Compare all attributes in M:N relationship
Well, after some experiments and close reading of multiple SQL tutorials, I found this is a quite good solution:

SELECT DISTINCTROW book_id, title, year_of_publication FROM
((book
INNER JOIN (SELECT * FROM link_author_book 
                 INNER JOIN author ON link_author_book.author = author.auth_id
                 WHERE author.firstname = "Jeff" AND author.lastname = "Carpenter") AS author
ON author.book = book.book_id)

INNER JOIN (SELECT * FROM link_place_book
                 INNER JOIN pub_place ON link_place_book.p_place = pub_place.place_id
                 WHERE pub_place.placename = "Sebastopol" OR pub_place.placename = "Tokyo") AS place 
ON place.book = book.book_id)

WHERE title = "Cassandra: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition" AND
year_of_publication = 2016 AND pagecount = 370;


This should return exactly the required book and nothing else. Obviously, hard coded values can be replaced with values from frontend forms or something, to make this more flexible ... Any suggestions to optimize this solution are welcome.