TREASURE HUNT
by John Lescroart
Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Dutton (2010)
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First printing. Mickey Dade hates deskwork, but that s all he s been doing at Wyatt Hunt s private investigative service, The Hunt Club. His itch to be active is answered when a body is discovered: It s Dominic Como, one of San Francisco s most high-profile activists a charismatic man known as much for his expensive suits as his work on a half dozen nonprofit boards. One person of interest in the case is Como s business associate, Alicia Thorpe young, gorgeous, and the sister of one of Mickey s friends. As Mickey and Hunt are pulled into the case, they soon learn that they city s golden fundraiser was involved in some highly suspect deals. And the lovely Alicia knows more about this and more about Como than she s letting on. Treasure Hunt is both a nail-biting thriller and a coming-of-age story, filled with Lescroart s trademark San Francisco flavors. Mickey Dade, its young protagonist, gradually learns the hard lessons Hunt knows only too well, as the world he thought he knew unravels around him.
Your price: $15.00

The Wolf at the Door
by Higgins, Jack
Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. G. P. Putnam's Sons (2010)
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. Dillon and company are back in the ultimate blockbuster from the legend that is Jack Higgins...Putin and the Russians have suffered too many killings of their own people in the past. Now they want the whole of the 'Prime Minister's private army' wiped out, including Blake Johnson and Charles Ferguson. Somebody is after them: Blake, Harry Miller, his sister, Monica, Harry Salter and Billy. The only people spared are Roper and Dillon. After surviving a car bomb, Ferguson heads a desperate search to uncover the perpetrator. Not wanting any overt connections with their country, the Russians need the right kind of assassin, better than Carlos the Jackal. When such a man is discovered in a Lubiana prison, he is willing to take on the job as a price for his freedom! An unlikely man, brilliant and terrifying, ingenious and deadly, he is the wolf at the door.
Your price: $13.00

LEVEL 26
by Anthony Zuiker with Duane Swierczynski
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Dutton Books (2009)
New in good dust jacket. Aside from the unfortunate combination of constants in their names, Zuiker and Swierczynski have put together a remarkable creation--the world's first digi-novel. Zuiker is the creator and executive producer of the most-watched television show in the world, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and Swierczynski has written some fine thrillers such as THE BLONDE. Crime scene technician Steve Dark is the hero, and every 20 pages readers can link to a three-minute online video which enriches the book. Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items. First printing.
Your price: $16.00

Too Many Murders: A Carmine Delmonico Novel
by McCullough, Colleen
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Simon & Schuster (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. . Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. In her riveting sequel to On, Off, Colleen McCullough, the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds, proves once again that she is a master of suspense
Your price: $15.00

BOX 21
by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom
First edition.Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar Straus Giroux (2009)
New in good dust jacket. Hot on the heels of Steig Larsson's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO comes this spicy new Swedish meatball--the thriller that Stockholm City hailed as the Best Crime Novel of the Year. Three years ago, Lydia and Alena were two hopeful girls from Lithuania. Now they are sex slaves, lured to Sweden with the promise of better jobs and then trapped in a Stockholm brothel, forced to repay their debt. Suddenly they are given an unexpected chance at freedom, and with it the opportunity to take revenge on their enslavers and reclaim the lives and dignity they once had. What will happen now that the tables are turned and the victims fight back? Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items. First American edition.
Your price: $15.00


The Red Door
by Todd, Charles
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. William Morrow & Company (2010)
New in good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Lancashire, England, June, 1920. Who was the woman who lived and died behind the red door? What did she see before she died? And who was the man who never came home from the Great War, for the simple reason that he had never really gone? How is the woman's death linked to his disappearance? And why is Scotland Yard blind to the connection, even when Inspector Ian Rutledge points it out? Charles Todd is the author of eleven Ian Rutledge mysteries A Matter of Justice, A Pale Horse, A False Mirror, A Long Shadow, A Cold Treachery, A Fearsome Doubt, Watchers of Time, Legacy of the Dead, Search the Dark, Wings of Fire, and A Test of Wills and one stand-alone novel. A mother-and-son writing team, they live in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively
Your price: $14.00

GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER
by Wallace Stroby
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Minotaur Books
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Stroby, author of the widely-praised THE BARBED-WIRE KISS and HEARTBREAK LOUNGE, introduces a new character--Florida cop Sara Cross, struggling to raise a son with health problems, who has to deal with ex-boyfriends and New Jersey mob killers.
Your price: $14.00


36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Pantheon
New in new dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Equally adept at fiction (a winner of the National Jewish Book Award) and philosophy (a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation genius prize), Rebecca Newberger Goldstein now gives us a novel that transforms the great debate between faith and reason into an exhilarating romance of both heart and mind. At the center: Cass Seltzer, a professor of psychology whose book, The Varieties of Religious Illusion, " has become a surprise best seller. He s been dubbed the atheist with a soul, and his sudden celebrity has upended his life. He wins over the stunning Lucinda Mandelbaum the goddess of game theory and loses himself in a spiritually expansive infatuation. A former girlfriend appears: an anthropologist who invites him to join in her quest for immortality through biochemistry. But he is haunted by reminders of the two people who ignited his passion to understand religion: his teacher Jonas Elijah Klapper, a renowned literary scholar with a suspicious obsession with messianism, and an angelic six-year-old mathematical genius, heir to the leadership of an exotic Hasidic sect. The rush of events in a single dramatic week plays out Cass s conviction that the religious impulse spills out into life at large.
Your price: $14.00


BLACKLANDS
by Belinda Bauer
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Simon & Schuster (2010)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. "Original, unsettling and atmospheric, " says Val McDermid. A psychological thriller about the cat-and-mouse game between a boy desperately seeking the truth about this uncle's murder and the murderer himself.
Your price: $14.00

Freeze Frame: The Fourth of the Enzo Files
by Peter May
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Poisoned Pen
New. No dust jacket as issued. . Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. A promise made to a dying man leads forensics ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who's been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man's heir has preserved for nearly twenty years. The dead man left several clues there designed to reveal the killer's identity to the man's son, but ironically the son died soon after the father. So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin that Enzo rashly boasted he could solve (he's been successful with the first three). It takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines. An attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder--but still the viable suspect, a crime scene frozen in time, a dangerous hell hole by the cliffs, and a collection of impenetrable messages, make this one of Enzo's most difficult cases.
Your price: $13.00

First edition Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, "America's Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine"
by Scott, Henry
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Pantheon Books (2010)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. Copy of color inside. First Edition. The never-before-told story of America s first scandal magazine that dominated the country s newsstands in the fifties with its revelations of sexual and political scandals and forever changed our notion of privacy, the practice of journalism in America, and the way we view celebrity. Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house, said Humphrey Bogart of America s first tabloid. With its boast that it tells the facts and names the names, Confidential s premise was that millions of people were willing to reject fan magazine pabulum and instead wallow in scandal. And so they did. At its peak in the mid-fifties, the twenty-five-cent magazine was the best-selling newsstand publication in America. Printed on cheap paper and crammed with splashy pictures, the semi-monthly s distinct advantage was that its stories, however shocking and embroidered, were based on fact. Henry Scott shows us how Confidential exposed the most hallowed movie stars and heroes as wife beaters (Bing Crosby), homosexuals (Van Johnson), neglectful mothers (Rita Hayworth), sexual obsessives (June Allyson), and, of course, card carrying Communists. The author also shows how the magazine helped create fertile soil for the cynicism about politics and the powerful that took root in the late fifties and blossomed in the decades that followed. Shocking True Story is as riveting and revealing as Confidential itself.
Your price: $13.00

BRYANT AND MAY ON THE LOOSE
by Christopher Fowler
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Ballantine Books
New. No dust jacket as issued. Please check all prices WITH POSTAGE; ours are generally lower. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Long regarded an anachronism and a thorn in the side of its superiors, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is to be disbanded. For octogenarian detectives Arthur Bryant and John May, it seems retirement is now the only option. But then a headless body is found in a freezer, and on the perimeter of a massive construction site near King's Cross, a gigantic figure has been spotted-dressed in deerskin and sporting antlers made of knives and suddenly, with limited resources and very little time, the PCU is back in business.
Your price: $14.00

