Fiction

Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene – First 1958

Graham Greene’s masterpiece and a fine encouragement to all vacuum cleaner salesmen.

Published by Heinemann. London a first edition 1958. Octavo, 273 pages. Foxing to page edges, jacket very good, the odd minor chip.

A super spy story and a put down of the big wigs back at the Circus. Blatantly (self confessed) copied by Le Carre in his Tailor of Panama. We prefer this and you must see the old film starring Alex Guinness.

Graham Greene First – Humour and Spying in Havana

$60.00

Updating cart…

Maigret in Society – George Simenon

Published by the Thriller Book Club, Charing Cross, London in collaboration with and in the same year as the Hamish Hamilton first.

Octavo, 160 pages, very good condition.

The 78-year-old Comte Armand de Saint-Hilaire is found dead. A former Ambassador to Rome. Washington and London. All his acquaintances are elderly and Maigret is given little to work on other than the discovery of letter which suggest a long-standing love for Princess de V_____. Strange goings on are exposed.

Maigret not out of his depth in High Society.

$35.00

Updating cart…

Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s Green Hills was first published in 1936. This is a 1962 edition of the desirable Jonathan Cape format.

Octavo, 284 pages with the super decorative illustrations by Edward Shenton. Green cloth covered boards with “game’ gilt design to front. Top edge stained green as required of this edition. A few dust jacket light chips and age otherwise a very copy of a hard to find item.

A piece of non-fiction regarding Hemingway’s safari to Africa in December 1933 with his wife Pauline. First criticised by reviewers and then lauded as the best African safari book ever written … Hemingway never forgave them as he thought they had killed the book.

Set in Tanzania and up the Great Rift Valley. Hemingway describes the lure of the hunt, the landscape and beauty of the wilderness like never before. Intermingled with conversations and views on writers and his writing. It is in this book that he set Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain as the greatest piece of American literature … but not without qualification.

Carries a special appreciation for “J P” i.e. Jackson Philip who was Philip Hope Percival who was his guide. Percival was the inspiration behind the character Robert Wilson in his later short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”

Green Hills of Africa – true Hemingway

$70.00

Updating cart…

A Farewell to Arms – Original Soundtrack -1957

The original soundtrack to the movie base on the Ernest Hemingway classic “A Farewell to Arms”. Long playing record, 33 RPM, from Capitol Records, super condition.

Released the same year as the famous movie starring Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones and Vittorio de Sica, directed by Charles Condor. The semi-autobiographical story had been mad into a stage play shortly after the books release in 1929. An earlier film starred Gary Cooper.

Music composed by the legendary Mario Mascimbene … conducted by Franco Ferrara and recorded in Rome. Opening with a cannonade of percussion portraying the war theme. The introduction of harmonica and guitar expressing the lighthearted camaraderie between the three soldiers. Introduction of horns and strings depicting the Alpine setting. the beautiful “love theme” with strings and harp … up to the symbolic sound of raindrops as Henry waits helplessly for Catherine …

Collectable Hemingway Artifact

$60.00

Updating cart…

Bony & The white Savage – Arthur Upfield – First edition 1961

A hard to find first edition published by Heinemann, London in 1961.

Octavo, 230 pages, reproduction dust jacket. Ownership details on title; free end paper with a piece cut out. Otherwise a very clean and bright copy of an often badly foxed edition.

An old timer in the deep south-west of Western Australia spots a violent criminal on his way back to the caves of Rhudder’s Inlet. Inspecter Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte is called in with his tracker Lew. What they find leaves them shaken to the core.

Bony discovers strange goings on in the very south-west.

$60.00

Updating cart…

Jamaica Inn – Daphne Du Maurier – 1951 Edition

Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn vies with Rebecca as her best work… this “Cheap Edition” has become iconic.

Jamaica Inn was first published in 1936 … this is effectively the 21st impression, of 1951, with many more to come

Octavo, 208 pages, with the publisher Gollancz’s iconic yellow jacket. This is the cleanest and best early copy we have come across.

If you are in that beautiful part of England make sure you visit Jamaica Inn and read the book. Daphne gives us a useful introductory note … “Jamaica Inn stands to-day, hospitable and kindly, a temperance house on the twenty-mile road between Bodmin and Launceston” … you can get a nice drop there now and a heavy lunch!

“It was a cold grey day in November …”

$40.00

Updating cart…

Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene – First 1958

Maigret in Society – George Simenon

Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms – Original Soundtrack -1957

Bony & The white Savage – Arthur Upfield – First edition 1961

Jamaica Inn – Daphne Du Maurier – 1951 Edition

Product Categories