New York: Hyperion Press, 1994. SIGNED first edition - Author's first novel - a story of growing up black and female in Chicago in the 1960's. The title is one of the sayings that bookish Stevie, who is determined to break away from the South Side, grew up with - along with the dictums that nice young women don't fight, talk trash, or sleep with boys. SIGNED on the title page. 239 pp.

Duluth, MN: Spinsters Ink, (1996). First edition - The author's first mystery novel published as a trade paperback original. "Portland, Oregon therapist Morgan McRain has a penchant for sleuthing, wise-cracking, and wearing comfortable shoes. When the members of a partner-swapping club are found dead and barefoot, one after the other, Morgan steps into action. Who would remove victims' shoes after murdering them and why?" 165 pp.

Solaris, U.S.A., (2008). SIGNED first edition - A novel which is both a thriller and a return to hard SF by this award-winning writer, the first book in a trilogy. Jeff Vaughn, a jaded telepath, is employed by the spaceship authorities to monitor incoming traffic and finds himself drawn into a deadly investigation. Full size uncorrected proof for a title being issued as a mass market paperback in the US. SIGNED on the title page. 247 pp.

New York: Pocket Books, (2007). First edition - The first novel by this feminist filmmaker and the host of BET's Best Shorts, a book she describes as a "fun, smart and satirical adventure about friendship, drama and love that happens to be set in the world of hip hop." - not to mention lots of sex. Includes a brief reader's club guide. 356 pp.

Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, (2007). First edition - The third novel in the Sheriff Ike Schwartz Series set in Picketsville, a small town in Virgina's Blue Ridge Mountains. It opens with Deputy Whaite Billingsley finding a corpse bearing the ID of Randall Harris, a member of one of the meanest families in the backwoods locale of Buffalo Mountain. But Schwartz, a former CIA agent, recognizes the body as that of ex-KGB spy Alexei Kamarov. 257 pp.

New York: Handsel Books / Other Press, (2003). First edition - The complete poems - some 140 - by this British writer who was considered by many prominent critics and authors including Walter de la Mare, Aldous Huxley, Peter Sacks, and Seamus Heaney, as one of EnglandÕs most important poets of the 20th century. Often considered a war poet, he was more accurately a poet of rural England who was killed during World War I. He wrote all of his poetry over a three year span, from a few months before his enlisting in 1914 to just before his death in 1917; during his lifetime he was much more widely known as a critic and prose writer. Introduction by Peter Sacks. xxvi, 180 pp.

New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, (1973). First edition - On a tranquil tree-lined street in Paris, a woman exits a taxi. She has come from Bonn, Germany, on a mission of desperation and revenge. And in a house on the Rue de Varenne, a wife and mother is about to relive the past she thought shed left far behind. In 1944, in Nazi-occupied France, circumstances forced Jean de Bernard and his wife to put up a German officer at their isolated chateau in St. Blaize. A novel which looks at the complexities of loyalty and accomodation during war time, ending in post-war Germany where an SS officer is being tried for wartime atrocities. 332 pp.

New York: St Martin's Minotaur, (2015). SIGNED first edition - The seventh novel in the Vera Stanhope series. SIGNED on the title page.

New York: Random House, 2000. SIGNED first edition - Set in Big Stone Gap, Virginia in the year 1973. A family scandal sends the heroine, 35 year-old Ave Maria Mulligan into new levels of activity, shattering her quiet spinster life. First novel by this playwright. With a projected first printing of 150,000 copies, this ARC is much less common than the hardcover copy. SIGNED on the title page, and dated April 2000. 328 pp.

New York: Bantam, (1994). First edition - The 4th culinary mystery, set in Colorado, featuring caterer and amateur sleuth Goldy Bear, who is about the marry homicide detective Tom Schultz, when the Episcopalian priest who was to perform the ceremony is murdered and Schultz disappears. 253 pp plus an index of the recipes in the book.

Marietta, GA: Cherokee Publishing, 1995. First edition - The author's first novel, a story about twin boys growing up on a hunting plantation in Georgia in the 1940s, told with a "balance of lyrical nostalgia and gleefully coarse humor. It is narrated by Matty MacDonald in one of those distinctive Southern voices that creates color on the page. He and his brother Patty are twins whose mother died giving birth to them and whose father committed suicide shortly afterward. The boys are raised on a 15,000-acre South Georgia hunting property named Ecowah Plantation by their delightfully eccentric Uncle Charlie, who gives up his carefree bachelor life to accept the responsibility." (Publisher's Weekly) 238 pp.

