FICTION A-B

A MATTER OF HONOUR

Jeffrey Archer
A MATTER OF HONOUR
Adam Scott listens to the reading of his father's will, aware that the financial benefit can only be pitiful. The colonel, after all, had nothing to leave - except a letter he had never opened himself, a letter, Adam fears, which can only bring further dishonour to the family name.
Should Adam open the letter and discover what caused his father to leave the regiment in disgrace and force him to resign his commission? His mother begs him not to, but the moment he does so he realises his life can never be the same again. The contents leave him no choice but to follow a course that his father would have described as "a matter of honour".
350 pages hardback (Hodder & Stoughton, 1986)
Condition: has slightly faded page edges

BILLIARDS AT HALF PAST NINE

Heinrich Boll
BILLIARDS AT HALF PAST NINE
Boll was perhaps the most prominent post-war German novelist; his great gift for creating character and for defining the German bourgeois mystique is combined with an outstanding narrative gift, so that Billiards At Half Past Nine came close to obtaining a Nobel Prize for the author.
256 pages, paperback (John Calder, 1965)
Condition: has faded cover and pages and owner's signature

GETTING EVEN

Edward Behr
GETTING EVEN
It was a note left in a London supermarket which set everything in motion, a trifling occurrence, except that the words were a cry for help. Independence of mind, in the days before the death of Mao was tantamount to treachery for a citizen of China. Comrade May, young, beautiful, but above all unable any longer to conform, was the writer. And her note was the first episode in an extraordinary series of events which threatened to involve America, Russia and China in nuclear confrontation.
246 pages hardabck (Hamish Hamilton, 1980)
Condition: has dust stained top page edges

GO TELL IT ON A MOUNTAIN

James Baldwin
GO TELL IT ON A MOUNTAIN
"With vivid imagery, with lavish attention to details, Mr Baldwin has told his feverish story ... Judicious men in their chairs may explain the sociology of guilt, and so explain Negro religion away. Mr Baldwin will not have it away. In this beautiful, furious novel, there are no such reductions" The New York Times.
237 pages paperback (Black Swan, 1984)
Condition: has faded cover, pages edges and owner's signature

IN TRANSIT

Brigid Brophy
IN TRANSIT
Described as a 'trans-sexual adventure' and an 'heroic-cyclic novel', this witty and perceptive examination of the mind of the contemporary traveller defies classification: it's a puzzle, a labyrinth, a literary game of hide and seek - with a heroine who may turn out to be a hero …
236 pages paperback (GMP, 1989) £3.00
Condition: good

PORT OF SAINTS

William S Burroughs
PORT OF SAINTS
Rapid juxtaposition of incident, erotic fantasy, memory merging into a science fiction view of the future, familiar catch phrases - all the familiar elements of a Burroughs novel are here. It is a key work containing characters from earlier and later novels and it echoes with the situations, preoccupations, and jaundiced view of the world that readers well know from the sequence of novels that began with The Naked Lunch.
174 pages paperback (John Calder, 1983)
Condition: good

RAPTOR RED

Robert T Bakker
RAPTOR RED
Written by one of the world's leading paleontologists. The time is 120 million years ago, the place is the plains of prehistoric Utah, and the eyes belong to one of the most unforgettable heroines you will ever meet: Raptor Red, a female raptor dinosaur. Her story opens with tragedy. She and her mate are stalking a giant astrodon, silently and with deadly force, but at the moment of triumph, Raptor red's mate is killed. And so begins her year-long odyssey of survival.
241 pages hardback (Bantam Press, 1995)
Condition: good

SOUTHERN COMFORT

Rita Mae Brown
SOUTHERN COMFORT
Hortensia Banastre is a Southern belle with a difference. At twenty-seven, she is trapped in a loveless marriage, unable to feel any emotion towards her indifferent, money-loving husband or her two sons. Then she meets Hercules, a fifteen-year-old black youth who dreams of becoming a prize-fighter. They fall in love and, throwing aside all social conventions, the two have a passionate love affair - one that affects the lives of many people for years to come.
320 pages paperback (Corgi, 1984)
Condition: has faded pages and owner's signature

THE IRON WOLF & OTHER STORIES

Richard Adams
THE IRON WOLF & OTHER STORIES
Adams has collected together nineteen folk-tales from almost as many parts of the world - from Europe to China and from Polynesia to the Arctic Circle. Each has a special magic, an aura that is sometimes beautiful and fascinating, sombre and frightening, or exciting and colourful. But what unites all these stories is the essential quality of folk-lore, something that transcends the boundaries of nations, of custom and time, that gives them their permanence and universality of appeal.
142 pages, hardback (Allen Lane, 1980)
Condition: has faded page edges and some damp marking on inside page

THE LAST TESTAMENT OF OSCAR WILDE

Peter Ackroyd
THE LAST TESTAMENT OF OSCAR WILDE
Oscar Wilde led a uniquely flamboyant and colourful life, but targicaslly spent his last years in isolation and poverty in Paris. In this brilliantly constructed last testament which blends invention with true history, Ackroyd embodies Wilde as he muses on his childhood, his glorious fame as a playwirght and his private delight and degradation as a homosexual.
185 pages paperback (Penguin, 1993)
Condition: very good

THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS

William S Burroughs
THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS
Here Burroughs does for the 19th century what Cities Of The Red Nightt did for the 18th. The book opens in 1899 with a good old-fashioned shoot-out in the Boulder, Colorado, cemetery between one William Seward Hill, 65, a real-estate speculator, and Mike Chase. Who these men are and why the shoot-out are questions dealt with and ultimately answered as the novel wends its way brilliantly through time and space until it has come full circle.
306 pages paperback (John Calder, 1984)
Condition: good

THE RICEYMAN STEPS

Arnold Bennett
THE RICEYMAN STEPS
In the strange little square called Riceyman Steps, we meet Henry Earlforward, the miserly book dealer, and his warm-hearted maid Elsie. When Earlforward decides to marry Violet Arb, the owner of a confectionary shop across the way from him, he sets a tragedy in motion. The atmosphere Bennett creates in this strange confined setting has the power and tension of live theatre.
Set in London, the novel deals with sexual hunger and sexual repression and is completely unlike the Five Towns realism usually associated with Bennett's work.;
386 paperback (Academy Chicago, 1984)
Condition: has owner's signature and slightly faded page edges

THE ROMANCE READER

Pearl Abraham
THE ROMANCE READER
Rachel lives in an insular environment; as the rabbi's eldest daughter, she is expected to set a moral example for her siblings and for the community: she must wear thick tights; she must never wear a bathing suit in public; she is not to read books in English.
But Rachel does read forbidden books: she reads Victoria Holt and Charlotte Brontë. She wears sheer stockings and takes lessons as a life guard. She craves independence but, as the prospect of marriage draws nearer, she is torn between the opportunity it offers to leave her family and the realisation that this will not be a genuine escape.
An extraordinarily powerful first novel which gives a glimpse into the sealed world of Hasidic Jews, yet still tells a universal story.
296 pages, paperback
Condition: mint

THE WRECKED, BLESSED BODY OF SHELTON LAFLEUR

John Gregory Brown
THE WRECKED, BLESSED BODY OF SHELTON LAFLEUR
Abandoned as a baby during the Depression, Shelton Lafleur is adopted by a wealthy white family and raised as an adored son. But at eight years old, a tumble from a tree cripples him and leads to his incarceration in an orphanage. Deliverance eventually arrives in the shape of street a wily artist named Minou, who inexplicably takes Shelton into his family and under his worldly tutelage. It is Minou who holds the secret of Shelton's entangled past and, ultimately, the source of his redemption.
257 pages, paperback
Condition: mint

THEY WHISPER

Robert Olen Butler
THEY WHISPER
Ira Holloway is driven, as he moves into middle age, to examine his sexuality and its profound hold on him. In many ways he is an ordinary man - a husband and father, a Vietnam vet working in public relations. But he lives in an ongoing internal landscape populated by all the many women he has loved. The result is a compelling and profound examination of human sexuality.
333 pages hHardback (Henry Holt, 1994)
Condition: mint

WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU

J R Ackerley
WE THINK THE WORLD OF YOU
The friendship between two men and the love they both share for a magnificent and mischievous dog is at the heart of this novel. Frank is deeply hurt when his young friend Johnny is sent to prison for robbery. Then he meets Evie, Johnny's pedigree bitch, and is captivated by her beauty and rebellious nature. Frank wants to take her away from her cramped surroundings, but his attempts to do so meet with vehement opposition from Johnny's family and from Johnny himself. But Evie is determined that she belongs with Frank.…
Ackerley called the novel "a fairy story for adults", but beneath its enchanting façade lies a sensitive exploration of frustration, jealousy and the breakdown of love.
157 pages paperback (Penguin, 1971)
Condition: has faded spine and page edges

FIRST AMONG EQUALS

Jeffrey Archer

FIRST AMONG EQUALS

In the 1960s four ambitious new MPs take their seats at Westminster. Over three decades they share the turbulent passions of the race for power with their wives and families, men and women caught up in a dramatic game for the highest stakes of all. But only one man can gain the ultimate goal – the office of Prime Minister.

466 pages paperback (Coronet, 1985)

Condition: has faded page edges and owner’s signature

Weight: 2.00 kg

WATERSHIP DOWN

Richard Adams

WATERSHIP DOWN

475 pages paperback (Penguin, 1974)

Condition: has faded pages and owner’s signature

THE PLAGUE DOGS

Richard Adams

THE PLAGUE DOGS

Two dogs escape from an experimental research station in the Lake District, where they have been horribly tortured and mistreated in the name of science. As they run for their lives on the hard fells they attempt to survive wild and free.

460 pages paperback (Penguin, 1978)

Condition: has faded pages and owner’s signature

SHARDIK

Richard Adams

SHARDIK

In his second novel, Adams unfolds a powerful saga of suffering, fire and war, as Shardik, the giant bear brings truth to the land of the Ortelgans.

526 pages paperback (Penguin, 1976)

Condition: has faded pages and owner’s signature