Monkey House Books

Monkey House Books Monkey House Books is a mail order, used book dealer located on Long Island.

We offer quality used books and ephemera at reasonable prices through marketplaces like AbeBooks.com and Biblio.com.

Today is the birthday of English author Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928, whose works offer a portrait of rural life in a moderni...
06/02/2026

Today is the birthday of English author Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928, whose works offer a portrait of rural life in a modernizing world. Hardy was born in Dorsetshire, which became the Wessex of many of his novels. His father was a stonemason, and Thomas was apprenticed to an architect, but he read widely in literature, science, and philosophy. His early poems went unpublished, and he offered his first 2 novels anonymously.

The success of Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874 enabled him to pursue a literary career in earnest, and he wrote more than a dozen novels over the next 24 years, as well as 8 volumes of poetry later in life. His works include such classics as Return of the Native, Jude the Obscure, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hardy’s tales are deterministic and naturalistic, with the natural world almost a character in itself. But there is no idyllic, simple life in Hardy’s rural settings; instead, his protagonists often struggle against their environments and their fates with an almost tragic intensity.

Pictured here are vintage paperback editions of The Trumpet-Major, a love story set during the Napoleonic Wars; and Return of the Native, the sad tale of Clym Yeobright and his life on Egdon Heath.

Memorial Day is the traditional start of summer on Long Island, and like many area beaches, it’s opening weekend for Jon...
05/20/2026

Memorial Day is the traditional start of summer on Long Island, and like many area beaches, it’s opening weekend for Jones Beach State Park. With 6.5 miles of beachfront and easy access from New York City and all of Long Island, it’s possibly the most popular beach on the East Coast, welcoming 9.5 million visitors in 2024.

Work on Jones Beach began in the 1920s with a massive dredging operation and the planting of acres of beach grass to stabilize the dunes. The park opened on August 4, 1929, and quickly became a beloved destination for residents of the New York metropolitan area. From the iconic 188’ Italianate water tower to the stylish Art Deco bathhouses, many of the original buildings and amenities are still in use today. The park also boasts an amphitheater, boardwalk, restaurants, and playgrounds, making for the perfect getaway on a hot summer day.

Pictured here is Jones Beach: An Illustrated History by John Hane (2007), a nostalgic look back at this quintessential New York icon.

New York City in the Spring has always been surprisingly beautiful - here are some views from Impressionist New York by ...
05/11/2026

New York City in the Spring has always been surprisingly beautiful - here are some views from Impressionist New York by William H. Gerdts (Abbeville Press, 1994).

Today, April 25, is the birthday of the writer Howard R. Garis. You have probably never heard of him, but he - along wit...
04/25/2026

Today, April 25, is the birthday of the writer Howard R. Garis. You have probably never heard of him, but he - along with his wife Lilian - was possibly the most prolific author of children’s books in the first half of the 20th century. Writing under several pseudonyms, Garis created the Tom Swift series, many of the Bobbsey Twins books, and a host of other popular children’s series.

Pictured here is a 1970s hardcover reprint of Uncle Wiggily’s Story Book, which features several of Garis’ classic adventures of the good-natured & well-dressed bunny gentleman, Uncle Wiggily Longears. Garis’ most famous creation, Uncle Wiggily first appeared in the Newark News newspaper in 1910. Over the next several decades, the paper published a new Uncle Wiggily story every day, ultimately amounting to more than 11,000 stories. Beginning in 1912, the Uncle Wiggily tales were collected in a total of 79 books. Uncle Wiggily even had his own popular board game to help young children learn to read!

Isak Dinesen was the pseudonym of Karen Blixen, born in Denmark in 1885. From 1914 to 1931, she managed a coffee plantat...
04/17/2026

Isak Dinesen was the pseudonym of Karen Blixen, born in Denmark in 1885. From 1914 to 1931, she managed a coffee plantation in British East Africa (now Kenya). From those years came her engaging and transporting memoir, Out of Africa. First published in 1938, it is considered her finest work. The book was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1985 starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.

Blixen was a daring and extremely capable woman for her time - she farmed, hunted, doctored, flew in early aircraft, talked with Somali chiefs, entertained the Prince of Wales, and was a pioneer in the typically male sphere of the adventure memoir. She is most assuredly at the center of her own story, not a spectator or supporting character.

Pictured here is a copy of Shadows on the Grass, a companion piece to Out of Africa. The book contains four autobiographical episodes, offering more of her experiences with her African neighbors. This edition was published by Michael Joseph in London in 1960.

Harry Houdini, born Erich Weiss in Budapest on March 24, 1874, was an American magician and escape artist known for his ...
03/24/2026

Harry Houdini, born Erich Weiss in Budapest on March 24, 1874, was an American magician and escape artist known for his bizarre & still-impressive feats of strength and endurance. The “Master Mystifier” - even 100 years after his death - remains the man who comes to mind for most people when asked to name a famous magician. He was particularly celebrated for his skill at freeing himself from any and every restraint, including ropes, chains, handcuffs, and sealed containers.

The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman (2006) is a comprehensive and sometimes controversial biography that utilizes a wealth of personal letters and Houdini’s voluminous scrapbooks to craft a meticulous and imaginative new look at the great magician. The book offers new details, including Houdini’s possible involvement with American intelligence in the years before World War I. Sadly, the great man died of a ruptured appendix in Detroit in 1926.