SNOW ANGELS
by James Thompson
Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Putnam
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. Thompson, an American who has made his home in Finland for the last ten years, begins a series starring Finnish Police Inspector Kari Varra.
Your price: $13.00


The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith
by Schenkar, Joan
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. St. Martin's Press (2009)
New in good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. "The first word that comes to mind after reading Joan Schenkar s new biography is 'stunning, ' says Deirdre Bair, author of SAMUEL BECKETT, winner of the National Book Award. "Anyone who has ever read one of Patricia Highsmith s novels has had to wonder about the quirky intelligence that shaped the plots, so full of downright evil, mischievous wickedness, and outrageous behavior. What kind of a mind could envision page after page of pathological nastiness and still keep her readers totally enthralled? Who could elevate anti-social behavior to so high an art that her readers could not get enough and clamored for more of it? Joan Schenkar is the first writer to grapple with Patricia Highsmith on every level of her being, from her bizarre personal life to her incredibly prolific writing life. It s hard to avoid superlatives when describing Schenkar s biography, but there doesn t seem to be any other way to go about it. As a biographer myself, I am well aware of the astonishing amount of research that went into the writing of this book: Schenkar has read and studied indeed poured over---everything Highsmith ever wrote, from the odd occasional jotting, to the precisely detailed writing notebooks, to the variant versions of the novels themselves. She has interviewed everyone who ever encountered Highsmith, and she has woven all this material into what can only be called a page-turner. And she has done this in such an original manner that her biography of Patricia Highsmith will not only be the definitive study for many years to come, but it will also be known as the biography that changed the way the genre is written. Schenkar has created a vivid and dynamic account of Highsmith s life by departing from the usual chronological narrative ( she was born, she grew up, she lived, she died ). Instead, she clusters ideas, themes, events, human relationships, and various other topics so that her reader can see how all these things influenced the way Highsmith lived her daily life, and how and why they came to be so important to her writing. Schenkar has an incredibly deft touch as she deals with so many horrific facts and events. She possesses a remarkable objectivity (and frankly, I wondered at times how she managed to be so level-headed and even-handed as she wrote this stuff). She allows this life to unfold in all its sometimes seamy sordidness while still keeping her readers interest and attention. It is a gifted writer who can create such an enthralling account of so incredible a life and Schenkar deserves high praise for carrying off this difficult feat. "
Your price: $15.00


Boston Noir, by Lehane, Dennis (Editor)
Akashic Books (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 270 p. Akashic Noir. Audience: General/trade. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First printing. Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron. Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, The Given Day) has proven himself to be a master of both crime fiction and literary fiction. Here, he extends his literary prowess to that of master curator. In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city: the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between. Lehane s own contribution the longest story in the volume is set in his beloved home neighborhood of Dorchester and showcases his phenomenal ability to grip the heart, soul, and throat of the reader.
Your price: $10.00


First edition 7th Son: Descent
by Hutchins, J C
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. St. Martin's Griffin (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 368 p. Audience: General/trade. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. The first thriller to gain a huge audience online, 7TH SON: DESCENT now becomes a quality paperback. As America reels from the bizarre presidential assassination committed by a child, seven men are abducted from their normal lives and delivered to a secret government facility. Each man has his own career, his own specialty. All are identical in appearance. The seven strangers were grown---unwitting human clones---as part of a project called 7th Son. The government now wants something from these John Michael Smiths. They share the flesh as well as the implanted memories of the psychopath responsible for the president's murder. The killer has bigger plans, and only these seven have the unique qualifications to track and stop him. But when their progenitor makes the battle personal, it becomes clear he may know the seven better than they know themselves.
Your price: $10.00



First edition Phoenix Noir
by Millikin, Patrick (Editor)
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Akashic Books (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 304 p. Akashic Noir. Audience: General/trade. First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback New in very good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 304 p. Akashic Noir. Audience: General/trade. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First printing. Brand-new stories by: Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, James Sallis, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Talton, Megan Abbott, Charles Kelly, Robert Anglen, Patrick Millikin, Laura Tohe, Kurt Reichenbaugh, Gary Phillips, David Corbett, Don Winslow.
Your price: $10.00


