of Discipline
Published by Secker & Warberg, 1981
1st edition hardback in very good+ condition in a similar dust wrapper. This powerful novel is the story of four cadets who have become blood brothers. Together they will encounter the hell of vicious bullying and the rabid, raunchy and dangerously secretive atmosphere of an arrogant and proud military institute. They will experience the violence, the passion, the rage, the friendship, the loyalty, the betrayal. Together they will brace themselves for the brutal transition to manhood... and one of them will not survive. Based on Conroy's own experiences at The Citadel Military School in Charleston, The Lords of Discipline is a remarkable novel.
723. Coonts, Stephen: The Red Horseman
Published by Century, 1993
Fine hardback 1st edition in a very good dust wrapper. As the infrastructure of the Soviet Union crumbles before the world's eyes, twenty thousand tactical nuclear weapons, once under the command of the Soviet military, are up for grabs - and US intelligence believes they may soon appear on the open market. Jake Grafton is despatched to Moscow to ensure that the weapons are destroyed before they disappear into a terrorist pipeline. But Grafton discovers that unidentified American officials want his mission to fail - and will go to any lengths to stop him. Meanwhile, off the coast of the Canary Islands, the body of a British billionaire has been found floating in the sea. Grafton's contacts tell him the man was a victim of a hit squad from within the CIA. And before long, Grafton realises he too has been targeted for assassination - and the conspiracy is clearly stamped 'made in America'...
176. Cornwell, Bernard: Sharpe's Havoc
Published by HarperCollins, London. 2003.
1st edition hardback in fine condition. There are no previous owner names or other marks. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. This time, we are taken to the spring of 1809 when a few British soldiers are stationed in Lisbon as Marshal Soult undertakes his assault on the garrison of Northern Portugal. It's not for Sharpe and his trusty crew of riflemen to dwell on the finer points of politics when they are sent into the city of Oporto to save the lives of two British women who have elected to stay. But when one of the women, Kate Savage, goes missing, Sharpe (along with Sergeant Patrick Harper and several battle-hardened colleagues) finds himself besieged in the city when the bridge over the river falls to the enemy. The English are forced on in a desperate journey back to the safety of the British encampment, but things become very murky when an enigmatic English officer informs them that they will be staying in the hellhole that is Northern Portugal.
175. Cornwell, Bernard: Sharpe's Prey
Published by HarperCollins, London. 2001.
1st edition hardback in fine condition. There are no previous owner names or other marks. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. The year is 1807; Lieutenant Richard Sharpe is planning to leave the army. Against his better judgment, he is persuaded to accompany the Hon John Lavisser to Copenhagen in what is essentially an act of political skulduggery: they are to deliver a bribe and (hopefully) avert a war. But with the French ensuring that Europe remains at boiling point, Sharpe finds himself protecting his charge against French agents and struggling to ensure that the Danish battle fleet is not used to replace every French ship destroyed at Trafalgar.
724. Cornwell, Bernard: Stonehenge: A Novel of 2000 BC
Published by Harper Collins, 1999
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is also fine. Bernard Cornwell's new novel, following the enormous success of his Arthurian trilogy (The Winter King, Enemy of God and Excalibur) is the tale of three brothers and of their rivalry that creates the great temple. One summer's day, a dying stranger carrying great wealth in gold comes to the settlement of Ratharryn. The three sons of Ratharryn's chief each perceive the great gift in a different way. The eldest, Lengar, the warrior, harnesses his murderous ambition to be a ruler and take great power for his tribe. Camaban becomes a great visionary and feared wise man, and it is his vision that will force the youngest brother, Saban, to create the great temple on the green hill where the gods will appear on earth. Saban' s love for Aurenna, the sun bride whose destiny is to die for the gods, finally brings the rivalries of the brothers to a head. But it is also his skills that will build the vast temple, a place for the gods, certainly, but also a place that will confirm for ever the supreme power of the tribe that built it.
725. Cornwell, Bernard: Copperhead
Published by Harper Collins, 1994
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is also fine. Copperhead was the name given to Northern sympathizers of the Confederacy, after a venomous species of North American snake. It is a name that sticks to Nathaniel Starbuck, a preacher's son who has run away from family, college and a foolish love affair, taking shelter in the Falconer legion. Book 2 of The Starbuck Chronicles.
279. Cornwell, Bernard: Battle Flag
Published By Harper Collins, London, 1995
First edition hardback in near fine condition, pictorial battlescene endpapers, there are no previous owner names or inscriptions, the dustwrapper is in very good+ condition with general shelfwear, it has not been price clipped and still retains the £16.99 net price. This third volume in the American Civil War series follows the further adventures of northerner Nathaniel Starbuck as he fights for the rebel south.
726. Cornwell, Bernard: Rebel
Published by Harper Collins, 1993
Hardback 1st edition. A fine book in a near fine unclipped d/w. The first novel in the Starbuck Chronicles, Set during the American Civil War, this book follows the confrontation of North against South. Nathaniel Starbuck is a Northerner, but fleeing his family after the disgrace of his involvement with a French actress, he turns to his best friend, Adam Faulconer.
161. Cornwell, Bernard: The Bloody Ground
Published by HarperCollins, London. 1996.
