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 is 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 our 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 Five-Year Mark
We’ve just reached our fifth year 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 (and recent) honors include the following:
—31 HOURS by Masha Hamilton (due out in September) was featured in Publishers Weekly’s Show Daily at Book Expo America
—The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson was a #1 Book Sense Pick
—In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld was a #1 IndieNext Pick
—Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel was reviewed in the daily New York Times, is a June IndieNext Pick, and is the July selection of the Twitter Book Club
—Shimmer by Eric Barnes (landing in stores in late June) is a July IndieNext Pick
—Madewell Brown by Rick Collignon was the first ever adult book selection for Reading the West!
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 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
