Plots and Counterplots: More Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott.
New York: William Morrow & Company, 1976. Hardcover. Edited by Madeleine Stern. Small 4to. Green cloth spine with gilt lettering and black paper over boards, pictorial dust jacket. 315pp, (4pp). Fine/fine. Item #48749
ISBN: 0688030467
Superbly tight and bright first edition of this quartet of pseudonymously published Alcott potboilers: "V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots," "A Marble Woman: or, The Mysterious Model," "The Skeleton in the Closet," "A Whisper in the Dark" and "Perilous Play." A fine decorative-edged archival bookplate on front flyleaf is signed boldly by Stern in black ballpoint and inscribed "For my colleague...." This is a sequel to Stern's 1975 "Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott," in which she first lays out in riveting fashion how she discovered these thrillers published under the name "A.M. Bernard" in long-forgotten weeklies.
Price: $75.00