My library’s semi-annual book sale was this weekend! Naturally, I went both yesterday and today, and I got some good stuff!

Saturday’s haul:

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby — First of all, how excellent is that title?! This is a collection of “scary fairy tales,” and I’ve heard a lot of good things about it.

Ben H. Winters, The Last Policeman — I love the premise of this one: A policeman tries to investigate a murder, but no one really cares because the world is about to end. To what extent is it meaningful to bring a murderer to justice in these circumstances?

Louis Bayard, The Black Tower — To me, this book sounds a bit like Sherlock Holmes just after the French Revolution. A famous detective and his assistant try to track down the missing Dauphin, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Meg Keene, A Practical Wedding — I read this book recently and really liked it, so I couldn’t resist picking it up!

Cheryl Sawyer, The Winter Prince — I read Sawyer’s The Code of Love a couple years ago and loved it, so I’m interested in reading more of her stuff. Plus, this book is set during the English Civil War — and one of the characters is Prince Rupert of Bohemia, who also made an appearance in A Midsummer Tempest!

Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance / The League of Frightened Men — I’ve been wanting to read some of Rex Stout’s mysteries for a while now, and this omnibus contains the first two Nero Wolfe books.

Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire — I’m a sucker for anything set in England in the late 18th and/or early 19th centuries. So even though I don’t read a ton of nonfiction, I really like reading biographies of famous figures from this era; I always learn a lot about the time period.

Sunday’s haul:

Hannah March, The Devil’s Highway and A Distinction of Blood — Mysteries set in Georgian England! I’m excited, although unfortunately these are books #2 and #3 in the series. But I was able to find book #1, The Complaint of the Dove, on Paperback Swap, so it’s all good.

Michael Innes, Death at the President’s Lodging and Hamlet, Revenge! — Again, I read and enjoyed Hamlet, Revenge! earlier this year, so I figured I’d grab both of these books by Innes.

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, The Most Beautiful Book in the World — I kept seeing this book when it first came out years ago, and I was always interested in reading it, so I seized the opportunity to pick it up for a great price!

Bernard Cornwell & Susannah Kells, The Fallen Angels — More French Revolution goings-on…this book sounds Scarlet Pimpernel-esque, which is always going to grab my attention!

Stefanie Pintoff, A Curtain Falls — The sequel to In the Shadow of Gotham, which I quite liked.

In sum, I spent $25.50 on 14 books, all of which are in pretty good condition, so I’m happy! Of course, now I have to find a place to put them all….

This weekend was my local library’s semi-annual sale, and because I am a crazy person, I went three times! Here’s what I bought:

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford — Picked up this one on a whim because it looked interesting; apparently it’s an autobiographical work about the author’s childhood in early 20th-century Oxfordshire.

J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country — Saw this one in a bookstore a while ago and wanted it, so this weekend I seized the opportunity!

Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories — I’ve been slowly accumulating all the Lord Peter Wimsey books. My goal is to read them all in publication order, so obviously the short stories will be important for that!

Shusaku Endo, Silence — Been interested in this one for ages. It’s about Christian missionaries in Japan, which is a fascinating subject that I know little about.

Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop — I loved Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels and have been wanting to read this sequel.

Susannah Fullerton, Jane Austen and Crime — It’s Austen-related, so obviously I was intrigued right away! This particular subject is an aspect of Austen’s work I don’t know much about.

In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire & Patrick Leigh Fermor — I don’t actually know who either of these people are, but I really like reading letters in general. They give such unique insights into people’s characters!

John Curran, Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making — This was an inexpensive hardcover in great condition, and I am a huge Agatha Christie fan, so why not?

Juliet Marillier, Blade of Fortriu and The Well of Shades — I read the first book in this trilogy, The Dark Mirror, a few years ago. Since I liked it a lot, why not get the rest of the series?

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings — These are some of my very favorite books, so of course I had them already…but my copies were so ugly! Allow me to demonstrate:

 (new cover)     vs.      (old cover)

You guys, that dude on the right is supposed to be Aragorn. So you can see why I needed new copies of these books! And the new covers, unlike the old ones, don’t make me sad at all! 🙂

All told, I got 14 books for $30. I know some book sales are cheaper, but sadly my library doesn’t do the whole “Five bucks for a whole bag” thing. And everything is in pretty good shape, so I’m happy! Now the only problem is how to fit all these books onto my overstuffed shelves…