Hardcover with dust jacket, brown cloth with gilt spine titles, 14.5 by 21.7 cm, 246 pp. Near fine, unread copy. From the flaps: “Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside-to move, in fact, to the little cobblestone village of Hay-on-Wye, the 'Town of Books,' boasting 1500 inhabitants—and forty bookstores. Antiquarian bookstores, no less. Hay's newest citizens accordingly take up residence in a sixteenth-century apartment over a bookstore, meeting the village's large population of misfits and bibliomaniacs by working for world-class eccentric Richard Booth—the self-declared King of Hay, owner of the local castle, and proprietor of the world's largest and most chaotic used book warren. A useless clerk, Paul delights in shifting dusty stacks of books around and sifting them for ancient gems like Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable, Confessions of an Author's Wife, and I Was Hitler's Maid. Meanwhile, as he struggles to put the finishing touches on his own first book, he also duly fulfills his duty as a new British citizen by simultaneously applying to be a peer in the House of Lords and attempting to buy Sixpence House, a beautiful and neglected old tumbledown pub for sale in the town's center. Inviting readers into a sanctuary for book lovers, and guiding us through the production of the author’s own first book, Sixpence House is a wonderfully engaging meditation on what books means to us, and how their meaning can resonate long after they have been abandoned by their public. For Paul Collins, there is a curious comfort to be found in his own books’ future: rubbing bindings with the rest of the books that time forgot.”