#original dust jacket

Black Money. Ross Macdonald. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [1966]. First edition. Original dust jacket.

When Lew Archer is hired to get the goods on the suspiciously suave Frenchman who’s run off with his client’s girlfriend, it looks like a simple case of alienated affections. Things look different when the mysterious foreigner turns out to be connected to a seven-year-old suicide and a mountain of gambling debts.

The Forbidden Trail (Melody Lane Mystery #2). Lilian Garis. Grosset & Dunlap, 1933. First edition. Original dust jacket.

Carol observes several foreigners in town and that at least one of them seems to be trying to communicate with Veronica. Meanwhile, Carol learns that Veronica has inherited the cave on the Forbidden Trail from her father, who is missing and presumed dead. Veronica’s father had said that the cave held the secret to a great scientific discovery. When Carol receives a warning message not to interfere in Veronica’s affairs, she knows that something sinister is afoot. Carol does not understand what is going on, but she knows that the answer to the riddle lies in the cave on the Forbidden Trail.

Mrs Caliban. Rachel Ingalls. MRS CALIBAN. London, Boston: Faber and Faber, [1982]. First edition. Original dust jacket. 

“Dorothy, a failed mother and neglected, wife, secretly takes in Larry, an anthropoid amphibian who has escaped from the institute for Oceanographic Research and is being sought for the deaths of two of his keepers … A sensitive portrait of alienation and disaffection with darkly fantastic overtones.”

Orphan of Mars. Joanna Cannan. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., (1930). First edition stated. Original dust jacket.

World War One themed novel of “the educated civilian who dashed to the Front without pausing to ask whether he was too good for cannon-fodder - and returned to live among those who had grown fat through the asking”.

Dock Walloper, The Story of ‘Big Dick’ Butler. Richard J. Butler and Joseph Driscoll. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, (1933). First edition. Original dust jacket.

Labor and social change non-fiction. “A giant Irishman form London who fought his way up from the waterfront slums to New York State Assembly and won international renown as the forceful ruler of longshoreman activities in the Port of New York during the World War. He has friends among Governors and gangsters, politicians and thieves, judges and con men, cops and palookas, authors and actors, rum runners and speakeasy folk, show girls and waitresses.”

Tales Before Midnight. Stephen Vincent Benét. New York, Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc., [1939]. First edition. Original dust jacket.

Collects twelve stories including “Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer,” a moral fantasy about personified death, “O'Halloran’s Luck,” a leprechaun story, and “Doc Mellhorn and the Pearly Gates,” an ironic posthumous fantasy. “Good stories.”

The Ghost of Melody Lane (Melody Lane Mystery #1). Lilian Garis. Grosset & Dunlap, 1933. First edition. Original dust jacket.

Carol Duncan finds herself worrying about Mrs. Becket, her good friend and organ teacher, who has been frightened by strange events at her home. Mrs. Becket has an accident, and a ghost is seen on her property holding a white rose. Some of the girls at school have begun spreading rumors, and Carol is afraid that many of the girls will decide to stop taking lessons. Carol also wonders about other seemingly unrelated unusual events. A strange carpenter who repaired Mrs. Becket’s organ is caught lurking near Mrs. Becket’s house. A foreign girl who lives with Mrs. Becket’s caretaker and his wife flees whenever anyone tries to speak to her. Carol is determined to discover what is happening and why.