New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998.) dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first book, winner of the 1998 National Book Award. From the dj flap: this "is the story of one man's exploration of his family's slave-owning past and his search for the descendants of the people his family kept as slaves. In 1698, Elias Ball traveled from his home in Devon, England, to Charleston, Carolina to take possession of his inheritance: part of a plantation and twenty slaves. Elias and his progeny built an American dynasty that lasted six generations, acquiring more than twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, selling rice known as Carolina Gold, and enslaving close to four thousand Africans and African-Americans until 1865, when Union troops arrived on the lawns of Balls' estates to force emancipation. ... A nonfiction American saga that is part history, part journey of discovery. This is the story of black and white families who have lived side-by-side through three hundred years.." Illustrated with black and white photographs. Genealogy charts, notes, index. 495 pp. Illustrated endpapers. ISBN: 0-374-265828.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998.). First edition - The author's first book, winner of the 1998 National Book Award. "The story of one man's exploration of his family's slave-owning past and his search for the descendants of the people his family kept as slaves. In 1698, Elias Ball traveled from his home in Devon, England, to Charleston, Carolina to take possession of his inheritance: part of a plantation and twenty slaves. Elias and his progeny built an American dynasty that lasted six generations, acquiring more than twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, selling rice known as Carolina Gold, and enslaving close to four thousand Africans and African-Americans until 1865, when Union troops arrived on the lawns of Balls' estates to force emancipation. ... A nonfiction American saga that is part history, part journey of discovery. This is the story of black and white families who have lived side-by-side through three hundred years.." Illustrated with black and white photographs. Genealogy charts, notes, index. 489 pp.

Lexington, KY: The University Press Of Kentucky, (2001). SIGNED hardcover first edition - "What does a writer do when he's got a family that includes a blacklisted member of the Hollywood Ten, the brains behind Tony the Tiger and the Marlboro Man, a trio of gay puppeteers, the world's leading birdwatcher, sixties hippies, a Dutch stowaway who served in an all-black regiment during the American Civil War, a mother of unusual compassion and understanding, and a convicted murderer? He tells their stories and secrets, illuminating 150 years of American life along the way. Dan Bessie begins the journey through his family history with his great-grandfather in the cargo hold of a ship bound for New York on the storm-tossed Atlantic." An account of his family by this screenwriter and the son of blacklisted writer Alvah Bessie. Warmly INSCRIBED on half title page and dated November 30, 2000. xv, 287 pp. ISBN: 0-813121795.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Hardcover first edition - Award winning author's "evocation of his mother's childhood in the Appalachian foothills during the Great Depression, and the magnificent story of the man who raised her. Charlie Bundrum was a roofer, a carpenter, a whiskey-maker, a fisherman who knew every inch of the Coosa River, and made boats out of car hoods. He could not read, but he asked his wife, Ava, to read him the paper every day so he would not be ignorant. He was a man who took giant steps in rundown boots, a true hero whom history would otherwise have overlooked. In the decade of the Great Depression, Charlie moved his family twenty-one times, keeping seven children one step ahead of the poverty and starvation that threatened them from every side." Frontispiece portrait. 259 pp. ISBN: 0-375410627.

New London, NH: BKB Press, (2008). SIGNED first edition - Although Knickerbocker is an American name (there are no Knickerbockers in The Netherlands), the author grew up with her family history drummed into her by her elders. Raised during the Great Depression, she found her adult life profoundly influenced by her family's history. The first part of this book is a memoir of growing up during the Great Depression. "She and her parents were crammed into the top floor of Grandma Knickerbocker's home. Childhood was spent dealing with a feisty housekeeper, and an unrepentant grandmother who needed her son's help, but resented his young family's intrusion into her life." Part II recounts the history of the Walloons in the Belgic lowlands, and Part III is an early history of the two families - the Vincents and the Knickerbakkers and the founding of New York City. Illustrated with photographs. SIGNED on the title page and very personally INSCRIBED and signed on the half title page. Bibliography, index. xiv, 287 pp. ISBN: 0-981776817.

