Welcome to our Spring/Summer newsletter

We have been busy buying and selling stock and thought we'd take the time to update you on some of our more recent and most interesting additions. As always, if you have any queries please get in touch and we will do our best to help you.

Thank you for being our customer and we look forward to being in touch again soon.

Best wishes

The Team at Really Good Books

New stock

We have acquired stock in quite a variety of areas. We now have a small but growing category of Cookery books - mainly modern British and some we predict will become collectable classics in a few years - get in early! Our particular favourite is Jane Grigson, purely for her depth of knowledge and eloquently instructional writing style.

We completed a valuable sale of a set of Nevil Shute novels to a university library, and have restocked some of his classic works from the 1950s. Often forgotten, sometimes under-rated, this prolific Anglo-Australian author is unrivalled in his command of a good page-turner, backed up with solid background in aviation and general engineering.

Also from that era, but from an altogether different perspective is Yukio Mishima's ground-breaking Confession of a Mask. We are pleased to offer a rare UK 1st printing.

We continue to add to our core specialties - modern fiction, children's and mountaineering. A couple of highlights are a fabulously complete set of 'Adventure' stories from Enid Blyton, probably the most popular of her works after the Famous Five. Elizabeth Coxhead's One Green Bottle set the scene for mountain-based fiction, uniquely with a rare underlying social commentary. In modern fiction, we have an affordable second printing (1955) of the first UK Raymond Chandler omnibus - a very nice package. Also hard-boiled but Scottish, a nice early Ian Rankin.

Perhaps just for its cover, our favourite this time is Doughty's "Friesland Meres - through the Netherlands in a Norfolk Wherry". Presaging and possibly influencing Arthur Ransome in this realistic and altogether unwhimsical tale of a quite unusual family journey.

Charcuterie & French Pork Cookery. Jane Grigson.  London: Michael Joseph, 1967. Edition: 1st UK, 1st impression. Book Condition: Very good. Her first book and a superb example of Jane Grigson's many seminal works. Written in her usual... (#1216)  Price: £115.00

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. Isabella Beeton.  London: Ward Lock, 1907. Edition: New edition. Book Condition: Very good. In remarkably good condition for its age with no inscriptions or annotations. Superb colour plates showing different foods.  Very... (#1788)  Price: £175.00

On the Beach. Nevil Shute.  Heinemann, 1957. Edition: 1st UK, 1st impression. Book Condition: Fine. Perhaps one of Shute's most well-known novels dealing with the lives of ordinary Australians as they face events of cataclysmic... (#1774)  Price: £195.00

Confessions of a Mask. Yukio Mishima.  London: Peter Owen, 1960. Edition: 1st UK, 1st impression. Book Condition: Very good. Ground-breaking coming of age novel, extremely scarce in this good condition UK first issue. The book is... (#1769)  Price: £325.00

The Island of Adventure/The Castle of Adventure/The Valley of Adventure/The Sea of Adventure/The Mountain of. Enid Blyton.  London: Macmillan, 1944-1955. Edition: 1st UK, 1st impression. A rare and very attractive complete set of the eight volumes comprising the "Adventure" series, all first edition, first impressions, all in... (#1696)  Price: £2,200.00

One Green Bottle. Elizabeth Coxhead.  London: Faber, 1951. Edition: 1st UK, 1st impression. Book Condition: Very good. A multi-layered story often said to be one of the finest UK mountaineering novels. This book is in... (#1347)  Price: £295.00

The Raymond Chandler Omnibus. Raymond Chandler.  London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955. Edition: 1st UK thus, 2nd impression. Book Condition: Fine. Containing The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window; The Lady in the Lake. This is... (#1777)  Price: £55.00

Mortal Causes. Ian Rankin.  London: Orion, 1994. Edition: 1st UK, 1st impression. Book Condition: Very good. Rebus was not yet a household name, in this early outing for him in 1994 - franchise building... (#1726)  Price: £70.00

Our favourite

Friesland Meres - Through the Netherlands in a Norfolk Wherry. Henry Montagu Doughty.  London: Jarrold, undated. Edition: 4th, revised. Book Condition: Very good. Undated but probably c.1900 , revised edition of well-known and respected travel tale around the inner seas of the Netherlands... (#1789)  Price: £100.00