The day Thriftbooks sent me a book I did not order, and it turned out to be a collectible

/ Lisa R. Howeler

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Sometimes, I share what I’ve been listening to.

Thursday I received a package from Thriftbooks and inside was supposed to be a copy of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (check), a copy of The Nancy Drew Scrapbook by Karen Plunket-Powel (check), and a Murder She Wrote Mystery (no check). Instead of the Murder She Wrote mystery, I found a very old book with a crumbling dust jacket and more dust than this mild-asthmatic with allergies was comfortable with. I barely looked at the book but I thought the title looked French.

Later that night after sending off an annoyed email to Thriftbooks to tell them they sent me the wrong book, I decided to take a closer look at the book, to at least find out the name.

I had never heard of the book, but it was called Murder A La Stroganoff by Caryl Brahms and SJ Snow. Inside the cover, it had a stamp that said it was from the Newberry Library, had been retired from their shelves, and was part of the Barzel Dance Collection. I searched a little more online and these books are fairly rare because it is a first edition from 1938 and the book is no longer in print. They did issue a paperback copy in 1985, but there are not a ton of the hardcovers published by The Crime Club, Doubleday & Co, New York out there.

Sadly, the book isn’t necessarily worth a ton without the dust jacket, which crumbled in my hands when I opened the package, but I couldn’t find one online being sold for less than $20 so, hey, if I ever do decide to sell it, I could make at least $20 off something I was shipped for free. With the dust jacket it could be worth up to $150. Apparently there aren’t a ton of these first editions out there and it’s a bit of a cult classic among mystery readers.

Thriftbooks did get back to me, by the way, and didn’t get the point that they sent the wrong book. Instead, they said they were sorry the book didn’t show up the way I wanted it to and that they didn’t have any other books with that title (they still think it is the Murder She Wrote book I first ordered) so to just keep the book and do what it with I wanted. They then issued me a refund for the book.

The book is a mystery and crime book with some satire mixed in about the ballet industry and is the second book in a series. I can not find a description of the book line but I think I actually want to read it so I might get a copy of the paperback instead of trying to read this older book which might bother my allergies.

I will be writing a blog post in the future about the book and its authors, though, because I fell down a rabbit hole researching what the book might be worth. I suppose that in the end getting the wrong book wasn’t such a bad thing.

Last week I finished The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie and The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery).

I’ll have reviews of both of them soon but I did enjoy them both. The Pale Horse was obviously more adult — I mean, not like “adult-adult” but more mature themes. But not like … mature-mature. *wink*

I’ve been enjoying some leisurely reading of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Imitable Jeeves.

The book is so funny and witty. It’s been a very nice escape. The Jeeves books are comedic books about Bertie Wooster, a British gentleman from London, who is always getting into somewhat weird situations where he has to be bailed out or helped by his valet Jeeves.

This book is exactly what I have needed this week.

I think I’m going to have to give up on The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh before I even really get too far in it. I pushed through the first chapter wondering why the author was giving me so much information at once and when she was going to get to an actual story. The first chapter is entirely Isadora standing in a supermarket, thinking about her life with very little interaction with anyone else or action. It looks to me like the whole book is mainly her thinking about things and dumping a lot of info on the reader all in one go. I just can’t get into it, in other words.

I might try again this week, but otherwise I am going to move on to Prince Caspian and then But First Murder by Bee Littlefield.

This week I watched Gaslight (1944) as part of my Summer of Angela movie watching event and really enjoyed it. It isn’t a movie I’d watch over and over because it is pretty dark in some ways, but I did enjoy it.   I also watched The Rains Came, a 1939 movie with Myrna Loy and Tyrone Powers and Abbott and Costello in The Jack and The Beanstalk.
This morning I watched church with Lisa Harper as the guest pastor and followed it up with a couple episodes of Just A Few Acres Farm.

I’m working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School and wrote a little more this past week. I hope to have more time to write this week since Little Miss is going to VBS and I’ll probably wait at the church for her to save gas.

On the blog I shared:

Saturday Evening Chat: Fourth of July and prayers, not blaming, for Texas

Summer of Angela: Gaslight (1944)

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot July 4th!

