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AbeBooks has released a list of the most expensive books it sold last month, a list that includes a $18,500 first edition of Ernest Hemingway‘s  The Old Man and the Sea–signed “with very best wishes” by the novelist himself.

The month also included a $19,314 sale of a handwritten Latin bible from the 13th century, a $9,500 sale of 1930 edition of The Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock and a $9,000 first edition of The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

Here’s more about the most expensive book of the month: “Mystere de la Vengeance de Notre Seigneur by Eustache Mercade – $20,000 Published in 1491 in Paris by Antoine Verard, this first edition lacks 16 leaves, but only one complete copy is known to exist, in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.  The sale also included a letter by French bibliographer Amedee Boinet, who confirms the exceptional rarity of this book.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I decided to read Edith Wharton’s Summer right after I read George Eliot’s Silas Marner because Sandra Gilbert told me to. Ok, she didn’t really tell me to, at least not directly. But she has an interesting essay in Rereading Women a large portion of which is a compare and contrast between the two novels, and since I was planning on reading something by George Eliot this year I figured why not read Wharton too? I like Wharton quite a lot after all.

Summer isn’t a very long book but it is signature Wharton with it’s cool, crisp prose and keen social eye. The story starts in the late winter/ early spring and goes through the early fall with most of the events taking place during the summer. It is the story of Charity Royall, a young woman of about seventeen. She was adopted when she was a toddler by lawyer Royall and his wife. But,

Mrs. Royall died seven or eight years later; and by that time Charity had taken the measure of most things about her. She knew that Mrs. Royall was sad and timid and weak; she knew that lawyer Royall was harsh and violent, and still weaker. She knew that she had been christened Charity (in the white church at the other end of the village) to commemorate Mr. Royall’s disinterestedness in “bringing her down,” and to keep alive in her a becoming sense of her dependence; she knew that Mr. Royall was her guardian, but that he had not legally adopted her, though everybody spoke of her as Charity Royall; and she knew why he had come back to live at North Dormer, instead of practising at Nettleton, where he had begun his legal career.

Charity was “brought down” from The Mountain, a place where a small colony of “out-laws” live. These outlaws turn out later to be a rather poor lot of subsistence farmers living in squalid conditions. To be from The Mountain is rather a stain on one’s social standing in North Dormer. North Dormer is a small town where everyone pretty much knows everyone else’s business and where Miss Hatchard, a woman with some money and an ancestor who founded the town library, and lawyer Royall, a sad and lonely man whose law career is on the wane, are the town luminaries.

Charity has pretty much raised herself and rules lawyer Royall’s house. She does as she pleases and pretends to not care what the rest of the town thinks of her, except she does care. She longs to leave North Dormer and live in a city but she has no money of her own. So when a new librarian is needed for the town library she makes sure that lawyer Royall gets her the job. Charity doesn’t give a fig about books and because the library is rarely used anyway, doesn’t spend much time there.

Then lawyer Royall asks Charity to marry him. She refuses in a very mean and spiteful way. About the same time Miss Hatchard’s young cousin Harney comes to town. He is working on a book about the architecture of old houses in small New England towns. Charity falls for him in a big way. Harney likes Charity too, Charity is a beautiful and energetic girl, but she is just a flirtation for him and he neglects to mention he is engaged to another woman.

Since the story is told mostly through Charity’s eyes in a limited third person, it only gradually becomes clear how innocent Charity is and how Harney is using her. At the end of the summer Harney leaves to take care of some business, promising to come back. Of course he has no plans to come back, and of course Charity soon learns she is pregnant. I feared that the book would have an ending like House of Mirth but it doesn’t. Nonetheless it doesn’t exactly have a happy ending either.

There is quite a lot more that happens in the book than I mention here. I liked it very much even though it isn’t exactly uplifting. Gilbert’s essay I mentioned at the beginning discusses the father and daughter

By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK

Oxford, over the last week, has been hit with some of the worst snow it has seen in about 30 years. It’s just the sort of weather that makes a girl want to curl up in front of the fire of an evening, reading a good book. But which books should you be reading if you want your fiction to be as snowy as the outside world? Here are a few suggestions.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Set against the bleak winter landscape of New England, Ethan Frome tells the story of a poor farmer, lonely and downtrodden, his wife Zeena, and her cousin, the enchanting Mattie Silver.

“Ethan Frome drove in silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand, his brown seamed profile, under the helmet-like peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of snow like the bronze image of a hero. He never turned his face to mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, or such slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed part of the mute, melancholy landscape, and incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence.”

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Snow proves to be crucial when Sherlock Holmes solves the mystery of “The Beryl Coronet”. You can read more about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in this post.

“Fairbank was a good-sized square house of white stone, standing back a little from the road. A double carriage sweep, with a snow-clad lawn, stretched down in front to the two large iron gates which closed the entrance. On the right side was a small wooden thicket which led into a narrow path between two neat hedges stretching from the road to the kitchen door, and forming the trademen’s entrance.”

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother’s tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket. And it is a fable about redemption, in which a bleak house is transformed by the resilience of human love.

“Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he would write and whispers, ‘No, he has not come back yet, Sir Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a little time gone yet.’

He withdraws his hand, and falls to looking at the sleet and snow again,until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and fast, that he is obliged to close his eyes for

Here are some interesting tidbits found around the web. Hope you like..

Looks like Harlequin is getting into the eBook game with an new imprint called Nocturne Bites. Shorter, fast-paced vampire stuff. Should be a nice fit for that format. Check out Vanessa Giunta’s blog for more info…

Have you heard of BookWise yet? It’s a Network Marketing system designed around selling books. Michael Lieberman, who always has very informative posts on the book world, brings us some insight.

An interview with crime writer Lee Child

One of our regular Link List sites is BookRide. I just love the blog. Great posts on interesting books in a very digestable format. Here is his take on Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald.

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