Beyond bestsellers Lesser-known literary delights make perfect holiday gifts
Emily Dickinson, faced with a long Christmas list, famously scribbled “There is no present like a book.” OK, the word “frigate,” not “present,” is what you’ll find in modern collections of her poetry, but I’m sure she must have initially been thinking about holiday gifts. Even now, books are bargains. Plus, they are really easy to wrap.
Should you be seeking 2019 titles, consult The Washington Post Book World’s recent guide to the best of this season’s readings. What follows here is a more idiosyncratic sampler, geared mainly to specialty presses and writers of the past.
For all the Janeites on your list, reach for
by Janine Barchas, which — despite the title — isn’t about unwritten sequels to “Pride and Prejudice” and “Mansfield Park.” Instead it’s a fascinating, richly illustrated study of what we can learn from the numerous popular editions of Austen’s novels that appeared during the 19th and 20th centuries.
For sheer joy, few comics can match
For years, Fantagraphics has been publishing definitive albums of their myriad adventures, often to strange lands in search of treasure or in pursuit of Scrooge’s fortune, periodically stolen by the dastardly Beagle Boys. Even the titles are the stuff of childhood dreams: “The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama,” “The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan” and, most recently, “The
Mines of King Solomon.”
While focusing on classics of every genre, the Folio Society’s handsome, well-printed books feature original artwork and new introductions, sometimes by the author, sometimes by a critic (even, on a few past occasions, by one with my name). This year, two of my very favorite books have been given the Folio treatment. John Berendt’s
might be described as an irresistible love letter to the quirky — and sometime murderous — denizens of Savannah, Ga. Charles Portis’
is more than a western; it’s a masterpiece of American literature, beloved by writers as different as Donna Tartt (who introduces this edition) and George Pelecanos. Start reading the Berendt or Portis in the morning and your day will be a happy one.
Montaigne’s selected by Sarah Bakewell, inspired the Folio Society to produce a slightly oversize, faintly Renaissance-style volume worthy of that wary self-examiner. For children, pick up Margery Williams’ with William Nicholson’s original art freshly restored. Did you know, by the way, that early in her career Williams wrote “The Thing in the Woods,” a werewolf novel admired by H.P. Lovecraft?
Fans of HPL himself will be grateful to Necronomicon Press for two new works honoring the 20th-century horror master. Compiled by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz,
packs 500 pages with anecdotal memoirs by people who knew the Providence, R.I., writer, while
edited by Joshi, provides a tasting menu of his wide-ranging nonfiction. For the fiction,
is in some ways more valuable than Leslie S. Klinger’s first “Annotated Lovecraft” because it concentrates on less familiar work.
To paraphrase “Little Women,” it wouldn’t be Christmas without any ghost stories. Specializing in Irish writers of supernatural fiction, Swan River Press has just issued a beautiful keepsake volume of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s
in which an unfortunate cleric finds himself bedeviled by a demonic, red-eyed monkey only he can see. Along with essays by Brian J. Showers and Jim Rockhill, this edition of Le Fanu’s Victorian masterpiece comes with a CD of the Wireless Mystery Theatre performing the story.
Any lover of classic mysteries will ooh and aah over
by John Curran, our leading Agatha Christie scholar. Ranging from the 1930s through the 1980s, this lavish art book reproduces the dust jacket covers of every title issued by the detective fiction imprint. What’s more, it includes each book’s descriptive blurb and Curran’s commentary.
Collins used to advertise “a Christie for Christmas,” but there’s plenty of excellent entertainment to be found in the Golden Age rivals of Dame Agatha. For example, American Mysteries Classics, an imprint
Press);
of Penzler Publishers, has just reissued John Dickson Carr’s dazzling howdunit,
Its magnificently farfetched plot turns on a line from G.K. Chesterton’s first Father Brown story, “The Blue Cross”: “There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his singular height.” If you are drawn to murder in locked rooms and other impossible crimes, be sure to check out American Mystery Classics’ earlier titles, notably Ellery Queen’s “The Chinese Orange Mystery” and Clayton Rawson’s “Death From a Top Hat.”
But don’t overlook the offerings, past and present, of the British Library Crime Classics, available here from Poisoned Pen Press.
is this year’s seasonal collection, compiled by series general editor Martin Edwards. The largely Golden Age assortment features an exploit of Baroness Orczy’s Lady Molly of Scotland Yard and clever tales by Ronald Knox, Cyril Hare and Julian Symons.
In the 1920s and ’30s, Black Mask magazine took murder back onto the mean streets. Milton Shaw’s biography of his father, chronicles (American Mystery Classics); (University of Illinois (Black Mask)
the life of the pulp magazine’s editor, with anecdotes about such famous contributors as Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner. If you’d like to explore hard-boiled storytelling from the 1950s, pick up
edited by Jeff Vorzimmer, with memoir-like essays by Lawrence Block and Barry Malzberg. Its publisher, Stark House, also reprints paperback classics of postwar noir fiction.
Savvy readers of Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” quickly realize that this four-volume masterpiece of the 1980s resembles an iceberg, with a lot going on beneath the surface of the beautifully crafted text. That’s why Michael Andre Driussi’s latest from Sirius Fiction,
is an essential vade mecum. Similarly, Gwyneth Jones’ and Robert Markley’s “
are welcome new titles in the University of Illinois’ series “Modern Masters of Science Fiction.” Russ was a pioneering feminist author, best known for her 1975 gender-questioning tour de force “The Female Man,” while Robinson regularly envisions utopian and dystopian futures in, for example, the award-winning Mars trilogy and the recent “New York 2140.”