Murder by Death

I almost forgot about the sale this weekend.  We have one Friends of the Library organisation in our area and they have two huge sales a year.  I did forget about the preview sale on Friday (members only), so I made sure to be there bright and early before the doors opened Saturday, along with about 70 others.

When the doors opened, I was disappointed to see that the sale was half as big this year; only one table of fiction, as opposed to a whole room of it in the last sale.  People were hoovering up the books almost faster than you could look at them and I almost left without buying anything.  Then I spied The Best of Saki, a Folio Society edition that looks to be never read so I snatched that up for 1.00.

Then I discovered they'd pushed some carts outside the doors with "clearance" books on them - all .50 a piece.  Going out there I found four more books including one fun surprise:

Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart was one of those books I remember seeing as a kid in my moms library.  Supposed to be quite gothic...

Summer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse - I keep picking these up as I find them cheap.  

Jennifer by Janet Whitney is an Australian historical romance I have no intention of ever reading.  I just bought it for the title; at .50 I figured I could afford to be whimsical.

The Foundling by Georgette Heyer was the big surprise of the day.  It's missing its dust jacket, but is otherwise in really good condition.  When I got it home, I discovered it's a true UK first edition.  Woot!  Since I'm not a true collector, and have no intention of selling it, I'll keep an eye out; maybe someday I'll find a dust jacket for it.  

Even though I'd never part with my books, I always get a thrill when I find one that's actually worth a lot more than I paid for it - sort of like finding buried treasure.  The fact that I wouldn't know how to find valuable books if I wanted to makes actually stumbling over them even more of a rush.

So, 5 books, 3 bucks and as I paid, the volunteer told me the next sale in 6 months would be back to full sized: they just temporarily lost the use of two of the rooms they normally use.  Happy days!  :)