Showing posts with label Sanderson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sanderson. Show all posts

04 December 2023

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2023!



With sadness, I report that 2023 was another year in which all my favourite acquisitions were purchased online. This is not to suggest that every transaction was a good one. In March, I won a lot of twelve Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows books, three of which bear the signature of their true author, New Brunswick's W.E.D. Ross. 

My lengthy victory dance came to an abrupt end when they arrived loose in a recycled Amazon box. Most were in poor condition, some featured stamps from used bookstores, and one had a previous owner's name written on its cover. Added to all this was the shipping charge, which far exceeded the amount paid for the books themselves, and was several times greater than what Canada Post had charged the seller.

Had all gone well, this copy of Barnabas, Quentin and the Frightened Bride (New York: Paperback Library, 1970) would've surely made the cut.

Enough negativity! It was a good year!

What follows is 2023's top ten:

In Nature's Workshop

Grant Allen
London: Newnes, 1901


I bought three Grant Allen books this year – the novels This Mortal Coil (1888) and At Market Value (1895) being the others – but this is the one I like the most. The posthumously published second edition, it features over one hundred illustrations by English naturalist Frederick Enock (1845-1916).


Hot Freeze

Martin Brett [Douglas
   Sanderson]
London: Reinhardt, 1954

For years I've been going on about Hot Freeze being the very best of post-war Canadian noir; it was one of the first novels reissued as a Ricochet Book. I was aware that there had been a UK edition, but couldn't find a copy with dust jacket.

Found it!
Hilary Randall: The Story
   of The Town
Horace Brown
Toronto: Voyageur, [n.d.]

While working to return Brown's 1947 novel Whispering City to print, I learned that Saturday Night editor B.K. Sandwell had thought Hilary Randall just might be the great Canadian novel. Self-published roughly four decades after its composition, my copy is inscribed!

Wedded for a Week; or, The
   Unseen Bridegroom
May Agnes Fleming
London: Milner, [n.d.]

As with Grant Allen, I can't let a year go by without adding more Fleming to my collection. The Actress' Daughter was the first, but I much prefer this 1881 novel, if only for its two titles.

Writing this I realize that I haven't read a Fleming in 2023. 

A Self-Made Thief

Hulbert Footner
London: Literary Press,
   [n.d.]

As my old review of 1930's The Mystery of the Folded Paper suggests, I'm not much of a Footner fan, Still, at £4, this last-minute addition to a large order placed with a UK bookseller seemed a bargain. The dust jacket illustration, which I hadn't seen, is unique to this edition.

Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1922

Had I not read this novel, it's unlikely this wouldn't have made the list. Pagan Love entertained at every turn as a take-down of the burgeoning self-help industry and corporate propaganda. Odd for a man who spent most of his working life writing copy for the CPR.

Dove Cottage
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay
   Grant]
London: Abelard-Schulman,
   1958

There are books that grow on you. Reviewing Dove Cottage this past March I likened it to an enjoyable afternoon of community theatre, but it has remained with me in a way that the local real estate agent's performance as George Gibbs has not.

Three Dozen Sonnets &
   Fast Drawings
Bob McGee
Montreal: Véhicule, 1973

This year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Véhicule Press. Three Dozen Sonnets & Fast Drawings was the press's very first book. A pristine copy with errata slip, it appeared to have been unread.

No longer.

Awful Disclosures of Maria
   Monk
Maria Monk
New York: Howe & Bates,
   1836

A first edition copy of the text that launched an industry. Not in the best condition, but after 187 years, much of it being pawed over by anti-papist zealots, what can one expect.

My work on the Maria Monk hoax continues. 


Crimes: or, I'm Sorry Sir,
   But We Do Not Sell
   Handguns to Junkies
Vicar Vicars [Ted Mann]
Vancouver: Pulp, 1973

As far as I know, Crimes is Ted Mann's only book. When published, he was an editor at National Lampoon. The Bombardier Guide to Canadian Authors was in his future, as were NYPD Blue, Deadwood. and Homeland.


What to expect next year? More Allen and Fleming, I'm betting.  Basil King seems likely.



06 March 2023

The Great Canadian Author Photo and Bio?


Purchased last week to treat myself. Lord knows I deserve it. Above is the cover of the first and only British edition of Hot Freeze by Martin Brett. Published in 1954 by Max Reinhardt, it follows Dodd, Mead's first American edition by a matter of weeks. I prefer the latter, but only for the dame.


