Fiction - General Books at Dial a Book Sydney

The Day of the Tortoise
Bates, H. E.
Book Number: 65416
ISBN:
Michael Joseph, London, 1961. 8vo. hardcover. 96pp. b/w illus. by Peter Farmer. Good+, spine slanted, light foxing to endpapers. / Good foxed d/w.
Price: $8.00

A Legacy
Bedford, Sybille
Book Number: 54419
ISBN:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1956. First edition. Small 8vo. hardcover. 368pp. Very good, light foxing, owner's inscription on fep. /Very good clipped d/w with small tear rear top of spine (repaired).
Price: $110.00

Mr Smith Goes to Washington - The Novel of Frank Capras Columbia Picture
Landery, Charles.
Book Number: 32846
ISBN:
London: J.M. Dent, 1940. 8vo. hardcover. 178pp. b/w illus. very good, light foxing to endpapers & outer edges. / good d/w with a few small tears & sunned spine.
Price: $65.00

The Six Sacred Stones
Reilly, Matthew
Book Number: 50637
ISBN: 1405038160
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty, Limited 2007 8vo hardcover in d/w. 518pp near fine. First Edition. Signed with inscription by Reilly. Dear Jenni, Happy Birthday, Its more than just a birthday, Manly 2007.
Price: $45.00

The Five Greatest Warriors
Reilly, Matthew
Book Number: 52600
ISBN: 9791405039338
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty, Limited 2009 8vo hardcover in d/w. 518pp Very good. / Very good d/w. First Edition. Signed with inscription by Reilly. " Hi Jessie Mathew Reilly".
Price: $45.00

Skin - The Beauty Myth Redefined
Briscoe, Joanna
Book Number: 45320
ISBN: 1897580835
Weidenfeld & Nicholson February 10, 1997 8vo softcover 288pp very good. Adele's career as an author of erotic novels is on the wane, as are her legendary looks. In an attempt to defy age, she retreats into a series of cosmetic surical procedures that, as her fear builds, become increasingly abusive and disturbing. After each operation, a layer of Adele's complex life is peeled away, exposing her most private passions and fears, until they young, brilliant girl is revealed, already sowing the seeds of her destiny.
Price: $8.00

The Model
Christensen, Lars Saabye
Book Number: 48677
ISBN: 190514721X
Arcadia Books June 2, 2007 8vo softcover 329pp very good. The painter Peter Wihl - a celebrated success early in his career - is about to turn fifty. The prospect is stifling his creativity and jeopardising his preparations for major new exhibition intended to revive his reputation. In a cruel twist of fate, he discovers that he has an incurable eye condition and will be blind in six months.
Price: $12.00

The California Book of the Dead: A Novel
Farrington, Tim
Book Number: 54046
ISBN: 0671519603
Pocket Books May 1997 8vo hardcover in d/w. 340pp very good. Farrington's fresh use of language lifts this romantic comedy above stereotypical retrohip. Farrington's quirky, lovable cast of characters, colorful souls careening around the California landscape, seems to cry out for a miniseries like, say, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. Marlowe, half of a devoted lesbian couple, is an artist obsessively painting a series of mopheads while she grieves the loss of her friend and soul mate, Jackson, to AIDS. Her lover, Daa, a transplant from the Midwest, is a kind of earth mother, ready to forgive almost anything, even Marlowe's unexpected pregnancy by their boarder, a New Age massage therapist who also seduces Marlowe's innocent cousin from the South, who has made her way to Lotus Land in search of spiritual inspiration--etc., etc.--you get the idea. This gentle, affectionately satirical look at the rituals often associated with California and at those who, seeking alternatives in salvation, are drawn to the West Coast, is one enjoyable book.
Price: $14.00

Underfoot in Show Business
Hanff, Helene
Book Number: 28048
ISBN: 0233972773
Deutsch, 1980 8vo hardcover 182pp. very good, spine slightly slanted. / very good d/w.
Price: $12.00

The faraway drums
Cleary, Jon
Book Number: 25360
ISBN: 0002222833
London Collins 1981 8vo hardcover 288pp very good / very good d/w.
Price: $8.00

Too Strange Not to Be True A tale
Fullerton, Lady Georgiana
Book Number: 30716
ISBN:
Philadelphia: John Joseph McVey, 1910 8vo. maroon cloth hardcover. 476pp. b/w illus. very good, cover a little specked. / no d/w.
Price: $28.00

Dubu A Novel of New Guinean Conquest
Williams, Maslyn
Book Number: 25170
ISBN:
New York William Morrow & Co. 1971 8vo. hardcover. 253pp. very good. / very good d/w.'
Price: $15.00

Last Safari
Rhodes, Richard
Book Number: 30242
ISBN: 0233972161
Deutsch 1980 8vo hardcover 349pp. very good, small owner's name on fep. / very good d/w.
Price: $15.00

In the Shape of a Boar
Norfolk, Lawrence
Book Number: 38850
ISBN: 0297647008
Weidenfeld & Nicholson 2000 Trade paperback. 322pp. Very good. A mesmerizing novel of Love and betrayal, of ancient myths and modern horrors, In the Shape of a Boar begins in the pre-dawn of history and reverberates through the darkest events of the twentieth century. First hunted in ancient Greece, the Boar of Kalydon returns three thousand years later in human guise. The modern hunt leads from 1930's Romania to wartime Greece anf finally to Paris in the 1970's where the secret of the hunt is exposed.
Price: $8.00

Bitter Fruit: A Novel
Dangor, Achmat
Book Number: 41126
ISBN: 0802170064
Black Cat March 10, 2004 First American Edition 8vo softcover 288pp very good. French flaps, rough page edges. Early in Dangor's embittered second novel about his native South Africa, aloof, independent 19-year-old Mikey comes to the realization that "history has a remembering process of its own, one that gives life to its imaginary monsters." This understanding of the past informs the thoughts and actions of the characters, which the author of Kafka's Curse explores in meticulous detail. Mikey's parents, Silas and Lydia Ali, are members of the black middle class in postapartheid South Africa. But when Silas, a lawyer for the Justice Department, encounters the white police lieutenant who raped his wife two decades before, old wounds open in his and Lydia's already strained marriage. Mikey discovers that he may be the product of his mother's violation and sets out to explore his familial roots, taking a type of "apartheid heritage route" that leads him to Silas's father's mosque. Here, he learns of his grandfather's own struggle with colonialism in India a generation earlier. Dangor's novel, a Man Booker Prize finalist, interrogates the forgiving attitude of people like Archbishop Tutu, and, as Silas puts it, "the namby-pambying of God's ferocious legions." In this environment, where even incestuous transgressions can be rationalized away, Mikey finds vengeance as a way to order the decayed social structures around him.
Price: $8.00

WAR BABY
GILLOTT, Jacky
Book Number: 43856
ISBN: 014003742X
PENGUIN 1974 8vo softcover 304pp very good. War Baby is a panoramic novel about English life in the last 35 years (from 1974).
Price: $6.00

The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel
Julavits, Heidi
Book Number: 45865
ISBN: 1400078113
Anchor January 8, 2008 8vo softcover 368pp very good. On November 7, 1985, Mary Veal, 16, a not especially distinguished upper-middle-class girl, disappears from New England's Semmering Academy. A month later she reappears at Semmering, claiming amnesia, but hinting at abduction and ravishment.
Price: $6.00

Waterborne
Murkoff, Bruce
Book Number: 49200
ISBN: 009947218X
VINTAGE January 1, 2005 8vo softcover 416pp very good. From various directions three lives converge on Boulder City and the Boulder Dam, the most ambitious engineering project of its day and a beacon of hope for and America crippled by the Great Depression.
Price: $6.00

You Gotta Have Balls
Brett, Lily
Book Number: 49905
ISBN: 0330421964
Picador October 1, 2005 8vo softcover 304pp very good. Ruth Rothwax, the heroine of Lily Brett's Too Many Men, is back. The proprietor of a successful letter-writing business, Ruth has just branched out into a new greeting-card line. But it's not easy. Her father, Edek, is driving her crazy at the office. And the very people she thought would be most supportive -- other women -- are not. Instead of acting in one another's best interests, the women are catty and competitive, behaviors Ruth swears that she will never imitate. Until she meets the one woman who turns her aspirations of sisterly solidarity -- and her life -- upside down. Fresh off the plane from Poland, Zofia is a buxom, sixty-something femme fatale with a talent for making balls. Meatballs, that is. When Edek asks his savvy daughter to fund his friend Zofia's restaurant, how can Ruth say no? But Ruth knows that gleam in Zofia's eye, and it means trouble is on the way for all of them. An unforgettable, heartwarming story of embracing life, You Gotta Have Balls is a funny, moving triumph from the highly inventive Lily Brett.
Price: $12.00

Good to a Fault
Endicott, Marina
Book Number: 50090
ISBN: 9781742370262
Allen & Unwin 2009 8vo. Softcover. French flaps. 440pp. When Clara Purdy takes a dreamy turn in her car and ends up plowing into the lives of the Gage family, her low-impact, nine-to-five life in the suburbs is transformed into heady, noisy chaos.
Price: $10.00

Rainwater
Brown, Sandra
Book Number: 50239
ISBN: 9780731814596
Simon & Schuster 20010 large 8vo. softcover. Fine.
Price: $8.00