1st edition, second printing, Hardback and dust wrapper in fine condition. Page edges slightly darkened. There are no previous owner names or other marks. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. Book four of the Starbuck Chronicles.
331. Cornwell, Bernard: Excalibur
Published by Michael Joseph, London. 1997.
1st edition hardback in near fine condition, page edges just starting to brown slightly,.there are no previous owner names or inscriptions. The dustwrapper has not been price-clipped and still reatins the £16.99 net price, it is in very good + condition. A tale of Arthur and Guinevere, of Merlin and Nimue and of Britain in its Darkest Age. The third in the magnificent series The Warlord Chronicles.
727. Cornwell, Bernard: Harlequin
Published by Harper Collins, 2000
1st edition hardback in very good condition. The book leans a little but there are no previous owner names or marks. The dust wrapper is also very good and not price clipped. England's archers crossed the Channel to lay a country to waste. Thomas of Hookton was one of those archers. When his village is sacked by French raiders, he escapes from his father's ambition to become a wild youth who delights in the opportunities which war offers - for fighting, for revenge and for friendship. But Thomas is hounded by his conscience. He has made a promise to God to retrieve a relic stolen in the raid from Hookton's church. The search for the relic leads him into a world where lovers become enemies, enemies become friends and always, somewhere beyond the horizon that is smeared with the smoke of fires set by the rampaging English army, a terrible enemy awaits him. That enemy would harness the power of Christendom's greatest relic - the grail itself. In this, the first book of a new series, Thomas begins the quest that will lead him through the fields of France, until at last the two armies face each other on a hillside near the village of Crecy. The first book of the Grail Quest series.
371. Cornwell, Bernard: Heretic
Published by Harper Collins, London, 2003
This 1st edition book is in very good + condition, it has black cloth boards with silver lettering to the spine. There are no owner names or inscriptions. The dustwrapper has some rubbing to the ends but has not been price clipped.The Grail Quest Series takes us through Thomas (of) Hookton's early years on the South Coast of England, his travels into France with the English army, where he and his long bow become embroiled in the 100 Years War. His return to England (Durham) where his archery skills help the locals defeat the invading Scots at the Battle of Neville's Cross; leaving England holding for ransom the monarchs of Scotland and France at the same time. Returning to France in a hunt for the Grail amongst the Monastaries and his distant relatives.
160. Cornwell, Bernard: The Pale Horseman
Published by HarperCollins, London. 2005.
1st edition hardback in near fine condition. There is a slight lean to the book otherwise fine. There are no previous owner names or marks. The dust wrapper is not clipped. The second book in the Saxon Chronicles series.
2442. Correia, Larry: Spellbound: Book II of the Grimnoir Chronicles
Published by Baen Publications, New York. 2011
Hardback 1st US edition. Fine/as new book and unclipped dust wrapper. Dark fantasy goes hardboiled in #2 of the hard-hitting Grimnoir Chronicles by the New York Times best-selling creator of Monster Hunter International. The Grimnoir Society's mission is to protect people with magic, and they've done so-successfully and in secret-since the mysterious arrival of the Power in the 1850s. But when a magical assassin makes an attempt on the life of President Franklin Roosevelt, the crime is pinned on the Grimnoir. The knights must become fugitives while they attempt to discover who framed them. Things go from bad to worse when Jake Sullivan, former P.I. and knight of the Grimnoir, receives a telephone call from a dead man-a man he helped kill. Turns out the Power jumped universes because it was fleeing from a predator that eats magic and leaves destroyed worlds in its wake. That predator has just landed on Earth.
728. Coupland, Douglas: Girlfriend in a Coma
Published by Flamingo, London. 1998.
1st edition hardback. Slight browning at the page edges otherwise both book and dust wrapper are in fine/as new condition, probably unread. The novel tells the story of a group of friends growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in the late 1970s. On the night of a teenage house-wrecking party, one of the protagonists, Karen, falls into a coma. More alarmingly, she seemed to expect it, having given her boyfriend, Richard, a letter detailing the vivid dreams of the future she had experienced and how she wanted to sleep for a thousand years to avoid that dystopia. The book was named after the 1987 single "Girlfriend in a Coma" by The Smiths. Additionally, Coupland uses other Smith lyrics and song titles within the book such as "Bigmouth Strikes Again," "Hand in Glove," and "The Queen is Dead."
729. Critchton, Michael: Airframe
Published by Century, 1996
1st edition hardback in very good condition. The dust wrapper is also very good. The twin jet plane en route to Denver from Hong Kong is merely a green radar blip half an hour off the California coast when the call comes through to air traffic control: 'Socal Approach, this is TransPacific 545. We have an emergency. ' The pilot requests priority clearance to land - then comes the bombshell - he needs FORTY ambulances on the runway. But nothing prepares the rescue workers for the carnage they witness when they enter the plane. Ninety-four passengers are injured. Three dead. The interior cabin virtually destroyed. What happened on board Flight TPA 545?
730. Critchton, Michael: The Lost World
Published by Century, 1995
1st edition hardback in fine condition. The dust wrapper is also fine. It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end - the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public. There are rumours that something survived. . . .