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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar in the Closet'
From the author of BURGULAR IN THE LIBRARY, and reissued in a new cover style, a crime novel which features professional thief, Bernie Rhodenbarr. Rhodenbarr finds himself locked in a wardrobe in a bedroom he is burgling, and when he escapes he notices that not only has his proposed loot disappeared but a dead body has materialised in the room. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar in the Library'
Bernie, if you recall, is that likeable young New Yorker who has tempered his passion for stealing classy works of art with the more staid vocation of selling books. But his passion always reigns. In this eighth Bernie Rhodenbarr caper, author Lawrence Block mimics the murderer's M.O. in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None while preserving the premise of the Burglar series. Bernie bursts in on someone else's wrongdoing before he gets to have any fun. All he wants is to make off with a Raymond Chandler first edition, but instead, red-handed, he stumbles on foul play. Lots of amusing send-ups of the genre's older conventions, particularly those oft-employed twists of dame Christie. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar in the Rye'
Lawrence Block is such a gifted writer that even a native New Yorker will be fooled into thinking that the Paddington Hotel, described in the opening pages of Burglar in the Rye, is a real institution. Block's descriptions of this enclave of artists, writers, and rock musicians is thoroughly convincing--although in actuality, the Paddington is a combination of the real-life Chelsea Hotel and Block's outrageous imagination.
This is Bernie Rhodenbarr's ninth heist. Bernie is a gentleman burglar who runs a used bookstore in between criminal acts, steals mostly from the rich, and only hurts people when it becomes absolutely necessary.
The Paddington is where Bernie goes to liberate the letters of a reclusive writer named Gulliver Fairborn from a literary agent. Fairborn's resemblance to J.D. Salinger and, of course, the fact that the woman who hired Bernie to steal the letters had an affair with Fairborn when she was a teenager, no doubt lend the book its title. But by the time Bernie gets to the Paddington, the agent has been shot, the letters already liberated--and a cop in the lobby recognizes our favorite burglar from a previous encounter.
Now all Bernie has to do is find out who else wanted those letters badly enough to kill for them. In typical Rhodenbarr tradition, the plot is less interesting than the trappings: the books Bernie reads, the fascinating objects he picks up along the way. The reader also learns about some mind-expanding facts, such as the existence of a tiny South American fish that swims up a man's urine stream and lodges in his private parts! Or did Block make that up, too?
Other Bernie picks include: The Burglar in the Closet, The Burglar in the Library, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, and The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza. --Dick Adler [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar on the Prowl'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling'
Bernie Rhodenbarr has gone legit -- almost -- as the new owner of a used bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village. Of course, dusty old tomes don't always turn a profit, so to make ends meet, Bernie's forced, on occasion, to indulge in his previous occupation: burglary. Besides which, he likes it.
Now a collector is offering Bernie an opportunity to combine his twin passions by stealing a very rare and very bad book-length poem from a rich man's library.
The heist goes off without a hitch. The delivery of the ill-gotten volume, however, is a different story. Drugged by the client's female go-between, Bernie wakes up in her apartment to find the book gone, the lady dead, a smoking gun in his hand, and the cops at the door. And suddenly he's got to extricate himself from a rather sticky real-life murder mystery and find a killer -- before he's booked for Murder One.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian'
If the only side of Lawrence Block you know is the dark and gloomy Matt Scudder books, such as the noir classic When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, then you might be surprised to hear that he's also one of the most delightfully droll writers in the mystery business.
"I hurried uptown and changed into chinos and a short-sleeved shirt that would have been an Alligator except that the embroidered device on the breast was not that reptile but a bird in flight. I guess it was supposed to be a swallow, either winging its way back to Capistrano or not quite making a summer, because the brand name was Swallowtail. It had never quite caught on and I can understand why." That's Bernie Rhodenbarr, used book dealer and gentleman burglar, making a literary fashion statement in this latest return to print of one of Block's best books about him.