A Good Book And A Cup of Tea Link Up for July

Top Ten Tuesday: The Ten Most Recent Books I’ve Read

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

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30 thoughts on “The day Thriftbooks sent me a book I did not order, and it turned out to be a collectible”

  1. I’ve had two surprise parcels recently – one a jigsaw puzzle I won for doing a questionnaire – they didn’t tell me I won, it just arrived, and the other a bunch of flowers for copy-typing a couple of books for a publisher! Fortunately nothing wrong, though I was out at Spanish conversation when the flowers arrived and my husband did wonder who they were from!

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  4. Sometimes it’s surprising what is worth something and what isn’t.
    I see books online with prices all over the place and with some sellers it makes me wonder if they ever sell anything at all.
    A freebie is always nice! I hope you can get the book that you really wanted easily elsewhere.
    If you have an OpenLibrary account, you can read “Murder a la Stroganoff” here, by the way
    https://archive.org/details/murderlastrogano0000brah

    My book choices are still eclectic, at the moment I’m on two biographies (one is one Liz recommended), two children’s books, and vintage crime.
    I have watched several of the Lansbury movies coming up – my Gaslight post is up, but I’ll skip the next two, one because of access, the other because I don’t want to see it – and of course there are my silent movies.

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    • PJ Fitzsimmons has a series you might love (if you haven’t already tried it.) His Aunty Boisjoly mysteries are PG Wodehouse style and are an absolute riot.

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    • It is very weird to find out that some things are worth something and other things really aren’t. This one could sell up to $150 if it had had the dust jacket. And I do have an account there! How do you know all this stuff about finding free books??! Such a wealth of information.

      Which ones don’t you want to see? The made-for-tv ones? I can’t say I blame you. I picked a couple duds…not sure what I was thinking. Ha! I sort of want to replace them with other ones and might do that since this is just a thing I’m sort of doing for me and you aren’t watching these two!

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      • I’m a librarian, I love free books 😉

        Nothing wrong about duds, they belong to an artist’s work just as much as the good ones, but I just couldn’t put up with a Pilcher. I tried, but had to give up quickly.
        I’m going to try the Pirates this week (I started by bookmarking the version that works best for me), if I manage, my post won’t be going live before Sunday, though. I had also found the one with Burr already.

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  6. Gosh, you had me really excited for a minute there! But, $20 is $20! I finished Twilight in Paris or something like that. It was a WWII book. I usually don’t read war books having grown up during the Vietnam War, but this was good. I read it in just a few days. We have been watching “Ginny & Georgia” which is a YA show, but a fairly mature YA show. Mike has been watching Bruce Lee videos…he gets on the weirdest kicks on what he watches!

    https://marshainthemiddle.com/

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  7. Wow, what a fun surprise find! Although not too fun for your allergies! I was disappointed when I found out that one of the Gladys Taber books that I donated when we downsized is now worth over $100! Oh well, at least someone else is having the joy of reading it now! I’m still praying for the people of Texas also, and agree with your post from yesterday. Let’s just keep politics out of it, and show compassion for all the families. 🙏🙏🙏

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    • I am afraid to get rid of any antique books I have in case they are worth something! My husband picked up a stack of Mark Twain books from the mid-1800s. They smell awful and I don’t know what to do with them but I don’t want to get rid of them just in case!

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    • Oh thank you for linking the review! I like getting different perspectives I might get more into it if I keep going too. Sometimes I find a book doesn’t work for me at one point and I pick it up later and then it does work for me so that might be the case here.

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    • It’s totally cracking me up right now but I sort of get the British sense of humor -sort of a dry and sarcastic one so that’s probably why I like it. Some people might not like that sense of humor.

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  12. If you thought Isadora Duncan was doing nothing in the supermarket, you should have read on to compare that first chapter with the last hundred pages. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Some good parts, though, and it could be an excellent prod for unhappy people to try some things.

    My cousin gave me a box of books that my uncle had, and she asked me to see if any of them were worth anything. The most valuable book in the box was a book about the oilfield (really?!) selling online for $250. I gave her back the box. Out of my league.

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