by Laura Moriarty Signed first edition. New.

Set in Kerrville, Kansas, The Center of Everything is told by Evelyn Bucknow, an endearing character with a wholly refreshing way of looking at the world. Living with her single mother in a small apartment, Evelyn Bucknow is a young girl wincing her way through adolescence. With a voice that is as charming as it is recognizable, Evelyn immerses the reader in the dramas of an entire community. The people of Kerrville, stuck at once in the middle of nowhere but also at the center of everything, are the source from which Moriarty draws on universal dilemmas of love and belief to render a story that grows in emotional intensity until it lifts the reader to heights achieved only by the finest of fiction.

"The author makes fine use of simple, small-town events, refracting and re-examining them through Evelyn's changing perceptions….a warm, beguiling book full of hard-won wisdom.” Janet Maslin, the New York Times, June 30, 2003.

About the author: Laura Moriarty earned a degree in social work before returning for her M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. She was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and is now a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas, and is at work on her next novel.

The Center of Everything is her first novel. Since then she has written The Rest of Her Life (2007), While I'm Falling (2009), The Chaperone (2012), and, most recently the young adult novel American Heart (2018). Published in 2003 by Hyperion, New York ISBN: 1401300316 Edition: First Edition, First Printing Binding: Hardcover Condition: New Dust Jacket included. Condition of Dust Jacket: new Comments: Description: 291 p.; 24 cm.

LCCN: 2002032898

alk. paper Signed Copy

by Elisabeth Robinson An outpouring of cheers, tears, and applause propelled this tender and hilarious first novel onto national bestseller lists immediately upon publication. Telling the story of two sisters-Olivia, a hotshot Hollywood producer whose life is unraveling, and Maddie, an unflaggingly optimistic, seriously ill midwesterner whose idealism has always driven Olivia crazy-The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters offers a startlingly poignant reminder of how hope can grow in even the darkest places.

About the author: American novelist, screenwriter and film producer, Elisabeth Robinson is the author of The True & Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters, a national and New York Times bestseller. The epistolary novel, her first, was published in the US by Little, Brown and translated into ten languages.

In New York, Robinson worked as a film executive for United Artists, Sundance, and the Lee Rich Company at Warner Bros, before moving to Los Angeles to accept a VP post at MGM. There she worked on such films as The Lover, Getting Even with Dad, and Goldeneye. Robinson left MGM to oversee development and production at The Ladd Company at Paramount Pictures. The company produced two Brady Bunch films and the five-Oscar-winner Braveheart. In 1998, she left Los Angeles to write and produce films independently.

Dividing time between London and New York, Robinson has produced, among other films, the Bill Murray comedy The Man Who Knew Too Little and Last Orders, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Graham Swift. In 2002, Variety named her one of the "Top Ten Producers To Watch." Robinson has written original screenplays for Paramount and Sony Pictures, adapted Lee Tulloch's Fabulous Nobodies and worked with Nick Broomfield on Ronan Bennet's The Catastrophist.

Since 2005, MORE magazine has commissioned Robinson to write adventure travel stories, including a motorcycle trip down the Ho Chi Minh trail; elephant riding in southern India; hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc; boating in Venice, and fly-fishing in Montana. She has also published articles in Vogue, Glamour, The Boston Review and the New York Times.

Robinson was born in Royal Oak, Michigan and graduated from Oberlin College. She lives in New York City. (Per Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Robinson)

Reviews:

"springs from the author's own life…..And there are moments when The Hunt Sisters can feel uncomfortably like a big-screen tear-jerker, alternating streaks of sap and cynicism. But…The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters’ is finally wryly effective, capturing the momentum of family sorrow, the ways in which people can care for each other without ever quite coming to terms.” Emily Nussbaum, The New York Times, Dec. 28, 2003

"Her Hollywood adventures are pitch-perfect and hilarious….No less impressive is Robinson's unsentimental chronicling of the progress of Maddie's illness and the alternately heroic and selfish reactions of those around her, including the sisters' mother, an anxious children's book writer, and their father, a retired attorney and alcoholic. Olivia's cynicism, compassion and loyalty come through as funny, real and inspiring, and the novel's epistolary format is smoothly employed. Moving but never maudlin, this is an accomplished debut.” Publisher’s Weekly, October 23, 2003 Published in 2004 by Little, Brown & Co., Boston ISBN: 2003047713 Edition: First Edition, First Printing Binding: Hardcover Condition: New Dust Jacket included. Condition of Dust Jacket: new Comments: Description: 327 p. ; 25 cm.

