Not much you can do about living in a book desert, though Alibris or bookshop.org are great choices. That said, even I, an independent bookseller, have ordered books from Amazon on very rare occasions (they were literally the only place in the world carrying that title), so there’s plenty of guilt to go around.
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I’ve only had the experience of buying through Alibris once, but i got my order quick and the book was in pristine condition so A+ from me.
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“… and the final question in your truck driver’s Class A license exam: Name three narrative themes in Sense and Sensibility, and explore one in detail. More paper is available by asking the invigilator.”
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Superb as always!
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I vaguely remember having read this.
I’ve only started the 2nd story.
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Pussycat loves these. She’s a mystery junky, to the point that it’s hard for me to find new books for her to read. But she tends to sour on a series after the first two or three books, because they’re so formulaic and usually not particularly well written. The Miss Fisher series is one exception.
She will also happily reread any Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, P. D. James, or Walter Mosley, which we have all of.
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I’m a big fan of Raymond Chandler. Grabbed the hardcover two-volume, archival paper, lovely typeface, sewn-in ribbon bookmark’d Library of America Complete Works. The title don’t lie, neither: a couple scripts and a buncha letters are included.
Dash Hammett, too. Found a big, fat, inexpensive vintage hardcover anthology of his novels. It has an appropriately lurid dust jacket.
I read my late Grandpa’s complete Sherlock Holmes until it fell apart.
The Raffles stories are great. EW Hornung was a big fan, friend, and brother-in-law of Conan Doyle. His anti-hero is an anti-Holmes. Somehow found a beautiful, fancily gold-stamp’d, pleatherbound, illustrated, limited edition anthology w/gilt page edges for less than $10 at a great used book store. Looked and felt like no one had opened it before me. That one may also have a sewn-in ribbon.
Arsène Lupin is also quite good. Gotta love a fellow who, after breaking in, burgles nothing…instead leaving a note: “I shall return when the furniture is genuine.”
I’m addicted to Rita Mae Brown’s Sister Jane mystery novels, of whomst there are many. I wasn’t crazy about a couple, but have re-read the rest a lot. Foxhunting figures large in the series (Yank packs don’t kill foxes, just give 'em some exercise), and the foxes, horses, hounds, pets, and other animals all talk with each other.
Ms Brown is a prolific author. She writes the Sneaky Pie Brown mystery series, with moar talking animals.
She wrote Rubyfruit Jungle.
I easily tire of serieseses/long anthologies, too, being AHDH AF. Th’ above have managed to catch - and hold my attention quite enjoyably.
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Has she read any of Barbara Neely’s Blanche White novels? Sadly she only wrote 4, but they’re great fun.
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Have you read the Solar Pons stories?
From wiki:
Solar Pons is a fictional detective created by August Derleth as a pastiche of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
On hearing that Doyle did not plan to write more Sherlock Holmes stories, the young Derleth wrote to him, asking permission to take over the series. Doyle graciously declined, but Derleth, despite having never been to London, set about finding a name that was syllabically similar to “Sherlock Holmes”, and wrote his first set of pastiches in 1928, which were published in The Dragnet Magazine in 1929. He would ultimately write more stories about Pons than Conan Doyle did about Holmes.
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Chandler is my favorite. I have all of his stuff in paperback, but I know of and covet the edition of which you speak. I’ve read his screenplay Playback and wish some damn director or other would actually film it already - would have been way better than that recent Liam Neeson Marlowe movie, which was actually not terrible.
Hammett is #2.
I also love me some Jim Thompson.
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Can’t go wrong with Ruth Rendell.
Has she read any of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King? There’s a lot of them.
Start with:
The Kopp sisters series.
If you like historical mysteries, the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom.
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I recently binged on Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books, very readable.
Also enjoyed the Bernie Gunther books by Philip Kerr.
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Why is Persepolis banned?
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I can think of a handful of things Republicans would clutch their pearls about, but looking online there’s a few vague reasons:
https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/marjane-satrapi-persepolis/
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Islamophobia
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A friend recco’d the book, and while I didn’t love it like he does, there are some brilliant lines.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “no wonder you’re such a cynic, you’re a goddamned mystic in disguise.”
— The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
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It was written by a woman who isn’t Phyllis Schlafly?
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