Just back from the New Haven Public Library book sale at the Westville branch. Five bucks a box in the final hours.

Among the finds:

• The Black Press 1827-1890: The Quest for National Identity, edited by Martin Dann.

• The Man Who Invented Saturday Morning and Other Adventures in American Enterprise, by David Owen.

• A lonely volume of The Complete Works of Frank Norris, consisting of Blix, Moran of the Lady Letty and Essays on Authorship.

• The spooky purple-skeleton trade-paper edition of J.K. Huysman’s hellish novel La-Bas.

• Library-bound copy  of John O’Hara’s Ourselves to Know.

• A couple of Sandburgs: American Songbag and a collection of his poems packaged for young readers

• Norman Spinrad’s Songs from the Stars, in hardcover.

• Two trashy Hollywood mysteries by Stephen J. Cannell. Also some theater and movie mysteries by Simon Brett and Helen Rose.

• Biographies of Chaplin (the Roger Manvell one), Kay Kendall, Keith Moon, Sammy Davis Jr., Edwin Forrest, Houdini and Moss Hart

• Farm Journal’s Country Cookbook (the “revised, enlarged” 1972 edition of the 1959 original)

• Audiobooks (on cassette) of Stephen King’s Blood and Smoke (an audio-only set of the short stories Lunch at the Gotham Café, 1408 and In the Deathroom) and George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman and the Tiger.

..and lots of stuff for the kids.

Total cost: $10 for a good cause.