The Vision of Emma Blau : A Novel
Hegi, Ursula
Book Number: 50597
ISBN: 0684872730
Touchstone January 16, 2001 8vo softcover 432pp near fine. Stefan Blau, flees Burgdorf in Germany and goes to America in search of the vision he has dreamed of. Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America.
Price: $8.00

Great House
Krauss, Nicole
Book Number: 51368
ISBN: 0670919330
Viking 7 Oct 2010 8vo softcover 370 pp near fine.
Price: $8.00

The Insatiable Desire of Injured Love
Morrison, Sally
Book Number: 52014
ISBN: 0733615139
Hodder 2002 8vo softcover 235pp very good. n the Cathedral Ranges in 1973, 27-year-old Renata Ochiltree steps off a mountain into thin air. Fully encased in a body cast - a premature coffin - Renata is humiliated by Matron, prodded by visiting medical students and in receipt of no sympathy from her doctor. But a broken neck, arms, fractured skull and vertebrae are the least of Renata's ills when visiting hours begin. Apart from her Uncle George, who shares the same hospital floor after drink-driving into a cow, Renata's three lovers - Matt, Mike and Warren - all make less than perfunctory company, while her family all descend on her and her home like harpies. Renata's only comfort, besides her right big toe (the one organ of her body that's mysteriously escaped harm - is her seemingly insatiable desire for the utterly unworthy, raffish, already married Mike, a gambling philanderer who stole the ground from under her in the first place.
Price: $6.00

The Ballad of Siddy Church
Hek, Lin van
Book Number: 52212
ISBN: 9781875559619
Spinifex Press March 28, 1997 8vo softcover 261pp very good. Set in Melbourne. Lin Van Hek writes about the poetry of aunties in a novel that is at once thrilling and filled with the memories of wilful women. When Eadie Wilt disappears during the flood, everyone thinks she has drowned. But Siddy Church's granddaughter has more life to live in a household filled with stories and larger-than-life characters.
Price: $8.00

Photographing Fairies
Szilagyi, Steven G.
Book Number: 52264
ISBN: 9780345383235
Ballantine Books April 13, 1993 8vo softcover 336pp very good. It all begins in the 1920s, when a blustering country policeman, Constable Michael Walsmear, literally punches his way into American photographer Charles Castle's London studio. Walsmear has what he claims are photographs of fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom Castle approaches to verify the pictures, offers a large sum of money to have Walsmear's photographs destroyed. But even more than cash, Castle wants the truth. His quest takes him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful country village seething with secrets. Armed with a camera, he encounters gypsies and wild dogs, the innocent girls of the photos and the murderous thieves who threaten them, a beautiful garden and unspeakable sexual practices. He also discovers the most shocking truth of all: that absolute purity and utter depravity are folded together in the human heart.
Price: $8.00

Something Special [Illustrated]
Murdoch, Iris
Book Number: 52628
ISBN: 0701169184
Chatto & Windus 1999 12mo. hardcover in d/w. 41pp very good. An unforgettable tale of love and repression, appearing in book form for the first time. Beautifully produced and hauntingly illustrated, this unknown work by Iris Murdoch (1918-1999) is something very special indeed. Previously unpublished but for an excerpt in a 1950s anthology, this is a bittersweet, haunting story. Yvonne, an ordinary, bold young Irish woman, believes that there's more to life than marriage to Sam, the dutiful Jewish lad who is courting her. Set in Dublin, against the vividly recognizable backdrop of the author's native city in the 1950s, Something Special is written with a wry humor and penetrating insight that evokes the psychological tension of James Joyce's "The Dead." Gorgeously illustrated with line drawings by the renowned American artist Michael McCurdy, Something Special is a perfect gift for all occasions, but especially for anyone in love. Line drawings.
Price: $6.00

The Friends of Meager Fortune. David Adams Richards
Richards, David Adams
Book Number: 53594
ISBN: 0224078151
Jonathan Cape February 2007 8vo softcover 288pp very good. In his major new novel, The Friends of Meager Fortune, Richards explores the dying days of the lumber industry in the mid-twentieth century. This is a transfixing love story of betrayal, envy, and sexual jealousy, which builds to a tragically inevitable climax. It is also a devastating portrait of a pre-mechanized time, and a brilliant commemoration of the passing of a world. Rich with all the passion, ambition and almost mythic vision that defines David Adams Richards' work, The Friends of Meager Fortune is a profound and important book about the hands and the heart; about true greatness and true weakness; about the relentlessness of fate and the evil that men and women do. Wise, stark, and without a false word in it, it cements David Adams Richards' claim to be the finest novelist at work in Canada today.
Price: $6.00