About Unbridled Books
Fred Ramey and Greg Michalson formed Unbridled Books in 2003, a renewal of our partnership dedicated to publishing high-quality works that are moving, beautiful, and surprising. We chose the name to designate a publishing venture that is both energetic and independent.
Unbridled Books aspires to continue as a premier publisher of works of rich literary quality that appeal to a broad audience. We want to be able to continue our longtime discussion about what allows a novel to touch our hearts and our minds at once. And we want readers, booksellers, and reviewers to trust that when they pick up an Unbridled book, we're inviting them to enjoy that rarest of pleasures, a good read.
Lineage
Foremost, Unbridled Books is editorially driven. And we are known for providing real commercial support to the most gifted authors we know—throughout their careers. And, as we did at MacMurray & Beck, we maintain strong, supportive relationships with booksellers across the country, with the same consistency that marked our lists at M&B and at BlueHen Books. Readers will recall that in the past we brought to them such books as:
* Susan Vreeland's bestseller, Girl in Hyacinth Blue
* Steve Yarbrough's The Oxygen Man
* William Gay's debut, The Long Home
* Susann Cokal's Mirabilis
* Marc Estrin's remarkable Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa
* Debra Magpie Earling's award-winning Perma Red
* Elizabeth Dewberry's compelling Sacrament of Lies
* Patricia Henley's National Book Award finalist, Hummingbird House
* Rick Collignon's widely acclaimed Guadalupe trilogy
* And many other equally notable books.
Through M&B and BlueHen, we published a great many titles lauded by reviewers and honored by prize committees, including books that won or were short-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN Hemingway Award, the Book Sense Book of the Year Award, several Mountains & Plains Regional Book of the Year Awards, two American Book Awards, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, the National Book Award, and many others.
At the Three-Year Mark
We’ve nearly reached our third anniversary, and we are proud of all that’s happened. It remains an uncertain time for publishing overall. But we still believe it’s a promising era for commercial literary presses. The successes we’ve known so far look to us like testaments to a continuing passion for reading the kind of quality fiction we aspire to bring you. And the reviews and kudos our books have received tell us that we’re still doing the right thing at the right time. Selected honors include the following:
* small acts of sex and electricity by Lise Haines—a September Book Sense Pick!
* RAIN VILLAGE by Carolyn Turgeon—a Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection and November Book Sense Pick!
* Song of the Crow by Layne Maheu—a June Book Sense Pick and earned a starred Library Journal review as well as other raves
* John Berger raved about Frederick Reuss’s Mohr: A Novel, saying “…his silver tact and his cool tenderness make his performance nothing less than Orphic. Listen to it.” This title received rave reviews in The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the author was profiled in The Washington Post.
* Lloyd Zimpel’s A Season of Fire and Ice—a May 2006 Book Sense Pick. Also, one reviewer has already compared Zimpel to Edith Wharton, Annie Proulx, and Willa Cather.
* Timothy Schaffert’s The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God—a Spring 2006 pick for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers and a Pulpwood Queens Book Club Selection
Yes, the book industry is still overloaded with well-documented challenges. What keeps us going through it all? The love of a good story and the sound of an original voice. We hope that you will be as absorbed as we by the titles in our third anniversary list.
Our Pledge
Both of us thank you for all your goodwill in the past and pledge to continue that commercial, literary lineage.
Fred Ramey and Greg Michalson