Fiction from Lightholder Books

Angels by Denis Johnson. 1983 Knopf, first edition, 209 pages. Johnson was a novelist and poet who garnered acclaim for his short-story collection Jesus's Son and award-winning novel Tree of Smoke. According to New York Times, "[His] novels and short stories about the fallen — junkies, down-and-out travelers, drifters and violent men in the United States and abroad — emerged… Read more about this item

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. 1952 Scribners, first edition, 140 pages. According to a review in the New York Times: "'The Old Man and the Sea' is a short novel, only 27,000 words. It is much simpler and enormously better than Mr. Hemingway's last book, 'Across the River and Into the Trees.' No phony glamour girls… Read more about this item

An Academic Question by Barbara Pym. 1986 Dutton, first American edition, 182 pages. Pym was an English novelist, forever forgotten and rediscovered. In a retrospective in the New York Times: "However remote her themes may seem — a churn of parish politics and petty romances — beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit… Read more about this item

The Nine Guardians by Rosario Castellanos. Translated by Irene Nicholson. 1992 Readers International reprint (c/r 1957), 272 pages. Castellanos was a feminist poet, essayist, and novelist who wrote confessional fiction and criticized male literary figures of the time. According to an essay in the Paris Review: "As a child, Castellanos was cared for by a Mayan woman, Rufina, in whose… Read more about this item

The Soldier from Virginia by Marjorie Bowen. 1912 D. Appleton Company, first U.S. edition, 357 pages. Bowen was a prolific British author with many pseudonyms who published historical and gothic romances, this one about George Washington. According to christopherfowler.co.uk "Bowen's first novel, 'The Viper Of Milan', set in fourteenth century Italy, was published to acclaim when she was just twenty… Read more about this item

Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector. Translated by Katrina Dodson. 2015 New Directions, second printing, 645 pages. Cult favorite Ukrainian-born Lispector was a celebrated Brazilian writer who wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style. She notoriously was in a near-fatal apartment fire, which she never mentally recovered from. As recounted in a retrospective in the New York Times "'When I don't write,' Lispector… Read more about this item

The Crazy Ladies by Joyce Elbert. 1969 New American Library, first edition, 438 pages. Elbert, who died in 2009, had a slight resurgence recently with the release of a book of eight essays. In an article for the Star Tribune, Kathleen Rooney starts her review of A Tale of Five Cities : "A contemporary of Jacqueline Susann, credited by Cosmopolitan… Read more about this item

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. 1864 Tauchnitz (this edition printed after 1877 as Emma is on ad card), 340 pages. Marbled boards and endpapers, gilt pages, leather bound. A classic in beautiful presentation. Condition: Good+, pages have warping and browning "He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing."

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim (Author of Elizabeth and Her Gardens). 1921 Doubleday, first U.S. edition. Cousin of Katherine Mansfield, von Arnim was a literary success in her time, writing more than twenty books. Her first marriage made her a Countess, and this novel is based on that disastrous relationship. Condition: Acceptable. No DJ, wear and soiling to boards, head of… Read more about this item

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. 2008 Random House, first edition, 270 pages. Strout's third novel of interwoven stories that take place in rustic Maine won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into one of my personal favorite mini-series. Condition: VG, remainder mark, bump to board "Autumn now, November, and so many years later that when Henry runs a comb through his hair… Read more about this item

Confessions of Love by Uno Chiyo. 1990 Peter Owen, first UK edition (c/r 1935),157 pages. Chiyo was a Japanese author, magazine founder, and kimono designer who shocked Japanese society with her public love affairs and short bobbed haircut. Later in life she was recognized as a legend and her novels recognized as masterpieces. Confessions was her debut novel and depicts… Read more about this item

Cliffs of Fall and other stories by Shirley Hazzard. 1963 first U.S. edition, 192 pages. Hazzard was an Australian-American author and essayist best known for her novels Transit of Venus and the Great Fire. Cliffs was her debut, a short-story collection in which all but one of the stories was published in the New Yorker (she was one of the… Read more about this item

An Excursion to the Sky by Grozdana Olujic. 1961 Dutton, first U.S. edition, 156 pages. Olujic was a Serbian author of novels, essays, fairy tales, and children's books. Excursion was her debut novel, published when she was twenty-four years old and inspired comparisons to Francoise Sagan (but make it bleak) and criticism from the "socialist realism" school of thought. Condition: Jacket… Read more about this item

Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Undated (I believe 1940s), Thomas Nelson, 345/216 pages. Includes illustration on first page, bound in leather and gilt pages. Two novels, including a favorite, by one of the greats. Condition: Good. Some wearing away of the leather, discoloring on end papers. "No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would… Read more about this item

Palimpsest by H.D. 1968 Southern Illinois Press, first printing. Hilda Doolittle was a poet and friend of Ezra Pounds, who became her editor. According to the New Yorker: "H.D.'s tense, chiselled verse led critics to describe her, repeatedly, as "the perfect Imagist." Her lyrics extracted sensory abundance from minimalism...She developed a reputation as "crystalline," not just for her poetry but… Read more about this item

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Unstated late-forties printing, inscription dated 1953, Grosset & Dunlap reprint, 218 pages. Fitzgerald's masterpiece and perennial student assignment was not always recognized as such. HL Menken wrote at the time: ""Scott Fitzgerald's new novel, The Great Gatsby is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that." This… Read more about this item

The Heir by V. Sackville-West. 1922 George H. Doran, first U.S. edition, 250 pages. Rebecca Dinerstein Knight in The Paris Review starts a wonderful biographical essay on Sackville-West thusly: "How preposterous is it that Vita Sackville-West, the best-selling bisexual baroness who wrote over thirty-five books that made an ingenious mockery of twenties societal norms, should be remembered today merely as… Read more about this item

Nocturnes by Thomas Mann. With Lithographs by Lynd Ward. 1934 Equinox Cooperative Press, #298 of 1000 copies, signed by Mann, 61 pages. Mann was a German Nobel-winning author well known for Death in Venice and Magic Mountain. He was an exiled writer for his opposition to Hitler. Nocturnes consists of three short stories A Gleam, Railway Accident, and A Weary… Read more about this item

Devil at Westease by V. Sackville-West. 1947 Doubleday, first edition, 219 pages. Rebecca Dinerstein Knight in The Paris Review starts a wonderful biographical essay on Sackville-West thusly: "How preposterous is it that Vita Sackville-West, the best-selling bisexual baroness who wrote over thirty-five books that made an ingenious mockery of twenties societal norms, should be remembered today merely as a smoocher… Read more about this item

The Old Man and Me by Elaine Dundy. 1964 Dutton, first edition, 255 pages, inscribed by author. Dundy was a novelist, actress, and biographer who gained acclaim with her debut The Dud Avocado in 1958, about young woman trying to make it in Paris, in which the heroine experiences an orgasm which Dundy credits as "an important first step toward… Read more about this item