First edition A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs
by Lehman, David
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Schocken Books (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Digressive, nostalgic and deeply moving, Lehman achieves a fine, lasting tribute to the American songbook. says Publishers Weekly. David Lehman's A Fine Romance wittily explores the enormous contribution of Jewish writers and composers to the American musical scene. Lehman finds Jewish influence, or what he calls a plaintive undertow, even in such unlikely upbeat anthems as Gershwin's Love Walked In. His love-struck history is itself a major entertainment. --John Ashbery, author of Three Poems "David Lehman's A Fine Romance is a spirited account and reminiscence of a time when Jewish plaintiveness and wit combined with Negro blues to give our American culture its way of singing. Everyone who hums the great old tunes will delight in this book and its wondrous lore. --Richard Wilbur, author of Things of This World With brio and encyclopedic knowledge, David Lehman has penned a lovely valentine to the American songbook. Along the way, hard questions are asked, contradictions confronted and shrewd insights offered. The result is pure delight. --Phillip Lopate, author of Two Marriages From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition. Review Digressive, nostalgic and deeply moving, Lehman achieves a fine, lasting tribute to the American songbook. --Publishers Weekly David Lehman's A Fine Romance wittily explores the enormous contribution of Jewish writers and composers to the American musical scene. Lehman finds Jewish influence, or what he calls a plaintive undertow, even in such unlikely upbeat anthems as Gershwin's Love Walked In. His love-struck history is itself a major entertainment. --John Ashbery, author of Three Poems "David Lehman's A Fine Romance is a spirited account and reminiscence of a time when Jewish plaintiveness and wit combined with Negro blues to give our American culture its way of singing. Everyone who hums the great old tunes will delight in this book and its wondrous lore. --Richard Wilbur, author of Things of This World With brio and encyclopedic knowledge, David Lehman has penned a lovely valentine to the American songbook. Along the way, hard questions are asked, contradictions confronted and shrewd insights offered. The result is pure delight. --Phillip Lopate, author of Two Marriages
Your price: $11.00


First edition INSPECTOR GHOTE'S FIRST CASE
by H. R. F. Keating
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. St. Martin's Minotaur
New in new dust jacket. Newly-promoted Inspector Ghote is thrilled to be granted casual leave until he takes up his post, as it allows him to spend time with his heavily pregnant wife, who is desperate to watch a showing of "Hamlet" at the cinema. Their plans are ruined, however, since his job requires Ghote to investigate the suicide of his friend's wife. Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items. First U.S. edition.
Your price: $12.00

First edition SIX SUSPECTS
by Vikas Swarup
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback.
New in new dust jacket. The author of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE follows up with another terrific thriller. Vicky Rai, the son of a high-profile Minister, has been shot dead by one of the guests at his own party. They are a glitzy bunch, but among them the police find six strange, displaced characters with a gun in their possession. Each of them is steaming with a secret motive. India's wiliest investigative journalist, Arun Advani, makes it his mission to nail the murderer. Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items. First U.S. edition.
Your price: $12.00

First edition THE DOUBLE-JACK MURDERS
by Patrick F. McManus
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Simon & Schuster
New. No dust jacket as issued. The eagerly-awaited third novel in the bestselling Sheriff Bo Tully mystery series. Patrick F. McManus is a renowned outdoor writer, humorist, and longtime columnist for Outdoor Life and Field & Stream. His most recent books are the Sheriff Bo Tully mysteries Avalanche and The Blight Way. He is the author of many other books, including such runaway New York Times bestsellers as The Grasshopper Trap, The Night the Bear Ate Goombaw, and Real Ponies Don't Go Oink! Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items. First edition.
Your price: $12.00

David's Revenge
by Kettenbach, Hans Werner, and Bell, Anthea (Translated by)
AAdvanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Bitter Lemon Press (2009)
New in good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 274 p. Audience: General/trade. A visitor from Georgia, a country torn apart by civil war, ends the peaceful existence of a school teacher's family in Germany. Christian Kestner has all but forgotten his stay in Tbilisi seven years before. He begins to worry when he receives a letter from David Ninochvili announcing his visit to Germany. Why is David coming? To seek revenge from Christian, guilty of flirting at the time with David's wife? Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items.
Your price: $12.00


