Bytown Books

Nightmare Garden is a fantastic collection of dark short horror stories, careful curated by Vic Ghidalia and featuring the likes of Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert,and Seabury Quinn (a personal favourite). The cover art by Ken Barr also gives a simple yet creepy air to the book.

This is a Manor Books first printing (and only version of this book to my knowledge) in good condition with some creasing and wear to the covers. $20 + shipping. DM to buy.

Tomorrow’s the big day! will be at booth from 10am to 4pm, Saturday July 8th outside Aberdeen Pavillon at Landsdowne—come by & talk books with us 📚.
❤️

The Hard-Boiled Omnibus is a fantastic collection of early crime stories that were published in Black Mask magazine in the 1930’s. Edited by Joseph Shaw and with a list of authors that includes the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, this book has you covered for golden age hard-boiled crime stories.

This is the 1953 second printing by Pocket Books, and is in good condition with some edgewear and creasing, particularly along the spine. Internally clean and firm.

$25 + shipping. DM to buy.

Eric Ravilious was a British painter, book illustrator, and wood-engraver who, most notably in the book world, provided engravings for some of the finest private presses of the first half of the 20th C., including the Golden Cockerel Press (a personal favourite of ours).

Helen Binyon’s memoir of Ravilious does full justice to the breadth and depth of his artistic genius and body of work. Filled with numerous colour and b/w illustrations, this near fine first edition copy in a like near fine jacket is a gem.

$35 + shipping. DM to buy.

As a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star in 1917 &—after serving with the Red Cross in WWI—working freelance with the Toronto Star, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) developed his "iceberg" theory of writing: that the truth of a story lies below the surface.

As one of the key members of the "Lost Generation" of expat writers working in Paris, Hemingway would continue to refine a lean, hard prose style, which would influence countless minimalist writers to follow—both in his own work & as a freelance overseas correspondent for the Toronto Star & other periodicals.

A foundational work in modern minimalism, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea (1952), his Pulitzer Prize-winning novella, written in Cuba, was the last major work Hemingway published in his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. Hemingway called it "the best I can write ever for all of my life."

We have a copy of the September 1, 1952 issue of Life Magazine, featuring Hemingway on the cover & the complete first publication of The Old Man and the Sea. Good condition overall but sadly the first page of the story is loose. $250 + shipping. DM to buy.

Baby Moll is a classic noir tale of an ex mobster pulled back into the life to help old ties solve a murder, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of guns, girls, and gangsters in the process.

This is the original 1958 Crest Books paperback printing using John Farris’s pseudonym Steve Brackeen. It would be later reprinted in 2011 under the Hard Case Crime imprint using the author’s real name.

This copy is a first printing in good condition with some light wear to the covers and bumping at the spine ends. $20 + shipping. DM to buy.