AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Our latest video is brought to you by the letter P: Penguin, Puffin, Ptarmigan, Peacock and Pelican – apparently not even all of the “P-birds” in the Penguin pantheon. It also sheds some light on the different colored covers on the vintage Penguin paperbacks you no doubt come across in bookstores. Orange, cerise, dark blue, [...]

Measuring only about four inches and bound in a simple embossed leather covering the books of the Little Leather Library are absolutely Spartan in design. Max Sackheim,Harry Scherman and Charles and Albert Boni knew they would need to be thrifty if they were going to successfully launch a publishing house in the middle of World [...]

While doing some research for a feature, I came across a Penguin imprint I hadn’t seen before – Ptarmigan Books. I knew it was Penguin immediately, not just from the name (though I suspected, because they do have a theme – Penguin, Pelican, Puffin… why not Ptarmigan?) but also because the cover art struck me. [...]

Go back in time to the era of Downton Abbey and discover what was being read. Titles published by A&C Black would have been found on many bookshelves and these beautiful vintage editions have lost none of their appeal. Famous for publishing P.G. Wodehouse’s early novels and the Who’s Who reference book of society, A&C [...]

To mark the launch of the Penguin English Library, Penguin commissioned this sweet animated video from the critically-acclaimed director Woof Wan-Bau. The video depicts one lucky (and familiar!) pengun finding his way to the glorious land of books. The Penguin English Library is: “…100 of the best novels in the English language. These are books [...]

On this day in 1960, the landmark obscenity case over Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence ended with the acquittal of Penguin Books. The publisher had been sued for publishing Lawrence’s novel, which details the steamy affair between the wife of a wealthy, paralysed landowner and his gamekeeper. All this seems a million miles away [...]

Taschen, one of our favorite publishers, has issued The James Bond Archives edited by Paul Duncan. The publisher claims the 600-page heavyweight book is “the most complete account of the making of the series, covering every James Bond film ever made.” Duncan spent two years researching over “one million images and 100 filing cabinets of [...]

In 2004, Akashic Books published Brooklyn Noir, a collection of short noir stories set around Brooklyn. People loved the regional authenticity and hardboiled, honest-to-goodness grit, and a series was born. Now you can read about murder in Mumbai, trouble in Trinidad, a corpse in Cape Cod and far beyond – the Akashic Noir series is [...]

Assouline publishes big, bold and beautiful books about art, architecture, design, fashion, food, travel, photography and much more. This publishing house was only founded in 1994 but it is already famous for producing luxury books that would grace any coffee table. This selection from Assouline Publishing ranges from Cecil Beaton to Penthouse and from Rene [...]

Oh Gods, kill me now. According to the Time Magazine NewsFeed, who I can only pray are having some peculiarly-timed April Fool’s-style laugh at our expense, things are about to get a whole lot worse. Publishers eager to cash in on the current craze of….”mommy porn”….*shudder* are reportedly planning to release steamier versions of some [...]