The undisputed classic of running novels and one of the most beloved sports books ever published, Once a Runner tells the story of an athlete’s dreams amid the turmoil of the 60s and the Vietnam war. Inspired by the author’s experience as a collegiate champion, the novel follows Quenton Cassidy, a competitive runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team. Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life against the greatest miler in history. A rare insider’s account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners, Once a Runner is an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one individual’s quest to become a champion.

A young girl’s disappearance rocks a community and a family, in this stirring examination of grief, faith, justice and the atrocities of war, from literary legend Joyce Carol Oates.

Again to Carthage is the "breathtaking, pulse-quickening, stunning" sequel to Once a Runner that "will have you standing up and cheering, and pulling on your running shoes" (Chicago Sun-Times). Originally self-published in 1978, Once a Runner became a cult classic, emerging after three decades to become a New York Times bestseller. Now, in Again to Carthage, hero Quenton Cassidy returns. The former Olympian has become a successful attorney in south Florida, where his life centers on work, friends, skin diving, and boating trips to the Bahamas. But when he loses his best friend to the Vietnam War and two relatives to life’s vicissitudes, Cassidy realizes that an important part of his life was left unfinished. After reconnecting with his friend and former coach Bruce Denton, Cassidy returns to the world of competitive running in a desperate, all-out attempt to make one last Olympic team. Perfectly capturing the intensity, relentlessness, and occasional lunacy of a serious runner’s life, Again to Carthage is a must-read for runners—and athletes—of all ages, and a novel that will thrill any lover of fiction.

The sequel to the cult classic Once a Runner.

The dramatic, tension-filled last days of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, who risked all by agreeing to the demand by Thomas Ford, Governor of Illinois, that he come to Carthage, the Hancock County seat—an 18-mile journey from the Prophet’s home in Nauvoo—to answer charges pertaining to the destruction of the Expositor press in June of 1844. The journey would prove to be a one-way trip.

Canandaigua to Carthage tells, in engaging story form, events from the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Based on carefully researched historical accounts, Canandaigua to Carthage invites readers, both young and old, to become better acquainted with the Smith family, who loved and helped each other through all their experiences as they moved from New Hampshire to New York, Ohio, Missouri, and finally to Illinois.