Edward Albee, born March 12, 1928, was a brilliant American playwright whose one-act plays like The Zoo Story (1959) and...
03/12/2026

Edward Albee, born March 12, 1928, was a brilliant American playwright whose one-act plays like The Zoo Story (1959) and The Sandbox (1960) established his place in the Theatre of the Absurd, an avant-garde dramatic movement emphasizing the illogical and purposeless nature of existence.

Albee’s best-known play is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a scathing portrayal of a marriage that reflects the dramatic influences of Eugene O’Neill and August Strindberg. Albee often dealt with questions of domination & submission, violence & love, illusion & reality. His desperate characters play cruel psychological games as the playwight himself toys with them in order to portray the emptiness of modern society on the stage.

Pictured here are Fireside Theatre Book Club editions of Tiny Alice (1965), a “staggering drama of malevolence and evil,” which opened at New York’s Billy Rose Theatre on 29 December 1964 starring John Gielgud as Julian and Irene Worth as Miss Alice, and A Delicate Balance (1966 Pulitzer Prize winner) which, like many of Albee’s works, is noted for its “brilliantly corroding and lacerating wit.” The play strikes its titular balance between wisdom & folly, fact & fancy, simplicity & complexity. It opened in New York’s Martin Beck Theatre on 12 September 1966 and starred Jessica Tandy as Agnes and Hume Cronyn as Tobias.

John Steinbeck, 1902-1968, was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize in 1952. His wo...
02/27/2026

John Steinbeck, 1902-1968, was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize in 1952. His works are realistic studies of life among the poor and working classes in America, especially of itinerant farm labor in California. Almost all his novels are still in print, and many are still familiar reading for students today, including Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, Cannery Row, and East of Eden.

The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s major work and the best example of Proletarian literature that flourished during the Great Depression of the 1930s, depicts the predicament of tenant farmers affected by drought, mechanized farming, and bank foreclosures. Published in 1939, Grapes offers us realism and naturalism with broad themes of family unity, the importance of all life, and man’s relationship to the land.

The Joad family are ‘Okies’ heading to California to escape environmental devastation and economic ruin with the promise of farm work out west. Along the way, we see their personal struggles & failings as they face ill treatment & prejudice, truck breakdowns & deaths in the family. When they arrive, work is almost impossible to find, a day’s wage picking peaches is only enough to buy a single meal, and there are always others behind them willing to work for even less. Facing increasing desperation and family breakdown, the indomitable matriarch Ma Joad draws on every resource of hope and strength to keep ‘the fambly’ together.

A harsh indictment of the capitalist economy, The Grapes of Wrath has often been banned, and the social injustice depicted sometimes led to accusations of Communism and revolutionary beliefs. But Steinbeck’s social criticism was a clarion call akin to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 19th century, shedding light on an outrageous social situation at the economic bottom of society and depicting the universal human struggle against oppression & misery. Steinbeck believed a writer must “set down his time as nearly as he can understand it” and “serve as the watchdog of society.” With a deep sense of humanity all his own, Steinbeck shows us that anger and not despair spurs one to action, and with The Grapes of Wrath, he has left us perhaps the most poignant social document in 20th century American literature.

In Big Apple Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in New York (2020), Jeffrey Sussman profiles the most powerful c...
02/20/2026

In Big Apple Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in New York (2020), Jeffrey Sussman profiles the most powerful crime bosses, gang members, corrupt cops, and mob associates of the 20th century. From the legendary Prohibition & Depression-era gangsters through the crime families of the 1980s and beyond, each chapter is a self-contained biographical portrait compiled with the assistance of criminal defense attorneys and retired NYPD detectives. The pages are full of colorful characters such as Arnold Rothstein (aka The Master), Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Dutch Schultz, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, Albert “Mad Hatter” Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Carlo Gambino, Joey Gallo, Paul Castellano, John Gotti, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, and Sammy “The Bull” Gravano.

In My Bo***ge and My Freedom, journalist, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass recalled his last meeting with his...
02/14/2026

In My Bo***ge and My Freedom, journalist, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass recalled his last meeting with his mother, Harriet Bailey, when she presented him with a cake. “The ‘sweet cake’ my mother gave me was in the shape of a heart.” Although enslaved people rarely knew their birthdates, Douglass believed he was born in February 1818, and he associated his birthday with Valentine’s Day. Sadly, he only met his mother a few times, as it was common to remove infants from their mother’s care and place them with elderly women who could no longer work in the fields.

Born in Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass escaped enslavement in 1838 and fled to the North. In 1841, he delivered a speech at an anti-slavery meeting in Nantucket, and afterward he was much in demand as a speaker. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published in 1845 and covers his early life in bo***ge. His honest portrayal of the dehumanizing effects of slavery served to open the eyes of many white Northerners, and almost 200 years later it remains a widely-read classic slave narrative.

Douglass founded and published the North Star newspaper, was a tireless abolitionist, promoted the idea of Black troops during the American Civil War (2 of his own sons served in the famed 54th Massachusetts), and advocated for the civil rights of free Blacks. He held various public offices after the war and encouraged African-Americans to embrace the United States as their own country.

Cedar Hill, Douglass’s home in Washington from 1877 until his death in 1895, has been restored and is now a National Historic Site. In the house are many of Douglass’ personal possessions, including his library, with its cast iron stove, writing desk, and collection of books.

Pictured is a handsome but inexpensive paperback edition of Douglass’ works published by Borders. It contains the Narrative, his novel The Heroic Slave, and a number of speeches and essays, including John Brown, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Fighting Rebels With Only One Hand, and Impartial Suffrage. His writing remains important, powerful, and inspirational even today.

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