Moth by James Cain (82 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Missing dust jacket; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. First edition, first printing of the ninth novel by Cain. No dustjacket. Light edgewear. Slight age toning to the pages. In very good condition.

Paperback. first PB. 811, good , been re-glued, might need more hardboiled novel, paperback,

Hardcover. Condition: USED Good.

mass market paperback. 16mo. 189pp. Signet Book 811. Authorized abridgment. see pictures for synopsis. #03635. Book G: shelf wear and creasing to wraps and spine, slight lean, text clean, binding intact.

Cloth Over Board. Condition: Fair. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. Fourth Edition. Text is clean, though pages have yellowed around the edges. The cover has minor edge wear. The dust jacket has been, long ago, placed in a protective cover that has been reinforced around the edges with black tape. The adhesive on the tape has now dried, causing the tape to pull away in some places. No markings or other signs of ownership. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Mass-market paperback. Condition: Good. First edition. SIGNET, 1950. First edition. Good. 1 200 p.

Mass Market Paperback. Condition: near fine. Stated first edition. NOT an ex library book. Binding tight.

unknown_binding. Condition: Very Good. Shows minor wear and tear, creasing, tanned pages.

Condition: Good. Alfred A. Knopf New York 1948 grey cloth boards are soiled. spine is age toned.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good Plus. Arthur Hawkins (jacket) (illustrator). First Edition. With owner's signature, lightly soiled endpapers in a facsimile jacket. A crisp, generally clean copy.

softcover. Condition: vg. eighth printing.

Hardcover. Condition: good. Dust Jacket Condition: fair. First Edition. This copy is still tight but has much fading to the outside of the cover, the dust cover has not been compromised by this though and has edge wear and tears but is encased in a mylar slipcover so it is protected, the pages are clean of marks and quite clean and bright, no foxing, This British copy states that it was First published in Great Britain, but is undated. It's dustjacke.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good-. #811, Sept., First Printing. 189pp. Authorized Abridgment. Cover by Alan Harmon. Light wear, slight lean, reading crease. Photos on request. Size: Massmarket.

hardcover. No Jacket. First Edition. New York. 1948. Knopf. 1st American Edition. A Few Tape-Repaired Pages Inside, Otherwise Good. No Dustjacket. 377 pages. hardcover. keywords: Mystery America. DESCRIPTION - In The Moth, Hollywood's hoary old sensation-monger James M. Cain tells the story of a nice boy-nice, that is, by comparison with other guys he has written about. Mr. Cain's new hero has a sense of beauty and even a sense of guilt. His missteps, including fraud, adultery, a few burglaries and one stickup, are practically forced upon him by the Great Depression. Thus Mr. Cain has it both-ways: his boy can be a college-educated, clean-cut young American and at the same time do the tough things in the tough situations that are the mark of Cain. Hero Jack Dillon-like Author Cain a Baltimore Irishman-tells the story in the first person, a common practice in Cain's novels, which absolves the author from having to write in English. Cain's command of the I'm-telling-you-brother vernacular has been compared with Lardner and Hemingway, but it is neither as inventive as Lardner's nor as selective as Hemingway's. It often sounds like what it often is-something the movies picked up pure and handed back to Americans as if it had been their own. Manhood Regained. Instead of smelling out his mates and attacking them with bites, as Mr. Cain's earlier heroes did, Jack never once smells a girl; he responds to visual appeal. It is, in fact, at the point that he does not respond to it-when he has been riding the rails as a hobo for some months and a Petty girl strips and wiggles for him in a passing compartment -that he realizes he will have to do something (i.e., steal) to regain his manhood. The emotional crisis is at length resolved by an oilman's wife whose hair curls to her shoulders, whose eyes are like something out of the sea, and who presents herself in Jack's guest room to show him her extensive tan. There have usually been hidden wells of sentiment in Mr. Cain's characters. Even in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Frank, though handy enough at murder with a wrench, sometimes thought about God while in swimming. The Moth gets its title from the fluttering blue-green Luna moth that Jack Dillon falls in love with as a little boy and ever after remembers at beautiful moments. One of these moments occurs when, at 22, he first takes the hand of the twelve-year-old girl he loves. She loves him, too, and their hearts are faithful through years of separation brought on by evil gossipers and the threat of arrest for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. All of Mr. Cain's dream girls are screenable without a change of makeup; so is Jack Dillon. A star halfback and a trained engineer, he has 'taffy' blond hair, dimples in his shoulders, and he displays that blend of brass and mechanical ingenuity that is required of a Cain hero, like an Eagle Scout who never heard of the gentler things a Scout is supposed to be. The best things in the book are like the best things in all Cain's books: clear, fast-moving narrative passages in which Jack Dillon tells you step by step how he bluffed, fought and figured his way out of jams. Murder Paid For. In The Moth, James Cain is occasionally content to lead the reader by the hand rather than to belt him over the kidneys. This makes for a longer novel but not necessarily a better one. Cain's writing is too proficient and disciplined to be classed as pulp, too intelligent to be classed as trash, and some of it certainly ranks with the classics of shock fiction. It is nevertheless essentially near-adolescent. And as adolescence goes, The Moth is a more arrested case than The Postman, in which at least honest murder was done and paid for. - TIME MAGAZINE, Posted Monday, Jul. 26, 1948. inventory #1940 A Few Tape-Repaired Pages Inside, Otherwise Good. No Dustjacket.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: very good. First edition. First edition (stated). Hardcover, 373 pp. Very good, tight bexample, some minor spotting to the cloth. In very good or somewhat better Hawkins designed dust jacket with a small arear of wear to the head of the spine.

