Pages & Proofs

Signed copies of The Casual Vacancy are now available on AbeBooks following JK Rowling’s promotional appearance in London yesterday on the day of the novel’s release. Prices begin at £790 and go up to almost £1,000. Clearbury Books took some excellent photos at the event. More copies are expected to be offered for sale as […]

AbeBooks sells books but we also sell paper-based ephemera.  One of the more unusual items of ephemera on the site is this vomit bag. It was issued to American cinema audiences watching a controversial 1970 West German movie called Mark of the Devil. Mark of the Devil starred Herbert Lom, whose death was announced earlier […]

She’s back. J.K. Rowling’s new novel, The Casual Vacancy, is out. Her first novel for adults takes on the complex web of provincial life. Her story is set in Pagford – the quintessential English small town with a cobbled market square and historic abbey, but life is anything but peaceful behind the hanging baskets and […]

A signed copy of the Madonna ‘Sex’ book has sold for £1,250 on AbeBooks. The book in question, a spiral-bound affair with aluminum covers, still had its pictorial outer wrapper. Sex was published in 1992 (a long-time before Lady Gaga and Katie Perry) and this was the Secker & Warburg edition. The book is filled […]

A complete lack of colour on a book’s cover usually indicates powerful writing inside. Open these stark but intriguing books and you’ll discover an array of fine literature. Black and white might just be the best way to present the writing of Albert Camus, Herman Melville, Peter Straub and Anton Chekhov. See our list.

A while back, AbeBooks sold a remarkable cocktail book – Giggle Water Including Eleven Famous Cocktails of The Most Exclusive Club in New York by Charles D Warnock for £1,200. It’s an ultra-rare self-published cocktail recipe book from 1928. The cocktails described are the The Bronx, The Astor, The Bacardi, The Clover, The Dry Martini, The […]

The New York Times magazine remembers Silent Spring by Rachel Carson – a book of immense importance to the environmental movement that was published 50 years ago this month. It’s an interesting article and I urge you to read it. “Silent Spring” was published 50 years ago this month. Though she did not set out […]

Earlier this month AbeBooks sold this remarkable item – the Edinburgh Stereoscopic Atlas of Obstetrics in four volumes with the set’s original viewfinder. The atlas, published in 1908 and 1909, includes a complete set of 100 stereoscopic photographic images designed for viewing through the “stereoviewer.” It sold for £650. The viewfinder reminds me of something you’d […]

James M Cain’s ‘lost’ novel has been published. The Cocktail Waitress is a story a femme fatale. Cain died in 1977 aged 85 and he was working on this book in his final years. The New York Times carries a review written by Michael Connelly. The published novel was drawn together by the editor Charles […]

Many authors, well known for writing serious literature for adults, have turned their attention to younger readers and written for children. Aldous Huxley went into a brave new world of crows and Ian Fleming shelved 007 to invent a magical car that’s better than any Aston Martin driven by James Bond. See children’s books from […]