First edition Last Known Address
by Schwegel, Theresa
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. . Trade paperback. St. Martin's Griffin (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback New in good dust jacket. Detective Sloane Pearson is new to the Sex Crimes Division but no stranger to being treated like an incompetent blonde by her hardened male co-workers. She's also no stranger to hard-to-crack cases, and her latest is as tough as they come: A rapist is on the prowl, dragging women to deserted building sites or vacant apartment buildings peppered all over downtown Chicago, and forcing them to fight.
Your price: $12.00

First edition Crossers
by Caputo, Philip
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Knopf Publishing Group (2009)
New in good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. "The fallout between public and private distinctions of war is just one of the border disputes haunting Pulitzer-winner Caputo's gorgeously stark latest. Inconsolable after the loss of his wife on 9/11, Gil Castle leaves New York for his family's Arizona ranch, San Ignacio, overlooking the Mexican border. But San Ignacio proves to be a pretty place where some ugly things happen, and Gil's discovery of a Mexican illegal, left for dead after a border-crossing deal gone awry, soon merges the world of cattle and horses and operatic landscapes with the world of drug lords and coyotes and murder, whose cast of femmes fatale and tough muchachos includes the Professor an agent of history working both sides of the border and at least two sides of the law and Yvonne Menéndez, the ruthless leader of the Agua Prieta cartel, whose past may be painfully entwined with Gil's family history. That history is broadly personified in Gil's larger-than-life grandfather Ben Erskine, a legendary deputy sheriff whose adventures emerge in inter-chapter accounts. At first glance, this multifarious book skirts country familiar to readers of McCarthy or McMurtry, but Caputo's west supersedes elemental cowboys and lone justice with the malaise of post-9/11 America and the violence of the Mexican desert as gruesome as in Iraq frothing with moral ambiguity and fraught with complicity, " says PW in a starred review.
Your price: $12.00

First edition Doors Open
by Rankin, Ian
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Reagan Arthur Books (2010)
New in good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Three friends descend upon an art auction in search of some excitement. Mike Mackenzie-retired software mogul, bachelor and fine art enthusiast-wants something that money can't buy. Fellow art-lover Allan Cruickshank is bored with his banking career and burdened by a painful divorce. And Robert Gissing, an art professor, is frustrated that so many paintings stay hidden in corporate boardrooms, safes and private apartments. After the auction-and a chance encounter with crime boss Chib Calloway-Robert and Allan suggest the "liberation" of several paintings from the National Gallery, hoping Mike will dissuade them. Instead, he hopes they are serious. As enterprising girlfriends, clever detectives, seductive auctioneers and a Hell's Angel named Hate enter the picture, Ian Rankin creates a highly-charged thriller, a faced-past story of second guesses and double crosses that keep changing the picture, right until the harrowing finish.
Your price: $12.00


First edition THE SHERIFF OF YNRAMEER
by Michael Rubens
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Pantheon Books (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Hailed by Stephen Colbert as "a science fiction book your grandmother will love if she s a lustful, violent lady, " this mordant, fast-paced, witty tour of a delightfully improba ble science fiction world combines The Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy with The Magnificent Seven. Our hero, Cole, is having a bad day. His sidekick has run off with his girlfriend. His ride has been disintegrated by an officious traffic robot. And the spaceship he s stolen to escape from a tentacled alien bounty hunter turns out to be filled with freeze-dried orphans. Reluctantly compelled to deliver the de fenseless, fluid-less children to safety, Cole recruits a support team of humans, aliens, and one friendly if cognitively challenged-computer. Their destination: the mysterious Yrnameer, thought to be the last untrammeled planet in the galaxy. Imagine their consternation, then, when they arrive to find it threatened by Cole s archenemy, the most infamous outlaw in the cosmos. Advance review copy--uncorrected paperback, which have become collectors' items. First edition.
Your price: $13.00

