B1: NEAR NEW Another typical Minette Walters 500 yen Crime themes interwoven with dysfunctional families and dark horse entrants for last minute twists. Includes a nasty psychopath with a hammer and identity confusion.
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B2: LIKE NEW 600 yen
Romantic comedy, light and silly, and very, very funny. Two step sisters start a project to find a man, in the U.K. Oddly, the search takes them to the USA. Quality paperback (larger size).
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B4: LIKE NEW 500yen For Barry Eisler's John Rain fans, The Last Assassin was supposed to be the last, but ends up leaving plenty of room for a sequel.
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B3: NEAR NEW 500 yen Interwoven crime story with about 3 plots running simultaneously. This one has a bit of child porn, blackmail, crowd hysteria, good Samaritans, nasty dialogues full of cussing, more dysfunctional families, class friction. I like the way she intersperses the text with journalist's columns as counterpoint to the characters actually involved and living through the action. |
B5: NEAR NEW 700 yen Heavy quality paperback. Cain is a soul catcher by accident (hunts down fugitive slaves), because he's good at tracking. But it doesn't sit well with him. He takes one last job in order to pay his debt. He is caught in the web of his own confusion when he begins look upon the fugitive that he is returning to his employer, as an equal. Set in the USA in early 1860's. |
B6: LIKE NEW Epic Saga 600yen Starts with a boy raised by a woman ahead of her times. He is drawn to an abusive apprenticeship in the art of tattooing. Heavy on adjectives like smeary for sky. Crazy stuff happens, but it almost comes across as normal against the over rich prose, but the writer was what, 25!, when she wrote it. Amazing read. Long, some sentences bear reading twice. |
B7: NEAR NEW 300yen Short Story Collection SOLD |
B8: LIKE NEW 500yen The famed duo Mary Haristeen and her cat, Mrs. Murphy, solve a series of murders that shake up the sleepy town of Crozet, Virginia.. Quite good, from the author of _Rubyfruit Jungle_ |
B9: Shocking! 300yen The extremes to which selfish passion may lead one! Still has a lot of bang power 16 years after being written. But British style. Is it really passion or obsession? |
B10: Good Condition: 400 yen 2nd book in Courtney trilogy. Stands alone. Saga style, but fast paced. A "he-man's" world set in Boer War South Africa. Very good historical fiction. |
B11: GOOD CONDITION Y200 A Ruth Rendell classic, the first Inspector Wexford mystery. A perfectly dull ordinary woman suffers a death of passion and violence for which there seems to be no motive nor clue. |
B12: LIKE NEW 500 yen Ruth Rendell is still going strong in this recent suspense novel about two sisters, and how a deep secret in the past influences their current romances. |
B13: VERY GOOD Angels and Demons (Corgi) 500yen Dan Brown's 2000 ouvre that predates DaVinci Code by 3 years, is in my opinion a better book. Read more. |
B14: NEAR NEW Digital Fortress 500yen Dan Brown's techno-thriller is a great read and based on real-world encryption advances. Read more.(1998) |
B15: LIKE NEW 500yen The first debut of a gutsy "need is the mother of invention" gal, Stephanie Plum, who takes on several guys tougher or smarter than her, and survives. Not for the faint hearted. |
B16: LIKE NEW 500yen Elvis Cole is like a Chandler PI but for the 21st century, all attitude and all heart. This counterfeit yarn includes a couple of abandoned children, and a surprise Vietnamese connection. |
B17: Good Condition 300yen Woman is left by husband for younger gal. Brookner dissects the jilted wife in beautifully written prose, as she figures some things out for herself. Surprise ending. |
B18: NEAR NEW 500 yen The second in the series. Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is in up to her eyeballs by accident, again. She takes a side job to find some stolen coffins. Body parts go missing off cadavers and show up where they shouldn't. Scuzzy characters abound. |
B19: NEAR NEW 700 yen Angela Carter writes this family saga from the point of view of two old biddies grown old, but still full of life and fun, in spite of EVERYTHING that has happened. One long run-on sequence of all the family gossip, and what a story it is. Thoroughly engrossing, filled with perceptions, love, humor, ribald jokes, social attitudes spanning 80 years... I almost couldn't put this up for sale, I like it so much. |
B20: LIKE NEW 500yen A long story, but over so fast! I was engrossed. John Irving begins by tracing the childhood of two dead brothers, how this shapes the life of the last child, Ruth. In particular, their grief stricken mother withholds herself from this third child. There are moments of great humor, but also there are some very shocking incidents. I think you could say that this book is better than Desperate Housewives (!). It includes a summer helper, a gardener, a prostitute, and on, and on! |
B21: Frankie and Stankie
VERY GOOD CONDITION 800 yen Heavy quality paperback. This writer is phenomenal. Couldn't put it down. Two white girls (European parents) grow up in South Africa as the apartheid policy gains momentum. Begins with a child's view, moves on to an adolescent's view, and the place of the characters in history often even as they remain unaware of their own part: an artfully woven tapestry. |
B22: Young Mrs. Cavendish and the Kaiser's Men 400yen K. K. Beck writes a delightful period thriller concerning attempted sabotage on the eve of World War II by German spies in and near San Francisco. Excellent train reading! |
B23: LIKE NEW 500yen A father's political campaign is being sabotaged. His son gives up his dream to be a race jockey, and joins his father on the campaign trail. Together they battle a deadly adversary. This was quite good. |
B24: In Moral Danger
GOOD CONDITION 700 yen Quality paperback. The autobiographical book by Barbara Biggs, who has several claims to fame, not least of which was her seduction as a child by the infamous Robert Roy Vernon, Australian barrister. This book is a testament to one child's survival, and also to a world in which too many children are left to fend for themselves. |
B25: The Nanny Diaries 800yen Quality paperback LIKE NEW. Comedy. How (some of) the super rich mistreat their kids and their servants... If you haven't seen the movie, excellent train reading! |
B26: LIKE NEW: Steele at her best 500yen Trauma is turned to good purpose. |
B27: The Lasko Tangent Used but in one piece 200 yen, by Richard North Patterson, a good read. |