LCCN: 2003047713 Signed Copy

by Mark Spragg In an extraordinary tale of love and forgiveness, Mark Spragg brings us this novel of a complex, prodigal homecoming.

Jean Gilkyson has a history of choosing the wrong men. After yet another night of argument turned to violence with her boyfriend, Roy, Jean knows it’s time to leave—if not for herself, then for her ten-year-old daughter, Griff. But the only place they can afford to go is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean’s family is dead and her deceased husband’s father Einar wishes Jean was too.

Of course, Griff knows none of this—only that here in Wyoming, with a grandfather she has never known and his crippled friend Mitch, she may finally be able to find a home.

About the author: Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers award, and the novels The Fruit of Stone and An Unfinished Life, which was chosen by the Rocky Mountain News as the Best Book of 2004. All three were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife, Virginia, in Wyoming.

Spragg continued the story of An Unfinished Life with the novel Bone Fire in 2010.

Reviews:

“The best parts of An Unfinished Life,…are its ancillary details - Einar's routine around the ranch, the desultory clutter of the sheriff's office - and the glimpses of the communal world that exists beyond its immediate focus, full of ground-down lives and soured destinies. Here, in half-a-dozen crisp little vignettes of small-town life…the novel…starts to work on its own terms.” D.J. Taylor, The Guardian, November 12, 2004.

“[Spragg] keeps the dialogue sparse and taut, each sentence feeling as if it was carefully thought through before spoken….What lingers long after readers turn the final page is an unforgettable portrayal of the irrepressible Griff. She is the heartbeat of this novel and Spragg has created a masterpiece in her character. And even though the book takes place in the West, Spragg has expanded his impressive skills by giving us a book that will resonate with everyone from Laramie to Eau Claire and beyond.” Stephen J. Lyons, San Francisco Chronicle, September 5, 2004. https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/A-fractured-family-tries-to-heal-under-the-vast-2727872.php

Made into a movie starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, and Morgan Freeman in 2005. Screenplay by the author and his wife, Virginia Korus Spragg. Published in 2004 by Knopf, New York ISBN: 1400042011 Edition: First Edition, First Printing Binding: Hardcover Condition: New Dust Jacket included. Condition of Dust Jacket: new Comments: Description: 257 p. ; 25 cm.

LCCN: 2004040949 Signed Copy

by Adam Langer Signed first edition. New.

Poignant, ambitious, and tremendously fun, Crossing California is the fiction discovery of the season-a novel about two generations of family and friendship in Chicago from November 1979 through January 1981. In 1979 California Avenue, in Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood, separates the upper-middle-class Jewish families from the mostly middle-class Jewish residents on the east of the divide. This by turns funny and heartbreaking first novel tells the story of three families and their teenage children living on either side of California, following their loves, heartaches, and friendships during a memorable moment of American history. Langer's captivating portraits, his uncanny and extraordinarily vivid re-creation of a not-so-past time and place, and his pitch-perfect dialogue all make Crossing California certain to evoke memories and longing in its readers…as well as laughter and anxiety. Whether viewed as an American Graffiti for the seventies, The (Jewish) Corrections, a Chicagoan Manhattan, or early Philip Roth for a later generation, Crossing California is an unforgettable, and thoroughly enjoyable, contribution to contemporary fiction.

Reviews:

“[Langer’s] ambitious first novel…hits high points of comic empathy….He thoroughly and elaborately exposes the narrow goals and narcissistic motivations of his middle-class Midwestern characters.” Mark Karmine, New York Times, July 25, 2004

“…dazzling debut novel….Langer's story is powerful and amusing; he has created a world that is ultimately recognizable in its portrayals of the ironies, heartache and joy of day-to-day life.” Kristin Kloberdanz, The Baltimore Sun, June 6, 2004.

A selection of awards:

Chicago Tribune Best Books of 2004

Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2004

Wall Street Journal Top Summer Read

About the author (from the author's website): I was born in 1967 and grew up on North Mozart Street in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, once home to Burghard's Egg Factory, Roband's Drugstore, and the Starsky & Fudge ice cream parlor. My early childhood was spent listening to Miss Kaufmann read stories at Nortown Public Library, learning to draw and color in Miss O'Connor's kindergarten class at Boone Elementary, walking along Lunt Avenue Beach with my mother. I finally left Chicago in 1984 to attend Vassar College, but returned in 1988 and worked for a little over a decade as an editor, nonfiction author, playwright, theater director, and very occasional film producer. I wrote for a number of periodicals, especially the Chicago Reader. In 2000, I won a fellowship to Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program and thought I would write a nonfiction book about the uncomfortable relationship between arts and the corporate world. The working title was For a Few Dollars More. Instead, I wound up writing fiction and remaining in New York where I served as senior editor of Book Magazine until that publication folded in 2003....These days, I write full-time, mostly fiction, but occasionally articles...." He is currently also the culture editor for the Forward, the longstanding Jewish newspaper/magazine.

Other novels include:

The Washington Story (2005)

Ellington Boulevard (2008)

The Thieves of Manhattan (2010)

The Salinger Contract (2013) Published in 2004 by Riverhead, New York ISBN: 1573222747 Edition: First Edition, First Printing Binding: Hardcover Condition: New Dust Jacket included. Condition of Dust Jacket: new Comments: Description: 432 p. : map ; 24 cm.

LCCN: 2003066719

alk. paper Signed Copy

by Joseph Boyden Signed first edition. New.

Set in Canada and the battlefields of France and Belgium, Three-Day Road is a mesmerizing novel told through the eyes of Niska—a Canadian Oji-Cree woman living off the land who is the last of a line of healers and diviners—and her nephew Xavier.

At the urging of his friend Elijah, a Cree boy raised in reserve schools, Xavier joins the war effort. Shipped off to Europe when they are nineteen, the boys are marginalized from the Canadian soldiers not only by their native appearance but also by the fine marksmanship that years of hunting in the bush has taught them. Both become snipers renowned for their uncanny accuracy. But while Xavier struggles to understand the purpose of the war and to come to terms with his conscience for the many lives he has ended, Elijah becomes obsessed with killing, taking great risks to become the most accomplished sniper in the army. Eventually the harrowing and bloody truth of war takes its toll on the two friends in different, profound ways. Intertwined with this account is the story of Niska, who herself has borne witness to a lifetime of death—the death of her people.

In part inspired by the legend of Francis Pegahmagabow, the great Indian sniper of World War I, Three-Day Road is an impeccably researched and beautifully written story that offers a searing reminder about the cost of war.

About the author: Joseph Boyden’s first novel, Three Day Road, was selected for the Today Show Book Club, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. His second novel, Through Black Spruce, was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year; it also earned him the CBA’s Author of the Year Award. His most recent novel, The Orenda, won Canada Reads and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Boyden divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana.

Reviews:

“[Three Day Road is] gripping, wrenching, eye-opening, illuminating, stirring, moral (not moralistic) fiction, rooted in closely observed fact….Boyden never demands credulity of his readers. Well-informed but non-specialist readers won't find themselves wondering if details are right, or feeling distracted by the obviousness of underlying research, or shaking their head over improbable coincidences….Three Day Road quickly takes on the texture of lived experience and feels uncannily as if its author has known these people and traversed both the Canadian wilderness and the killing fields of the Western Front with them….This novel is a remarkable achievement, and a breathtaking debut.” T. F. Rigelhof, The Globe and Mail, April 23, 2005

“[Boyden” guides us through immensely complex stories with subtlety and grace.” Murrough O’Brien, The Independent, August 14, 2005 Published in 2005 by Viking Press, New York ISBN: 670034312 Edition: First Edition, First Printing Binding: Hardcover Condition: New Dust Jacket included. Condition of Dust Jacket: new Comments: Description: 354 p. ; 24 cm.

LCCN: 2004066149 Signed Copy