First edition THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY
by Heidi W. Durrow
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Algonquin Books (2010)
New in new dust jacket. Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction. First edition; Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. From early reviews: "When I first envisioned the Bellwether Prize, I imagined all the best qualities of fiction; vivid language, compelling characters, and clear moral vision. Novels just like this one, Heidi Durrow's breathless telling of a tale we've never heard before. Haunting and lovely, pitch-perfect, this book could not be more timely. " Barbara Kingsolver Heidi Durrow is a wonderfully gifted writer who can summon a voice, a memorable character, with bold, swift strokes. [This] is a gem. " Jay Parini, author of Promised Land.
Your price: $13.00

First edition The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
by Dash, Mike
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Random House (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Decades before the Five Families emerged and more than half a century before Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather, Giuseppe Morello and his family controlled all manner of crime in New York City. Bestselling historian Dash (Satan's Circus; Tulipomania) presents an enthralling account of this little-known boss of bosses, dubbed the Clutch Hand because of his deformed arm. Arriving with his family from Corleone, Sicily, in 1892, Morello soon set up a successful operation counterfeiting American and Canadian bills. His empire expanded to include extorting local businesses, insurance scams and kidnappings. The Mafia a term that Dash underscores was used by outsiders, not members was in its infancy when Morello came to America, but by the time he was gunned down in 1930, families had cropped up in all five boroughs and in cities across the country. Dash depicts the balance between loyalty and betrayal as an ever-changing dance and nimbly catalogues the endless gruesome murders committed in the name of revenge and honor. Readers may think they know the mob, but Morello's ruthless rule makes even the fictional Tony Soprano look tame. Maps.
Your price: $13.00


Blame by Huneven, Michelle
Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Farrar Straus Giroux (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Says Publishers Weekly in a starred review: "In this gripping tale, Huneven charts the parameters of guilt and how a young, wisecracking intellectual becomes a shadow of her former self. Patsy MacLemoore, a boozy history professor, is helping her boyfriend, Brice, take care of his niece, Joey, whose mother is undergoing cancer treatment. But when Patsy goes on a bender and emerges from a drunken blackout in jail, she learns she's accused of having run down a mother and daughter in her driveway. After her conviction, Patsy transforms from free spirit into a convict, and Huneven deftly underscores the bizarre trajectory Patsy's life has taken. In a prison AA group, Patsy seeks redemption and meaning; she also develops a relationship with the man whose wife and daughter she killed and helps put his son through school, stays the course after her release and maintains a friendship with Brice and Joey. Brilliant observations, excellent characters, spiffy dialogue and a clever plot keep readers hooked, and the final twist turns Patsy's new life on its ear. Huneven's exploration of misdeeds real and imagined is humane, insightful and beautiful. "
Your price: $13.00


First edition The Disappeared
by Hall, M R
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Simon & Schuster (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. Coroner Jenny Cooper takes on the corrupt establishment of England's investigative institutions, fighting a lone battle for justice. M. R. Hall is a screenwriter, producer and former criminal barrister. Educated at Hereford Cathedral School and Worcester College, Oxford, he lives in Monmouthshire with his wife and two sons. Aside from writing, his main passion is the preservation and planting of woodland. In his spare moments, he is mostly to be found amongst trees.
Your price: $13.00


The Ghosts of Belfast
by Neville, Stuart
Advanced Reading Copy. Soho Crime (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. "The best first novel I've read in years....It's a flat-out terror trip. "-James Ellroy "Not only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times. "-John Connolly "The Ghosts of Belfast is the book when the world finally sits up and goes WOW, the Irish really have taken over the world of crime writing. Stuart Neville is Ireland's answer to Henning Mankell. "-Ken Bruen
Your price: $13.00