I first read Hot Freeze in 2011, roughly nine years after the author died. It's the very best work of post-war Canadian noir, those by Brian Moore and David Montrose included. Four years later, I helped return it to print as part of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series. It is the only edition to be published under Douglas Sanderson, the author's true name. 

A few months later, Ricochet brought back Blondes Are My Trouble (original title: The Darker Traffic), the sequel to Hot Freeze.

Blondes Are My Trouble is the second-best work of post-war Canadian noir.

Sanderson is an unlikely top dog. A transplanted Brit, he began writing thrillers after the commercial failure of his literary debut, Dark Passions Subdue (1952). He claimed the turn toward genre was done on a dare. If true, it sure paid off; throughout the decades, he produced nearly two dozen, most of which enjoyed French translation.

Mon cadavre au Canada [Hot Freeze]
Martin Brett [Douglas Sanderson; trans Bruno Martin]
Paris: Gallimard, 1955
I wrote the intro to the Ricochet Hot Freeze and invited John Norris to contribute another for Blondes Are My Trouble. Greg Shepard of Stark House Press has done more than anyone in reviving interest in Sanderson, republishing nine Sanderson novels, featuring additional material by himself, Kevin Burton Smith, Paul Charoff, Jonas Westover, and the author's son John D. Sanderson. This, I believe, forms the bulk of Sanderson scholarship. What else have we got? Never mind The Canadian EncyclopediaThe Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, and W.H. New's Companion to Canadian Literature, not even Wikipedia recognizes Sanderson.

No, I'm wrong. The French Wikipedia has a Martin Brett entry – very informative it is, too.

I reference all this because after all my years researching Sanderson, the brief Max Reinhardt author bio brought some revelations.


That is one great author photo.

26 December 2021

The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year


This annus horribilis draws to a close – thank God – meaning the time has come to recap the last twelve months of reading old books. I tackled a bunch, twenty-one of which were reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes & Queries. I'm counting Arthur Stringer's 1936 novel The Wife Traders and its British reworking, Tooloona, as two.

Fight me.

They're two different books... and having slogged my way through both, I've earned it.

Stringer proved to be this year's most read author, though I'm at a loss to explain why. I read four books by this son of Chatham, which is more than the previous seven years combined. The majority were pretty awful, but one made it onto my annual list of the three out-of-print reads most deserving a return to print:

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1977

Forget The Scalpel, the Sword,  this is the Ted Allan book you want to read. And yes, I'll again point out the wonderful Quentin Blake illustrations.

Get it while you can, then share it with the children in your life.

The Shadow
Arthur Stringer
New York: Century, 1913


Better known under the later (superior) title Never-Fail Blake, this story of one man's relentless drive to bring another to justice was one of Stringer's most reprinted thrillers. Today, it is all but forgotten. It doesn't deserve that fate.


Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944


This was the second Weston novel read this past summer. Where the first, The Legacy of Fear, disappointed, Poldrate Street entertained as the year's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure. No disappointment here!


Three of the books I reviewed this year are currently in print:

Dear Departed stands out as a relatively new book. The first true collection of Brian Moore short stories, it features writing that originally appeared between 1956 and 1961. Dear Departed was published just last year by Belfast's Turnpike Books, but went almost unnoticed in the author's adopted land. The only review I've seen or heard is Randy Boyagoda's on The Next Chapter

Having been elevated in 2012, Grant Allen's An African Millionaire (1897) holds certain distinction as a Penguin Classic. Much as I like the novel, I wonder why. The Woman Who Did is a much better, more interesting, more enduring, and more culturally significant work.

Never mind.

Give An African Millionaire a read, but if you want Allen at his best I recommend The Woman Who DidThe Devil's DieFor Mamie's Sake, Michael's Crag, Under Sealed Orders, Hilda Wade, What's Bred in the Bone or The British Barbarians.

Brash Books is in the process of returning every Tom Ardies novel to print. The author's second, This Suitcase is Going to Explode (1972) has the defeated hero of the first, Charlie Sparrow, pick himself up to save us all. The third and final Sparrow novel is titled Pandemic (1973), in which he saves us from same.

 At least, I think he does.

