Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
The man who met the train : a Carl Wilcox mystery
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Rare Books
Image not available
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Manuscripts
The Sayre Macneil papers contain papers relating to: the pioneer Argello family (1875 to 1957), the Argello family estate and claims before the American Mexican Claims Commission involving the Argello Properties in and near Tijuana. Alfred Henry Wilcox and the Colorado River Navigation in the 19th century. There are also a number of early land papers of the Wilcox family from Chatham, Connecticut, place of Alfred H. Wilcox's birth (1736 to 1928). The Sayre Macneil papers (1869 to 1948), includes mainly correspondence relative to academic and legal matters.
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Rare Books
"A small-town Chief of Police with reactionary politics and national ambitions, Ben Orton struck fear in the hearts of anyone who fell out of line in his little fiefdom of La Caleta. Most recently that has included gay rights activists pushing for the hiring of a police officer from their community. When big Ben is found in his backyard bludgeoned to death by a large terracotta pot, the police arrest the outspoken gay owner of a local nursery. Orton had a life insurance policy that brings death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter north to pry. As far as Dave can tell, the cops did almost nothing to investigate Orton's death and what evidence they did compile doesn't seem to add up. Dave quickly learns that the pool of suspects is much deeper than the police reported. Ben Orton may have seen himself as a pillar of the community but what many in La Caleta saw instead was a violent man whose commitment to enforcement didn't always also include room for the law. With an ailing father in the hospital and a relationship headed toward the rocks, a very distracted Brandstetter finds himself making more wrong moves than right while those on the other side of the thin blue line are making it painfully obvious his presence is not wanted"--Back cover.
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Rare Books
When Miles Hammond is invited to a meeting of the Murder Club in London, he is met instead with just two other guests and is treated to a strange tale of an impossible crime in France from years before-the murder of a man on a tower with only one staircase, under watch at the time the murder took place. With theories of levitating vampires abounding, the story comes home to Miles when he realizes that the librarian he has just hired for his home is none other than Fay Seton, a woman whose name still echoes from the heart of this bizarre and unsolved murder of the past.
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Rare Books
"In this swift, suspenseful novel of modern Africa, four white mean, mercenaries hired by the Army of Katange, take a native task force by train into the Congo interior to a little mining town threatened by hostile tribes. The boiling excitement of the story is heightened by the personal gethsemanes of the other white mercenaries. All find their destinies on the train from Katange, whether in death or in new life, or, in the case of Bruce Curry, in the rebirth of himself as a man able to believe again in love"--From dust jacket flap.
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Manuscripts
The chief topics of the Curphey papers are: his work as Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Battered Child Syndrome, air pollution, smoking and smog, aircraft accidents, suicide and suicide prevention, drug addiction and overdose, causes of death, homicides, asphyxia, autopsy, drowning, forensic pathology, forensic science, oral contraceptives, and violent deaths. The collection contains several boxes of glass lantern slides Curphey created for talks that he would give to other physicians. Prior to cataloging, most of the papers were stored in manila file folders with subject headings written in Curphey's handwriting. The current organizational structure of the collection for the most part replicates the classification system of Curphey's folders. In most cases, the contents of his folders were transferred in the order and under the conditions in which they were found. When appropriate and possible, the titles and sequence of Curphey's folders were retained. The original sequence of folders was not retained in those instances where no organizational schema seemed apparent, or when larger thematic groupings seemed preferable. For instance, all of Curphey's papers on air pollution and smoking, suicide, the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, battered child syndrome, and aviation accident investigations have been grouped together within the collection. While the contents of the folders on each of these topics generally replicate the contents of Curphey's individual folders, the folders themselves have been consolidated for organizational purposes and ease of access.
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Rare Books
An inordinately complex man who has been labeled everything from hero, to charlatan, to sadist, Thomas Edward Lawrence blazed his way to glory in the Arabian desert, then sought anonymity as a common soldier under an assumed name. The story opens with the death of Lawrence in a motorcycle accident in London at the age of 47, then flashbacks to recount his adventures: as a young intelligence officer in Cairo in 1916, he is given leave to investigate the progress of the Arab revolt against the Turks in World War I. In the desert, he organizes a guerrilla army and--for two years--leads the Arabs in harassing the Turks with desert raids, train-wrecking and camel attacks. Eventually, he leads his army northward and helps a British General destroy the power of the Ottoman Empire.
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