MISHA, THE MAGICIAN AND THE MYSTERIOUS AMULET

First edition of the author's second book. Inscribed presentation copy. Publisher's original red cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in dustwrapper. Illustrated throughout in black and white by John Woodgate. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with light bumping at the spine tips. The contents with a little rippling to the pages at the upper edge are clean throughout. Complete with the lightly creased dustwrapper which has a few small nicks and a single short closed tear at the extremities. Not price-clipped (£4.50 to the front flap).

Inscribed by the author in blue ink on the front endpaper "For ma, (again) / Lots of love, / Anthony xx / 29.8.82". An important presentation copy from the author to his beloved mother. Horowitz has made no secret of the fact that his wealthy but largely unhappy and brutal childhood compelled him to write for children as it allowed him to relive the formative years he never had. His father, a businessman and political fixer, who despite a love of literature and assembling an extensive library himself, ridiculed the commercial viability of his son's desire to become a writer. Sadly he died [and with him the whereabouts of the family fortune, never to be recovered] the year before his son's first book was accepted for publication. Horowitz describes his mother as an extraordinary woman whom he adored, encouraging his interest in reading and writing, and in his teens introducing him to classic horror novels such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Since the publication of this, his second novel, Anthony Horowitz has gone on to become one of the UK's most successful and sought after genre novelists and screenwriters creating new adventures for Ian Fleming's James Bond, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and writing for Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot!