This page features some of the highlights from our First Editions collection.
To search our entire inventory of First Editions, see our listings on:  AbeBooks   Amazon   Alibris   Biblio  

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. The third installment of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (following The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire) is a kick-ass ending (more below) to this outrageously popular global publishing phenomenon. We like to read the new crime fiction coming out in Europe, especially set in Scandinavia, so we were among the first to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when it was released in the UK January '08. We were immediately hooked and couldn’t wait for the American edition to be available last September. We also followed the early NYTimes reviews and it was quite entertaining so see the lukewarm initial reports get buried under the popular response to the book. Is it perfect? Well, how do you measure that? The book will be available here in May and will sell many, many copies, but those of us who have gotten to know Salander (a rebel and a loner and an ace computer hacker) just can’t wait.

Price: $45

All three titles in the trilogy were brought out in Sweden in 2005. Larsson died in 2004, almost immediately after turning in three manuscripts, reportedly leaving a laptop with 200 pages of a fourth book and notes for two more. We have one complete set of the first UK editions, all fine/fine.

Set of 3 UK 1sts: $2500

One of our favorite new Scandinavian authors is Norway's Jo Nesbo. He writes police procedurals featuring Harry Hole (pronounced Hurley), a reckless loner and brilliant detective on the Oslo police force.  Nemesis is up for this year's MWA Edgar Award for Best Novel and garnering well-deserved attention from American readers. This novel sits in the middle of a trilogy with an over-arching mystery, after The Redbreast and before The Devil's Star (just out and we have all three signed).

Prices for F/F signed first US editions:
The Redbreast - $150
Nemesis - $150
The Devil's Star - $40

DANIELEWSKI, Mark Z.

House of Leaves is difficult to describe. At the core of this first novel is a house that is larger inside than it is outside. When award-winning photojournalist Will Navidson and his companion ex-model Karen Green move into the modest house on Ash Tree Lane with their two small children, their efforts toward normal domesticity are shattered by this discovery. Walls move, doors appear, and a vast labyrinth opens before them. Will decides to investigate and film the phenomenon; a mysterious old blind man dies while compiling the Navidson Record, a document describing the making of the film and annotating all of the interpretations which have sprung up to explain it; an apprentice tattoo artist discovers the manuscripts and continues the work. Haunting, scary, wicked, funny, puzzling, beautiful...

This book is not for everyone. But for people who love books, we think every collector will want a copy of this edition for the sheer beauty of the publisher's art embodied here. House is 700 pages long -- Danielewski and Pantheon have succeeded in creating a fascinatingly interactive and attractive physical object. The typography reflects the pace of the narrative, ranging from densely packed notations, some in mirror image, to spiraling print with but a handful of words on a page. Each time the word 'house' appears it is printed in blue ink…we could go on and on.  House rocks!

This is the true first edition signed twice - first with tipped in page signed with a blue Z. when the author visited Partners and Crime on March 14, 200 he added a second Z on the "This is not for you page" (dated 3/14/00) and added a rough schematic drawing of walls, a door and three tiny explorers.

Price: $625

FFORDE, Jasper

The Eyre Affair, a delightful first novel that has caused an enduring sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, is a bibliomystery set in an alternate universe. The year is 1985, Wales is a Soviet Republic, dodos are available in home-cloning kits, the Crimean War is 131 years old and the ending of Jane Eyre has been stolen by the archfiend Acheron Styx. Thursday Next, a LiteraTec promoted to Section 5, is the heroine of this heady brew. Time runs funny in Thursday's world and her Nextian adventures might suggest a form of literary fractured fairy tales for all you Rocky and Bullwinkle fans...

We have all of Jasper's books, both US and UK first editions, the Thursday Next novels, the Nursery Crime series which begins with The Big Over Easy, and the new Shades of Grey (first of a projected trilogy, launched in December). If you are looking for anything Fforde, we've got it!

The Eyre Affair prices:
First UK edition with promotional card - $300
First US edition with card - $150