Books

First Printing. Octavo (21.5cm); red paper and navy blue cloth-covered boards, with titles stamped in gilt on spine and authors initials blind-stamped on front cover; dustjacket; [vi],197,[5]pp. Small, faint sticker shadow to upper front pastedown, with front board just slightly wider than the rear; contents clean; Near Fine. Dustajcket is unclipped (priced $5.95), gently spine-sunned and lightly edgeworn, with a tiny bubble beneath the laminate at lower front joint, and a faint diagonal crease to upper front flap; about Near Fine. A spare, suspenseful novel from the author's Appalachian period the story of a murderer and necrophile who is outcast from his small community, and living with the decomposing bodies of his victims in the mountains and in an underground cave. Basis for James Franco's 2013 film, starring Scott Haze and Tim Blake Nelson.

Cormac McCarthy's 'Child of God' tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whose life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. McCarthy depicts the life of a violent young outcast and serial killer in 1960s Appalachian Tennessee. Though the narrative is stark, the protagonist's isolation and disaffection are depicted with empathy by McCarthy, whose prose reveals the layers of humanity in even the most desolate and detestable characters.