Closing in on a complete Manly Wade Wellman collection, and picked up two of his more obscure works:
Posts Tagged ‘Mystery’
Library Additions: Two Manly Wade Wellman Firsts
Monday, April 6th, 2020Library Addition: Joe R. Lansdale’s Blood in the Gears
Friday, March 20th, 2020Another one from late last year:
Lansdale, Joe R. Blood in the Gears. Short, Scary Tales Publications, 2019. First edition hardback, #101 of 550 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Second in a four volume collection of all Lansdale’s short fiction, this one leaning toward dark suspense stories such as “Drive-In Date,” “The Steel Valentine,” “Incident On And off A Mountain Road,” etc. Bought from the publisher at a dealer discount. I still have copies available through Lame Excuse Books.
Library Addition: First Edition of Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Obsession
Tuesday, December 31st, 2019Slightly out of the ordinary for what I usually collect:
Penzler, Otto. Mysterious Obsession: Memoirs of a Compulsive Collector. The Mysterious Bookshop, 2019. First edition hardback, #219 of 250 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Non-fiction. The story of how Penzler assembled his famed collection of mystery first editions. This edition sold out before publication. I have precisely one copy available through Lame Excuse Books. Bought directly through Mysterious Bookshop at a slight discount off the $50 cover price.
Library Addition: Two Joe R. Lansdale Firsts
Friday, October 11th, 2019Two books, one a small press signed/limited edition that I’ll have in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, the other anthology I just missed picking up when it came out:
Library Additions: Three Signed Joe R. Lansdale Firsts
Saturday, August 17th, 2019All three of these were bought from Joe R. His Ownself’s table at this year’s Armadillocon.
Library Addition: Signed/Limited Edition of Lansdale’s Dark at Heart
Wednesday, April 17th, 2019Another addition to the Lansdale collection:
Lansdale, Joe R. and Karen, editors. Dark at Heart. Dark Harvest, 1992. First edition hardback, #120 of 400 copies signed by all the contributors, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with just a couple of touches of edgewear at top front (and a $45 price sticker on inside front flap, as per Chalker/Owings), in a Fine slipcase. Anthology of “dark suspense.” Includes some signatures I didn’t have in my collection heretofore, like Ardath Mayhar’s. Chalker/Owings (2002), page 1049. Nova Express Lansdale Bibliography, 1A.2. Hankow, A Checklist of Joe R. Lansdale, AA4a. Bought for $17.26 plus shipping off eBay, less than half the publication price of $45.
Chalker/Owings noted that the move into mystery is what killed off Dark Harvest, though I suspect they did OK on this (Lansdale’s a strong seller).
Library Addition: Signed First of Robert Bloch’s Screams
Wednesday, February 27th, 2019This is an upgrade, replacing an unsigned copy of he trade edition with a signed copy of the trade edition:
Bloch, Robert. Screams. Underwood -Miller, 1989. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, with a $39.95 overprint pricing sticker on flap (as issued). Signed by Bloch. Omnibus edition of The Will To Kill, Firebug, and The Star Stalker, being the first hardback editions of each. Chalker/Owings (1991), page 440. Bought off eBay for $25.
Library Additions: Two Jack Vance VIE “Extra” Volumes
Thursday, September 27th, 2018Sometimes you overpay for something because you couldn’t afford it when it came out, or to get the whole set.
Both of these volumes were produced by the Vance Integral Edition project (VIE for short), and were produced separately from the 44 volume VIE set (which I also own). I thought the volumes too pricey for what you got when they were announced, but since I’m closing in on a complete Jack Vance hardback collection, and own a VIE, I paid a premium for each.
Neither of these volumes comes to market nearly as often as the stated print runs would have you believe, so I was happy to snag these.
I lack but one other VIE volume, the “science fiction preview” volume containing The Languages of Pao and The Dragon Masters, which I’ll have to put on the want list even though I already have first edition hardbacks of both… (Update: Now I have that as well.)
Library Additions: Three Signed Joe R. Lansdale Books
Thursday, August 23rd, 2018The first batch of the books I bought at Armadillocon a few weeks ago:
All obtained for swaps/trade credit.
Library Addition: Lettered State of Jack Vance’s Desperate Days
Tuesday, March 20th, 2018Subterranean Press had a charity sale for PC copies of various lettered and numbered states of various books, most of which had already sold out. I took advantage of it to snap out some books for authors I collect, this being the first:
Vance, Jack. Desperate Days. Subterranean Press, 2012. First edition hardback, a PC copy of the 26 copy lettered edition, a Fine copy in a Fine dustjacket and a Fine- traycase (there’s a small flaw to the cork-lined interior front lid), signed by Vance. Contains “The Genessee Slough Murders: Outline for a Novel” not in the trade edition (though reprinted from Jerry Hewett’s bibliography). Contains three Vance mysteries: The Fox Valley Murders, The Pleasant Grove Murders and The Dark Ocean. Note that there was no regular numbered edition of this, so the lettered edition was the only one signed by Vance. Bought from the Subterranean PC sale for $250 plus shipping. Supplements a trade edition.
Also note that the traycase for Desperate Days is distinctively different from the one the lettered edition of Dangerous Ways, the first book in this mystery reprint series and which resembles an even larger book with it’s rounded spine. The traycase for Desperate Days resembles the regular Subterranean square traycase.