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Recent work from Bancroft:
 A Cry Unheard
by James J. Lynch
Finn: A Novel
by Matthew Olshan
The Art of Acquiring
by Mary Gabriel
Finn: A Novel
by Matthew Olshan
For Whom The Minivan Rolls
by Jeffrey Cohen
Lonesome Song
by Elliott Light
Hank
by Arch Montgomery
Man in the Middle: A Novel
by Ken Morris
Trembling in the Ivory Tower
by Kenneth Lasson
Uncovering Sadie's Secrets
by Libby Sternberg
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Bancroft Press
Coming to you from Bruce Bortz's apartment.
Bancroft Press has only published 25 books since its founding in 1992. It still operates from Bruce Bortz's basement in his Baltimore home. There, the 51-year-old lawyer/journalist/PR practitioner does all the book acquiring, editing, selling and most everything else as well. Yet, many of his 25 books to date have had an extraordinarily high profile given the smallness of his company. Recent successes include:
C. Fraser Smith, the author of Bancroft's first book, "Lenny, Lefty & the Chancellor," won rave reviews, was optioned by famed filmmaker Barry Levinson, and is used as a supplementary text in sports-related course.
Stephen Hunter, best known for his hard-edged, best-selling novels (last one, "A Pale Horse Coming"), won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism at the Washington Post. Bancroft published Hunter's only non-fiction book, "Violent Screen," which brings together 13 years of Hunter's movie reviews.
Mary Gabriel's "The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta & Claribel Cone," is the only book in print on two of the world's greatest art collectors and philanthropists. "Acquiring" is a fixture in the world's best art museum gift shops and, ever so slowly, is finding its way into libraries.
"Live by the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK," was a BOMC and History Book Club selection. Kirkus described it as the definitive history of the assassination. The book details why JFK's brother Robert, and new president Lyndon Johnson, covered up Oswald's political motive for the crime -- to spare the world a likely nuclear Armageddon.
Bancroft also publishes lighter fair, such as the recent YA novels "Uncovering Sadie's Secrets" and "Hank," by Arch Montgomery, and, for that matter, adult mysteries, like the oft-praised, humorous "For Whom the Minivan Rolls," by Jeffrey Cohen, and "Lonesome Song," a small-town lawyer mystery written by lawyer Elliott Light.
Bortz says he accidentally entered the YA genre when he published "The Reappearance of Sam Webber," by Jonathon Scott Fuqua. It won the Alex Award, and a Booklist Editor's Choice award, and is on the summer reading list of many schools. It also made the NYPL'S 2000 Books for the Teen Age List, and was singled out by the ABFFE as one of two novels in print to best deal with the issue of violence and youth.
Bortz followed that with "Finn: a Novel," by Matthew Olshan - a modern retelling of Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" but with two teenage girls as the protagonists. The recipient of a starred Booklist review, Bancroft's first, "Finn" is still going strong.
But even in this category, Bortz is deliberately iconoclastic. "I don't read YA fiction. I publish books that I like as an adult, and that I think teens will like, too. I like well-told stories that make me think and maybe even teach me something important. 'Hank,' for example, takes on a dozen real-life issues for adolescents, and is intentionally didactic. If that's out of fashion among book publishers - and I doubt anyone other than Bancroft would have put out 'Hank' -- then woe to us as a society."
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