First edition The Morning Show Murders
by Roker, Al, and Lochte, Dick
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Delacorte Press (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Nobody can dish morning TV like Al Roker, who s seen every side of a business that looks good on camera--even when sharks are circling inside the gleaming glass Manhattan media headquarters. Treachery abounds in Roker s riotously thrilling debut novel--an ingenious murder mystery and a delicious behind-the-scenes look at network TV. As fact and fiction collide and the backbiting ignites, The Morning Show Murders will make you wonder: How much of this stuff is real? Network TV can be murder. Just ask Billy Blessing, famous for his smile, charm, and ability to survive the shark tank that is high-stakes morning TV. But though Billy has outlived his fair share of prima-donnas, his cooking segment on Wake Up America! is a staple of the American diet, and his Manhattan bistro is a mega-success, his career has just taken a very dangerous turn: His show s perky cohost, Gin McCauley, has launched into some brass-knuckles contract negotiations. A visiting Mossad agent is about to tell all on the air. And then the network s head honcho is murdered in his luxury apartment, and an ambitious D.A. decides that Billy is to blame. Forensics show that Gerry Gallagher was poisoned and that the fatal coq au vin came from Billy s restaurant. Gerry had an impressive list of women in his black book and a news assignment in Afghanistan had plunged the TV exec into the heart of a violent international secret. Now unsavory characters are coming out of the woodwork, and another murder strikes the show s inner circle. Billy knows that someone s trying to frame him. He also knows that a ruthless international assassin has just arrived in New York City. And suddenly, for the most trusted guy on TV the ultimate career move is not about ratings. It s about staying alive and stopping the next murder from becoming tomorrow s breaking news.
Your price: $13.00

Fired Up by Krentz, Jayne Ann
Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Putnam Adult (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. New York Times-bestselling author Krentz presents her latest Arcane Society novel and introduces the first book in the Dreamlight Trilogy-the story of a curse that spans generations, and the love that can heal it. More than three centuries ago, Nicholas Winters irrevocably altered his genetic makeup in an obsession-fueled competition with alchemist and Arcane Society founder Sylvester Jones. Driven to control their psychic abilities, each man's decision has reverberated throughout the family line, rewarding some with powers beyond their wildest dreams, and cursing others to a life filled with madness and hallucinations. Jack Winters, descendant of Nicholas, has been experiencing nightmares and blackouts-just the beginning, he believes-of the manifestation of the Winters family curse. The legend says that he must find the Burning Lamp or risk turning into a monster. But he can't do it alone; he needs the help of a woman with the gift to read the lamp's dreamlight. Jack is convinced that private investigator Chloe Harper is that woman. Her talents for finding objects and accessing dream energy are what will save him, but their sudden and powerful sexual pull threatens to overwhelm them both. Danger surrounds them, and it doesn't take long for Chloe to pick up the trail of the missing lamp. And as they draw closer to the lamp, the raw power that dwells within it threatens to sweep them into a hurricane of psychic force.
Your price: $13.00


First edition Broken Places: Rachel Goddard Mystery
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Poisoned Pen
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Summer is deadly in the mountain community of Mason County, Virginia. Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger and veterinarian Rachel Goddard are caught in a maelstrom of lies that stretch far into the past and suspicions that threaten the future. Cam and Meredith Taylor are murdered within hours of one another, and Rachel is dragged into the case because she heard--but didn't see--Cam s murder. The Taylors arrived in Mason County as volunteers in the 1960s War on Poverty, and they stayed on, making loyal friends and bitter enemies. The victims daughter is Tom s former girlfriend, Leslie. She returns home to see justice done--and to win Tom back from Rachel. The prime suspect is newcomer Ben Hern, Rachel s childhood friend, and she is desperate to prove him innocent. Leslie pushes for Hern's arrest and launches a campaign of intimidation against Rachel. With the killer targeting Rachel and the community clamoring for an arrest, Tom and Rachel must decide who they can trust.
Your price: $13.00


First edition Crawlspace: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery
by Graves, Sarah
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Bantam (2009)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree abandoned Wall Street to its bankruptcies and bailouts for a far more rewarding life fixing up an 1823 Federal-style house in Eastport, Maine. But in Sarah Graves s chilling new mystery thriller, Jake discovers that no matter what your address, the most terrifying crimes always hit closest to home. The infamous Dodd murders are hardly among Eastport s proudest legacies. So when bestselling true-crime author Carolyn Rathbone arrives to research the case for a new book, the locals in the seaside town let her know that she s about as welcome as a spoiled clam. But surely no one would harm a crime writer out of a sense of civic pride or would they? Jake has her own problems, from the mysteries of old-house insulation to an anonymous caller plaguing her with death threats. But with Carolyn s arrival, the slayings of the wealthy Dodd women suddenly go from cold case to hot topic much to someone s dismay. For Carolyn Rathbone s untimely investigation hasn't only reopened old wounds and stirred up new suspicions; it s unearthed a string of deadly secrets ones that a cunning killer is grimly determined to rebury right along with Carolyn herself. Suddenly Jake finds herself inescapably targeted by one of the most deranged criminal minds she s ever encountered. For as much as she fights to insulate herself from his grisly compulsions, someone with a taste for terror has already crept closer than she dares to imagine. She d rather die than lose the home and family she s built and that suits her nemesis fine, because her death is just exactly what he has planned.
Your price: $13.00