New York: Edward O Jenkins 1873. Hardcover first edition - Printed "For Private Circulation". Includes an account of the celebration of the sixtieth wedding anniversary (the cover has simply "The Diamond Wedding" on it) of the marriage of John and Sarah Knox of Knoxville, in upstate New York, followed by "A sketch of the military life of Captain Williams with the 117th New York Infantry Regiment, prepared by Rev. Knox from Williams' letters and read at the celebration." This sketch includes 7 small maps and much interesting information about troop movements, descriptions of battles, daily life, and more. The first part consists of 44 pages, illustrated with engravings of the old homestead, the family tree and the church. The Civil War sketch is from page 45-106 followed by a list of members of the family present. INSCRIBED by one of the family members "for Mrs Ewing, your cousin, Mrs Anderson" (perhaps the one of the sisters who prepared the family tree) 107 pp. .

New York: Flatiron Books, (2018). First edition - A sprawling saga covering four generations of the author's family - from Appalachia to the open ranges of the West, from hardscrabble years, when they suffer through droughts, depression, and dust bowl years with tenacity, faith, and more than a bit of luck, and when their fortunes rise during the oil boom, their newfound wealth catapults them into a fleeting jet set lifestyle. It is a book which illuminates the history of Texas and the American experience. A book which show hows small twists of fate and nature, reminders of the capriciousness of life, where something as simple as a rain that doesn't come - or a weevil that does - can alter a family's fortunes forever. Notes. 369 pp.

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. dj. Hardcover first edition - Letters of the Charles Colcock Jones family: they lived on a plantation in Liberty County Georgia and the letters cover the period 1854-1868 - antebellum plantation life, the oncoming secession crisis, the participation in the war of a wealthy family, and the earliest years of Reconstruction. Includes 275 pages of biographical sketches plus over 100 pages of index Winner of the National Book Award for history in 1973. The massive original hardcover edition. Not only one of the most extensive and comprehensive archive of letters from this era, but also one of the most valuable for the insight it gives into the lives of a wealthy, slave-owning family. Includes an extensive "who's who" and 2 indexes -for free and sale. xxn. 1845 pp Map endpapers. ISBN: 0-300-012144.

New York: Scribner, (2015) dj. Hardcover first edition - Award winning author's third novel (fifth book), one "that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades. Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high. Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family's future" . 432 pp.

New York: Scribner, (2015). SIGNED first edition - Award winning author's third novel (fifth book), one "that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades. Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high. Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family's future" SIGNED on the title page and dated in the year of publication. 432 pp.

New York: Hyperion, (1998) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - The highly praised first novel by this Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor - "Like the stigmata of the saints, Lizzie DuBose's physical manifestations of the wounds of her African American ancestors are inexplicable and harrowing. Born in 1960, Lizzie struggles to understand why she relives her great-great-grandmother Ayo's travails, first on a slave ship, later at the hands of a ruthless slaveowner. Bleeding manacle-scars and flay marks on her back convince Lizzie that she's experiencing something more than psychosomatic pain, or the insanity for which she is hospitalized for 14 years. She knows more about Ayo's life than can be gleaned from the diary that her great-grandmother Joy kept at the turn of the century. She knows, too, what secret torment compelled her grandmother Grace to leave her children in Alabama - and to will Lizzie the trunk that holds the quilt that tells Ayo's story.. . Intricate, understated and beautifully controlled, this novel introduces a quietly provocative voice." (Publishers Weekly) SIGNED on the half title page. 235 pp. ISBN: 0-7868-6408-7.

New York: William H. Morrow, (2000) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - The third novel by this highly acclaimed writer. "A series of long telephone conversations make up the bulk of this beguiling, episodic novel. One evening in 1977, 19-year-old Fran receives an unexpected call from her mother, Gloria, who has been gone for four and a half years, leaving Fran alone in their Ontario farmhouse. Barely saying hello, Gloria launches into the beguiling history of the Mourne family, back to her mysterious great-grandmother, who never married yet bore 14 children on the Ontario farm. . . Like the immense titular house, the novel sprawls untidily but its absurd charms, entrancing characters and sumptuous language more than make up for its shapelessness. Contributing to the inventive spirit, b&w photographs of "family members" and increasingly annotated family trees accompany the text." (PW review) SIGNED on the title page. Laid in is a promotional postcard with a handwritten signed brief note from Schulman. 301 pp. ISBN: 0-380977990.