New York: Stein & Day, (1982.). First edition - Suspense novel featuring Liam Devlin (of 'The Eagle Has Landed.') A scarce advance issue with unusual promotional info on front cover - "All three major book clubs bid for this book, Only two were able to get it. Seven major reprinters bid for the paperback rights.. Only one got it. You've got it! The new Jack Higgins." 251 pp. ISBN: 0-8128-28720x.

New York: Random House, (1974.). First edition - Uncommon example of the earliest advance issue for this collection of essays and speeches by this noted journalist on many aspects of surviving as a Black person in the US - includes comments on education, crime, drug addiction, welfare, black pride and more. On the cover are the words "uncorrected first proof" with the issue price and date handwritten. Laid in a mimeographed notice from the publisher. 157 pp.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, (2002). First edition - A study of the five Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan - which were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. Although rich in both cultural heritage and natural resources - including massive oil reservoirs - Central Asia remains desperately poor and frighteningly volatile. Religious repression, political corruption, and the regions extreme poverty (unemployment rates exceed 80 percent in some areas) have created a fertile climate for militant Islamic fundamentalism. Maps, notes, glossary, index. xiv, 271 pp.

New York: Putnam, (1988). First edition - The author's second novel - one which "traces the need of sisters Rosie and Noonie to choose their own lifestyles even as they continue seeking the approval of their eccentric mother, Elsa Gluck. Estranged by Rosie's lesbianism, the three women are brought together again by the failure of Noonie's traditional marriage and Elsa's terminal cancer." (Library Journal) 261 pp.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. SIGNED first edition - The author's very highly praised first novel, of the South from the Civil War to the present, told in the voice of a woman who lived through it all. INSCRIBED on the half title page. Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize. Basis for the 1994 American television miniseries starring Diane Lane, Donald Sutherland, Cicely Tyson (who won the Emmy award for her role) and Anne Bancroft. The earlier - and far more uncommon - of the two proofs, with the page numbers handwritten in the upper corner. 737 pp.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. SIGNED first edition - The author's first book, a collection of nine interrelated stories which move back in forth in time to give us a picture of two generations of a Tennessee family. Praise from Robert Olen Butler, Peter Cameron and Annie Proulx who comments "These nine stories, spare and pellucid in style, sometimes wrenchingly painful in content, introduce a brilliant new American voice. These stories take up the contradictions of life where brutal situations are balanced by the blind and persistent human endurance that lets us continue to live." SIGNED on the title page. Picture of cover art stapled inside front cover. 161 pp.

Boston: Berkley, (2003.) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A China Bayles mystery, set in a small town in Texas which is undergoing a revival as artists flock there. SIGNED on the title page and dated in the year of publication. Includes a note to the reader, list of resources. x. 304 pp. ISBN: 0-425188280.

New York: Plume / Dutton, (1998). SIGNED first edition - The author's first book (issued as a trade paperback original at the same time as his first novel), a collection of ten stories which capture "the pathos and small triumphs of everyday life, with its fumbling attempts at deeper human relations, disappointments, and moments of grace." SIGNED on the title page. Praise from Madison Smartt Bell, Clyde Edgerton, George Garrett and others. A Los Angeles Times Notable Book. An uncommon advance issue. 161 pp.

New York: Kensington, (2000.). SIGNED first edition - First mystery featuring Martha Chainey, a 'beautiful six-foot former showgirl' who is working as a courier transporting large sums of under the table money for Las Vegas casino owners. SIGNED on the title page. 242 pp.

New York: Pantheon, (2005). SIGNED first edition - Her third novel, one which spans much of the 20th century as it tells the story of a woman, the daughter of Jewish immigrants, and a noted artist who returns to New York city in 1970 after spending 30 years on a remote island in the South Pacific. SIGNED on the title page. 211 pp.

New York: Pantheon, (2005). SIGNED first edition - Her third novel, one which spans much of the 20th century as it tells the story of a woman, the daughter of Jewish immigrants, and a noted artist who returns to New York city in 1970 after spending 30 years on a remote island in the South Pacific. SIGNED on the half title page. Publisher's letter laid in. 211 pp.

New York: St Martin's Minotaur, (2007). First edition - The 23rd mystery featuring Boston lawyer Brady Coyne, divorced, fortyish, with a wry sense of humor and a passion for fishing, who finds his quiet life upset when he goes against the mob. 292 pp.