A selection from this season's acquisitions. Prices on inquiry.
Author unlisted. Bound in unmarked calf. A ledger of dates best avoided, kept faithfully by a mortician who outlived every entry in it but his own. The final page is blank, which several previous owners found more troubling than anything written on the ones before it.
By Cordelia Ashgrove. A parlour-game manual whose rules rearrange themselves, subtly, each time the book is closed. Early owners reported winning more often the longer they played. Later owners stopped keeping score.
Anonymous. An etiquette guide for hosting visitors who were not, strictly speaking, invited, nor entirely alive. Includes chapters on seating arrangements, appropriate conversation, and the correct way to ask a guest to leave without causing offence to anyone still capable of taking any.
A bundle of letters between two sisters, one of whom stopped writing back in 1861 and never quite stopped answering. The handwriting on the later pages is disputed. The postmarks are not.
By Emrys Vane. Sheet music, according to the frontispiece, "intended for the comfort of those still settling into the ground." No recording of it is known to exist, and the shop intends to keep it that way.