Praise this year goes again to Stark House (first recognized in 2012) for its continued dedication to the work of Douglas Sanderson (aka Martin Brett, aka Malcolm Douglas). This year, the publisher put one foot outside its usual crime territory in publishing Dark Passions Subdue, which I reviewed here ten years ago. Sanderson's debut novel, it concerns a male McGill student's attraction to another man.

Dark Passions Subdue was first published in 1952 by Dodd, Mead. The next year, Avon brought it out as a mass market paperback. The McGill University Library does not have a copy of either edition. Now's its chance.

I was involved in the reissue of only one novel this year. Due to production matters, it's been pushed into next. Here's something to look forward to in the New Year:

Resolutions? I have a few:
  • I will focus more on francophone writers;
  • I will review more non-fiction;
  • I will keep kicking against the pricks.
Here's to a better New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:

The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

Arthur Stringer Unshackled (then bowdlerized)
Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home
A Shadow Moves Through a Showy Underworld
The Dead of a Dead End Street
Fumbling Towards Legacy
Shorter Moore
Starting on on Grant Allen: A Top Ten
Getting to Know The Woman Who Did
A Nineteenth Century What's Bred in the Bone
Grant Allen Tells Us Like It Is
Criminal Notes & Queries
Have Bomb – Will Travel
The Jacket, the Dressing Gown and the Closet

07 December 2020

Ten Best Book Buys of 2020 (& Three Great Gifts)



In years to come – presuming they come – I expect I'll look upon this beat-up copy of Arthur Beverley Baxter's The Blower of Bubbles with great affection. I do now. Published in 1920 by McClelland & Stewart, the book is neither rare nor valuable, yet it is this year's most memorable find. It was purchased at the Bookworm in Perth, Ontario, not long after lockdown restrictions had been lifted. Three months had passed since I'd last visited a bookstore. After all that time, I'd have gladly paid for admission.

As might be expected, most of the books added to the bookcase this strange year were bought online. You'll see I was particularly drawn to signed copies – something to do with the daily reminders of mortality, I suppose.

What follows are the nine other titles in this year's top ten. 

An African Millionaire
Grant Allen
New York: Edward Arnold,
   1897

The first American edition, this isn't the best of copies – I am not a wealthy man – but at US$27.00 it was a great find. Responding to my review of Allen's The Woman Who Did, a friend suggested that An African Millionaire is the author's better-known book. Perhaps, but is it as good?


Mon cadavre au Canada
   [Hot Freeze]
Martin Brett [Douglas
   Sanderson; trans Bruno
   Martin]
Paris: Gallimard, 1955

The French translation of our greatest post-war noir novel. The story is abridged and Bruno Martin is clumsy, but that didn't stop me from also buying Estocade au Canada, his translation of Sanderson's A Dum-Dum for the President.

Pascal Berthiaume

Francis DesRoches
Quebec: Elite, 1932

A novel brought to my attention by Jean-Louis Lessard of Laurentiana. His review of this short novel of romance and small town politics intrigued. I was not disappointed!

Signed by the author.

Married, Yet No Wife;
   Or, Told in the Twilight
Mary Agnes Fleming
New York: Street &
   Smith, [c. 1916]

A fragile paperback published during the Wilson administration, it crumbles to the touch. The nineteenth-century Carleton editions hold up better, but I do like that cover. The title, which predates same-sex marriage in Canada by more than a century, intrigues.

PeeVee

Fred Jacob
Toronto: Macmillan, 1928


Bland boards, lacking dust jacket – please tell me one has survived – and still this ranks as one of my favourite finds. I've been meaning to read poor Fred Jacob for ages. The first sentence grabbed me: "In the Hortop family, innovation was looked upon as something to be combated."



The Twenty-first Burr

Victor Lauriston
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1922

An early Canadian mystery, this is Lauriston's only novel. Amongst his other books are A Century of Milling, 1848-1948: the story of the T.H. Taylor Company Limited, Chatham, Ontario and Blue Flame of Service: A History of Union Gas Company and the Natural Gas Industry in Southwestern Ontario. Inscribed by the author.

Mine Inheritance

Frederick Niven
Toronto: Dent, 1945


Niven never had much of a profile, so how is it that Mine Inheritance, of which I'd never heard, was once abridged and edited as a school text? This copy, found in an Ottawa bookstore, came from the library of Henry C. Miller, founder of the legendary Graphic Publishers.