Paperback. first PB. 811, very good , reading creases hardboiled novel, paperback,

Softcover. Condition: Very Good. First paperback edition. Owner initials on interior front cover and first page, binding cocked, date stamp on topedge, very good. Signet 811.

First Australian edition, orange cloth, 251pp, VG+ (v sl cocked, v sl edge wear, front boards unevenly sunned , v sl foxed prelims & edgesv sl sunned soiled & rubbed) d/w VG- (4in open tear down front flap, v sl creases wear & tears to extrems, v sl chipped spine head & foot, v sl internal foxing, v sl rubbed sunned & soiled).

Hardback. 1st Edition (Australia). Octavo Size [approx 13x19cm]. Very Good condition in a Near Very Good Dustjacket. Rear hinge started but solid. DJ has tape repair to underside that has bled through - now protected in our clear archival purpose-made plastic sleeve. Robust, professional packaging and tracking provided for all parcels. 356 pages. The Moth is the story of John Dillon. It begins in the days when he amazed church congregations with the beauty of his boyish soprano. His rapid development into manhood and his subsequent career are striped with violence and passion.

Condition: Good. First edition copy. . Acceptable dust jacket. In protective mylar cover. (mystery, crime, fiction).

1st Australian edition. Good peach cloth hardcover. No dj. Hinges split. 356p.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. First edition stated. Corners and spine ends of the binding pushed but not rubbed. The dustjacket is not price-clipped, rubbin at the corners and spine ends with small bits of loss, light rubbing to the front gutter.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. No Jacket. 1st Edition. First edition. no jacket. undated. original red boards. near very fine with no inscriptions. the binding is square and tight. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services.

Hard Cover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. Hawkins, Arthur (illustrator). First Edition. 1st ed. Gray cover with green lettering and design. cloth shows some very light fading, light wear at edges else near fine in dj, rubbed along spine, rear panel slightly darkened, light wear, price clipped. Jack Dillon has been a golden child since birth. Blessed with blond locks, glittering eyes, and a perfect voice, he is the most popular child singer in Baltimore. But when puberty robs him of his voice and the stock market wipes out his family fortune, Jack is forced to rebuild. Over the next fifteen years, Jack will see it all. From Maryland to California and back again, he will become a football star, a soldier, and a tramp. Despite all that life throws at him, he never loses his eye for beauty, or his hunger for a woman he has known since childhood. But to find happiness in the face of the Depression, Jack must learn that no matter how the world has changed him, part of his soul remains as pure as the first note he sang. -- Publisher. Book.

Hard Cover. Near Fine/Very Good. First Printing. Author of Mildred Pierce. Some creasing on inside of dj flap. Slight shelf wear. Very small & light pencil markings on front of dj.

8vo, 356pp. A very good hardback copy in like dust jacket.

1st edition. [6], 373, [5] pp. Crown 8vo. 7-3/4" x 5-1/4" Cocked, with cloth stained & soild. Paper age-toned. A Good copy in a price-clipped Abt VG jacket, which shows some wear, soiling & age-toning, with a vertical stress crack to the dj backstrip. Blue-grey cloth binding with green stamping. Yellow topstain. Blue & green dust jacket.

Cloth. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition [printing unspecified]. Small 8vo, light green cloth with green lettering, archival polyester-protected pictorial dust jacket (price-clipped) with pale green moth designed by Arthur Hawkins, Jr., 373 pages + [2] Acknowledgements + [2] A Note on the Type. James M[allahan] Cain (1892 - 1977) was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as a progenitor of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction. His novels The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Double Indemnity' (1936), Serenade (1937), Mildred Pierce (1941), and The Butterfly (1947) brought him critical acclaim and an immense popular readership in America and abroad. Cain's ninth novel, The Moth, appeared in 1948, the year after The Butterfly. UNCOMMON title in this edition and condition. Tight, clean copy with moderate wear to cloth and dust jacket, which has some chipping mainly at the top of its spine.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. 1st Edition. The jacket is a bit marked and torn. Netting visible. Some tanning. Seemingly 1st. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services.