First edition Ransom by Malouf, David
First edition. Advanced Reading Copy. Trade paperback. Pantheon Books (2010)
New. No dust jacket as issued. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First U.S. printing. A reimagination of one of the most famous stories in all of literature Achilles s slaughter and desecration of Hector, and Priam s attempt to ransom his son s body in Homer s The Iliad Ransom is the first novel in more than a decade from David Malouf, arguably Australia s greatest living writer. A novel of suffering, sorrow, and redemption, Ransom tells the story of the relationship between two grieving men at war: fierce Achilles, who has lost his beloved Patroclus in the siege of Troy; and Priam, king of Troy, whose son Hector killed Patroclus and was in turn savaged by Achilles. Each man s grief demands a confrontation with the other s if it is to be resolved: a resolution more compelling to both than the demands of war. And when the aged father and the murderer of his son meet, the past and present blend, enemies exchange places, hatred turns to understanding, youth pities age mourning youth. * Ransom is a tour de force, incandescent in its delicate and powerful lyricism and in its unstated imperative to imagine our lives in light of fellow feeling.
Your price: $13.00

First edition Risk
by Harrison, Colin
First edition. Trade paperback. Picador USA (2009)
New in very good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 192 p. Audience: General/trade. Advance review copy, (ARC) which have become collectors' items. First edition. An honest lawyer, a Czech hand model, and a box of mysterious Christmas ornaments, each play their part in Harrison's intricate mystery George Young never thought of himself as a detective, but that's pretty much his vocation--an attorney for a top insurance firm, it s his job to pin down suspicious claims. But Mrs. Corbett, the rich, eccentric wife of the firm's founder, has it in mind to put George s skills to a peculiar assignment. With only a few months to live, her one desire is to know the true circumstance of her son Roger's violent death. George's investigation leads him to Roger's mistress, a cagey Czech hand model named Eliska, whose motives for latching on to Mrs. Corbett's son may have gotten him killed. Set against a brilliantly-drawn Manhattan, at once volatile and vivid, Risk is prime Colin Harrison.

From THE RAPSHEET

Comments about my new blog, and my reply:

Blogger Ray said...

Isn't it a little off to sell ARCs? I mean, didn't Mr Adler get them for free?

12:16 PM
Blogger Brian said...

Yeah, I'd agree. If I can't place my extras with another blogger/reviewer then I donate mine to a local cancer center for the patients undergoing chemotherapy and have to spend hours there.

3:40 PM
Blogger Sandra Ruttan said...

It says right on arcs that they aren't to be sold, so yeah, it's off. There have been these debates before, and not all will see eye to eye on it, but in light of the FTC regulations that have been discussed at blogs (It's a Crime) recently, this is an interesting move. When the regulations take effect this is like providing a list for the FTC to cross-check, and prove what you've received for free, isn't it? Never mind the obvious interest the IRS will take.

On the flip side of the coin, there is a potential advantage to authors. Readers who are prepared to buy an arc from someone who got it for free, and take the trouble of ordering it, are probably more likely to be vocal about the book, to review it on amazon or tell friends if they liked it. I'm prepared to acknowledge that, while saying that personally, I could never sell arcs, and Brian's already mentioned what happens to ours when we're done with them. We didn't even sell all the leftover books from B'con last year -we donated them.

4:20 PM
dick adler said...

I of course donate a lot of books to libraries, but they won't take ARCs. The idea about giving them to cancer patients is a very good one. And even though it does say they're not for sale, ABE and Alibris have no compunctions about listing ARCs.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the site?