The Devastator

Arthur Stringer
Indianapolis: Bobbs-
   Merrill, 1944

The last of Stringer's forty-four novels, I purchased this on a whim, sight unseen, from an online bookseller located in author's birthplace (Chatham, Ontario). Hollywood figures, as it did in the life of the author. Will you look at that cover! Signed by Stringer!
Psyche

Phyllis Brett Young
Toronto: Longmans, 1959

The first edition of the author's first novel –  signed by the author, with a gift inscription from her mother – how this ended up in a Wallingford, Oxfordshire bookshop is anyone's guess. It has now been repatriated. I made the purchase while working on the Ricochet reissue of The Ravine, Phyllis Brett Young's only thriller.


Three generous souls sent books which, had they not been gifts, would have been considered amongst the year's best buys:

   Atomic Plot
Joe Holliday
Toronto: Allen,
   [1959]

Of the fourteen Dale of the Mounted books, this is the one I'd most wanted to read. I mentioned as much when reviewing Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment. Chris Otto of Papergreat heard my wish.

CAW-CAW Ballads

Wilson MacDonald
Toronto: The Author, 1930


Number 449 in this "AUTHOR'S EDITION, WHICH IS LIMITED, NUMBERED AND AUTOGRAPHED." The poet inscribed this copy to Healey Willan. A gift from Fiona Smith, does this go in my MacDonald collection or my Willan collection? I can't decide!

 
The Private War of
   Jacket Coates
Herbert Fairly Wood
Toronto: Longmans,
   1966

A gift from old pal James Calhoun, who worked with me in returning Peregrine Acland's All Else is Folly to print. The Private War of Jacket Coates is Canada's only novel of the Korean War. How is it that there was only one? And why is he title so bad? I aim to find out.


There's more to my purchase of Arthur Beverley Baxter's The Blower of Bubbles. On that day I was in Perth for the celebration of the 101st birthday of André Hissink, my grandfather.


A man born in 1919, in the midst of the Spanish Flu pandemic, two months after his 101st birthday he came down with COVID-19... and he beat it.

Here's hoping I share those genes.

Here's hoping you all are safe and well.

Related posts:

22 January 2019

The Dusty Bookcase: Ten Years, 100 Titles



The Dusty Bookcase turns ten today. How is that possible? What was meant to be a six-year journey through the obscure and forgotten titles in my library has turned into something of a career. Is "career" the right word? This blog doesn't pay the bills, but it has resulted in a book, a regular column in Canadian Notes & Queries, and the odd gig with other magazines. It's also responsible, in part, for my position as Series Editor of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books imprint.

True to the plan, I pulled the plug on this blog the day after The Dusty Bookcase turned six... only to be coaxed back by friends. I was easily swayed. I've enjoyed my time here; The Dusty Bookcase has brought much more than work, and has never seemed like work.

Though I don't see an end to The Dusty Bookcase, posts will be less frequent this year. I owe my publisher two books – and, as they'll pay at least a few bills, I aim to deliver the first. Still, let's see if I can't make it through these:


For this tenth anniversary, I've put together a list of the one hundred books that have brought the most enjoyment on this journey. The very best feature, as do the very worst. And so, Ralph Allen's cutting satire The Chartered Libertine (praised by Northrop Frye) is followed by two of Sol Allen's gynaecologist novels, which are in turn followed by the paranoid delusions of lying, hate-filled bigot J.V. Andrew. What fun!

All are recommended reading. You can't go wrong.

Hey, wasn't blogging supposed to be dead by now?


All Else is Folly - Peregrine Acland (1929)
Love is a Long Shot - Ted Allan (1949)
For Maimie's Sake - Grant Allen (1886)
The Devil's Die - Grant Allen (1888)
What's Bred in the Bone - Grant Allen (1891)
Michael's Crag - Grant Allen (1893)
The British Barbarians - Grant Allen (1895)
Under Sealed Orders - Grant Allen (1896)
Hilda Wade - Grant Allen (1900)
The Chartered Libertine - Ralph Allen (1954)
Toronto Doctor - Sol Allen (1949)
The Gynecologist - Sol Allen (1965)
Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow - J.V. Andrew (1977)
Firebrand - Rosemary Aubert (1986)


