“The forger has but one chance to get it just right”
The Forgers by Bradford Morrow is a bibliomystery soaked in the juices of the antiquarian book trade. It begins when a collector is found dead in his home on Long Island, his hands severed, and parts of his collection of books and manuscripts vandalized beyond repair. The victim’s sister, a bookstore owner in Greenwich Village is distraught and her boyfriend Will, a convicted forger with A level book genes (his dad was a we ll known collector and a Sherlock Holmes devotee), takes center stage to help her through her grief.
As the murder case progresses Will begins receiving expertly forged letters in the hand of long-dead authors from someone with an intimate knowledge of the deceased and Will’s checkered past. From there the battle of the forgers ensues.
There is plenty here for the bookseller, collector and the mystery crowd. Both Sherlock Holmes and W. B. Yeats have a prominent role and the addiction-like obsession so often associated with hard-core book collecting is expertly portrayed. It is clear Bradford Morrow, himself a former bookseller, has got the book bug.
Here are a few gems from within:
‘The book trade was a crazy quilt of devotees who often shared little else than a rabid passion for the printed page”
“Other kids had their picture books like Dr. Seuss and Barbar and the rest. Me, I had something like four dozen hardcovers of the Colophon.”
“Bookshops were, are, and always will be chancy, quixotic enterprises at best -easier to raise snow leopards in one’s living room than keep an independent bookstore afloat”
“For a bookman…books always come first, the social niceties of enquiring how things were, how’s you health, all that congenial rigamarole, invariably take a back seat”
“There is a bookseller out therefor every bibliophilic obsession known to humankind.”
Easily a Top Ten Book about Books for 2014.
Why isn’t there a signed limited edition? 🙂
Published by Mysterious Press
Windows on the World: 50 Writers, 50 Views by Matteo Pericoli
MatteoPericoli had an epiphany while looking out the window of his Upper West Side apartment while he was in the process of moving. He realized that after seven years of looking out that window, the view had become an important part of his experience. Pericoli decided to take it with him by sitting down and drawing it.
He has been drawing windows ever since.
From Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Lagos to Nadine Gordimer in Johannesburg, Karl Ove Knausgaard in Sweden and Teju Cole in Brooklyn the power of place comes shining through in these elegant drawings. Each is accompanied by an original text from the writer ans is presented in a beautifully designed book featuring a translucent printed dust jacket which provides a “window” to the illustrated boards.
Published by Penguin Press
The latest offering in Open Court’s Popular Culture and Philosophy series tackles Showtime’s award-winning show Homeland. For those unfamiliar, the show revolves around Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody’s release from an al-Qaeda prison, and CIA Agent Carrie Mathison’s distrust of his intentions. Themes of the show raise questions of identity, what it means to be a terrorist, the conditions and effects of brainwashing, lying for the greater good, and whether or not courage is a virtue.
Homeland and Philosophy: For Your Minds Only invites 23 philosophers to tackle these themes and more.
This is already the 85 volume in the series which first launched in 2000. Oh, and the first volume was dedicated to Seinfeld.
Buy: Powell’s | Amazon | Publisher
Collected Translations’ showcases the entire translation career of David Wevill in a single volume for the first time.
In addition to the poems of Charles Baudelaire, Fernando Pessoa, San Juan de la Cruz, Alberto de Lacerda, and Pindar, this collection represents Wevill’s seminal translation of Hungarian poet Ferenc Juhász’s “The Boy Changed into a Stag Clamors at the Gate of Secrets,” one of the major poetic achievements in postwar European poetry.
Published by Tavern Books.
Buy: Limited edition hardback from publisher