As with the other entries in this admirable series--The Burglar in the Closet, The Burglar in the Library, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza, The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, Burglars Can't Be Choosers--Block manages to be very amusing, moderately suspenseful, and impressively erudite all at the same time. The plot is a complicated tangle of double-cross and deceit surrounding the theft of a valuable painting and two murders. Mondrian isn't the only artist being framed here: Bernie has to use all of his skills--as burglar, lover, and art expert--to prove his (relative) innocence. --Dick Adler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza'
Bookselling burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr doesn't generally get philosophical about his criminal career. He's good at it, it's addictively excitingand it pays a whole lot better than pushing old tomes. He steals therefore he is, period.
He might well ponder, however, the deeper meaning of events at the luxurious Chelsea brownstone of Herb and Wanda Colcannon, which is apparently burgled three times on the night Bernie breaks in: once before his visit and once after. Fortunately he still manages to lift some fair jewelry and an extremely valuable coin. Unfortunately burglar or burglars number three leave Herb unconscious and Wanda dead . . . and the cops think Rhodenbarr dunnit.
There's no time to get all existential about itespecially after the coin vanishes and the fence fencing it meets with a most severe end. But Bernie is going to have to do some deep thinking to find a way out of this homicidal conundrum.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams'
Bernie Rhodenbarr is a used bookstore owner in the midst of New York City. He also is a retired burglar, although it's hard to stay retired. When he sells a collectible book for a pittance, he gets depressed. He goes out with his close friend Carolyn that evening. He knows of a perfect set up for a burglary this evening but is resisting his impulses. He starts calling the potential target, wanting them to return home and thwart his impulses. They finally answer the phone. He has some inane conversation, then hangs up. When he has another unexpected tidbit fall in his lap, he gives in and breaks into another home. As he is burgling, he finds a naked, dead body in the bathtub. He puts everything back and exits, relocking the door behind him. Next thing he knows, he is being accused of stealing a valuable baseball card collection form the home he had called. He knows he doesn't have it. Although he as with Carolyn during the time of the absence of the owners, he is arrested. Once he is released Bernie knows he has to solve this theft mystery. While he's at it, he wants to keep his new landlord from raising his store rent about 1000%. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Burglars Can't Be Choosers'
Five years ago, in his bestseller The Great and Secret Show Clive Barker mesmerized millions of readers worldwide with an extraordinary vision of human passions and possibilities.
Welcome to a new volume in that epic adventure. Welcome to Everville.
With Clive Barker's trademark mingling of wild fantasy, eroticism, and visionary horror, Everville promises to take its readers on a journey that will awe, arouse, and terrify in equal measure, opening the doors of a new reality for readers of fantasy and horror alike.
On a mountain peak, high above the city of Everville, a door stands open: a door that lets onto the shores of the dream-sea Quiddity And there's not a soul below who'll not be changed by that fact...
Phoebe Cobb, once a doctor's receptionist, is about to forget her old life and go looking for her lost lover, Joe Flicker, in the world on the other side of that door, a strange, sensual wonderland the likes of which only Barker could make real.
Tesla Bombeck, who knows what horrors lurk on the far side of Quiddity, must solve the mysteries of the city's past if she is to keep those horrors from crossing the threshold.
Harry D'Amour, who has tracked the ultimate evil across America, will find it conjuring atrocities in the sunlit streets of Everville.
These are but a few of the hugely entertaining characters whose destinies Barker has charted in this book. Enthralling, chilling, and charged with an unbridled eroticism, Everville is above all a novel about the deepest yearnings of the human heart. For love. For hope. For understanding.
And of course Ws about the forces that threaten those dreams. The monsters that are never more terrible than when they wear human faces...
Step onto Everville's streets and enter a world like no other in fiction, created by a man whom the Washington Post called "a mapmaker of the mind, charting the furthest reaches of the imagination." [via]
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