Revenge! - Robert Barr (1896)
The Unchanging East - Robert Barr (1900)
The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont - Robert Barr (1912)
Similia Similibus - Ulric Barthe (1916)
Under the Hill - Aubrey Beardsley and John Glassco (1959)
The Pyx - John Buell (1959)
Four Days - John Buell (1962)
A Lot to Make Up For - John Buell (1990)

Mr. Ames Against Time - Philip Child (1949)
Murder Without Regret - E. Louise Cushing (1954)

Soft to the Touch - Clark W. Dailey (1949)
The Four Jameses - William Arthur Deacon (1927)
The Measure of a Man - Norman Duncan (1911)


Marion - Winnifred Eaton (1916)
"Cattle" - Winnifred Eaton (1923)
I Hate You to Death - Keith Edgar (1944)

The Midnight Queen - May Agnes Fleming (1863)
Victoria - May Agnes Fleming (1863)

Present Reckoning - Hugh Garner (1951)
The English Governess - John Glassco (1960)
Erres boréales - Armand Grenier (1944)
Everyday Children - Edith Lelean Groves (1932)

This Was Joanna - Danny Halperin (1949)
The Door Between - Danny Halperin (1950)
The Last Canadian - William C. Heine (1974)
Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment - Joe Holliday (1956)


Flee the Night in Anger - Louis Kaufman (1952)
No Tears for Goldie - Thomas P. Kelley (1950)
The Broken Trail - George W. Kerby (1909)
The Wild Olive - Basil King (1910)
The Abolishing of Death - Basil King (1919)
The Thread of Flame - Basil King (1920)
The Empty Sack - Basil King (1921)
The Happy Isles - Basil King (1923)

Dust Over the City - André Langevin (1953)
Orphan Street - André Langevin (1974)
Behind the Beyond - Stephen Leacock (1913)
The Hohenzollerns in America - Stephen Leacock (1919)
The Town Below - Roger Lemelin (1944)
The Plouffe Family - Roger Lemelin (1948)
In Quest of Splendour - Roger Lemelin (1953)
The Happy Hairdresser - Nicholas Loupos (1973)
Young Canada Boys With the S.O.S. on the Frontier -
Harold C. Lowrey (1918)


The Land of Afternoon - Madge Macbeth (1924)
Up the Hill and Over - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay (1917)
Blencarrow - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay (1926)
Fasting Friar - Edward McCourt (1963)
Shadow on the Hearth - Judith Merril (1950)
The Three Roads - Kenneth Millar (1948)
Wall of Eyes - Margaret Millar (1953)
The Iron Gates - Margaret Millar (1945)
Do Evil in Return - Margaret Millar (1950)
Rose's Last Summer - Margaret Millar (1952)
Vanish in an Instant - Margaret Millar (1952)
Wives and Lovers - Margaret Millar (1954)
Beast in View - Margaret Millar (1955)
An Air That Kills  - Margaret Millar (1957)
The Fiend - Margaret Millar (1964)
Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk - Maria Monk (1836)
Murder Over Dorval - David Montrose (1952)
The Body on Mount Royal - David Montrose (1953)
Gambling with Fire - David Montrose (1969)
Wreath for a Redhead - Brian Moore (1951)
Intent to Kill - Brian Moore (1956)
Murder in Majorca - Brian Moore (1957)


The Long November - James Benson Nablo (1946)

The Damned and the Destroyed - Kenneth Orvis (1962)

The Miracle Man - Frank L. Packard (1914)
Confessions of a Bank Swindler - Lucius A. Parmalee (1968)
The Canada Doctor - Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell (1933)
Adopted Derelicts - Bluebell S. Phillips (1957)

He Will Return - Helen Dickson Reynolds (1959)
A Stranger and Afraid - Marika Robert (1964)
Poems - Richard Rohmer (1980)
Death by Deficit - Richard Rohmer (1995)


Dark Passions Subdue - Douglas Sanderson (1952)
Hot Freeze - Douglas Sanderson (1954)
The Darker Traffic - Douglas Sanderson (1954)
Night of the Horns - Douglas Sanderson (1958)
Catch a Fallen Starlet - Douglas Sanderson (1960)
The Hidden Places - Bertrand W. Sinclair (1922)
I Lost It All in Montreal - Donna Steinberg (1983)
The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer (1921)

For My Country - Jules Paul Tardivel (1895)

The Keys of My Prison - Frances Shelley Wees (1956)
Arming for Armageddon - John Wesley White (1983)

Related posts: