Books published by publisher Santa Fe Writer's Project

"A Southern Gothic for the DC area." - Vanity FairSuicide, bankruptcy, and a missing fortune...What happened to the iconic Gifford's Ice Cream franchise and the family behind it?Few know the truth...For more than 70 years, Gifford's Ice Cream and Candy Company was associated with nothing but pleasure for native Washingtonians and visitors to the nation's capital, but behind the iconic business's happy facade lay elaborate and cruel schemes.In this memoir of discovery and resilience, the last Gifford heir takes the reader from his life under the shadow of the family business, to the broken world left behind by his abusive parents. Gifford attempts to understand the reasoning behind the byzantine betrayals and intrigue rooted in the company from its modest beginnings--dark influences that would ultimately destroy the legendary business and its troubled founding family."This amazing, harrowing tale of the D.C. ice cream family makes it deeply clear that what looks sweet on the surface begs for further investigation -- a brave, dark story of dysfunction." - A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven and The End of Alice"This is a page turner from page one to the end. A well written, well paced story of intrigue, domestic horror, and how we never know what's truly happening behind the facades we humans construct for the rest of the world. Highly recommend." - Karen Stefano, author of What A Body Remembers

Eightball strikes hard. Fueled by an abiding sense of loss, the eight stories in this collection take you on a journey across the exploded fault lines of intimacy, unfolding across cities and continents. Whether hitchhiking the Italian Veneto, trekking through a pitch-black Balinese rice field, or queuing for drinks in a crowded Seattle bar, Geoghegan sets her characters adrift in a world that stakes its claim to the enigmatic terrain of desire. This collection of darkly comic, occasionally violent tales is anchored by the eponymous "eightball," a coming of age novella about a sister and brother guided by the inertia of recklessness and self-destruction. A protégé of the late Lucia Berlin, Elizabeth Geoghegan writes lyric, place-driven prose laced with edgy realism and wry wit.

The fourteen fantastical stories in Magic For Unlucky Girls take the familiar tropes of fairytales and twist them into new and surprising shapes. These unlucky girls, struggling against a society that all too often oppresses them, are forced to navigate strange worlds as they try to survive. From carnivorous husbands to a bath of lemons to whirling basements that drive people mad, these stories are about the demons that lurk in the corners and the women who refuse to submit to them, instead fighting back—sometimes with their wit, sometimes with their beauty, and sometimes with shotguns in the dead of night.

Suicide, bankruptcy, and a missing fortune...What happened to the iconic Gifford's Ice Cream franchise and the family behind it?Few know the truth...For more than 70 years, Gifford's Ice Cream and Candy Company was associated with nothing but pleasure for native Washingtonians and visitors to the nation's capital, but behind the iconic business's happy facade lay elaborate and cruel schemes.In this memoir of discovery and resilience, the last Gifford heir takes the reader from his life under the shadow of the family business, to the broken world left behind by his abusive parents. Gifford attempts to understand the reasoning behind the byzantine betrayals and intrigue rooted in the company from its modest beginnings--dark influences that would ultimately destroy the legendary business and its troubled founding family.

The fourteen fantastical stories in Magic For Unlucky Girls take the familiar tropes of fairytales and twist them into new and surprising shapes. These unlucky girls, struggling against a society that all too often oppresses them, are forced to navigate strange worlds as they try to survive. From carnivorous husbands to a bath of lemons to whirling basements that drive people mad, these stories are about the demons that lurk in the corners and the women who refuse to submit to them, instead fighting back—sometimes with their wit, sometimes with their beauty, and sometimes with shotguns in the dead of night.

The lives of the working class in West Virginia—a train engineer, an epileptic, coal miners and outlaws, the fragile and dispossessed—are explored in this powerful yet tender collection of six short stories and a novella. They depict an isolated world of hardship, human endurance, and hard-won dignity and are a lyrical rendering of times and places now largely gone—but the stirring clarity of people and landscape can persist in the reader's imagination.

The stories in Muscle Cars explore the unique and sometimes flawed relationships between men, their families, and their friends. Featuring a diverse cast of inarticulate misfits—including a compulsive body builder obsessed by the death of his brother, a former boxer forced to sell his prized 1946 New York Yankees–autographed baseball, and two boyhood friends who plan to steal Ted Williams' scientifically frozen head—this stand-out debut from Pushcart-nominated Eoannou is a powerful journey through the humor, darkness, and neuroses of the modern American everyman.

Eightball strikes hard. Fueled by an abiding sense of loss, these eight stories take you on a journey over the exploded fault lines of intimacy, unfolding across cities and continents. Whether hitchhiking the Italian Veneto, trekking through a pitch-black Balinese rice field, or queuing for drinks in a crowded Seattle bar, Geoghegan sets her characters adrift in a world that stakes its claim to the enigmatic terrain of desire. This collection of darkly comic, occasionally violent, tales is anchored by the eponymous “eightball,” a coming of age novella about a sister and brother guided by the inertia of recklessness and self-destruction. A protégé of the late Lucia Berlin, Elizabeth Geoghegan writes lyric, place-driven prose laced with edgy realism and wry wit.

When Billy’s father mysteriously disappears and his mother responds by becoming more and more reclusive, Billy maintains hope that his father’s absence is not by choice—despite the rumors and taunts of his classmates who believe otherwise. Twelve days before Christmas, Billy acquires a magical tree with a dozen ornaments, each of which holds a clue to finding his father. In order to do so, however, Billy must solve one puzzle each day, so he enlists the help of his best friend Katherine, not realizing that in doing so, he has placed them both in grave danger. The forces of evil that have captured Billy’s father are revealed to be manifest in the landscape of their very own small hometown outside of Oxford, England, as well as in some of its seemingly benign inhabitants. A beautifully woven narrative with rich, compelling characters, this novel is sure to strike a chord with any fan of fantasy literature.

When Billy's father mysteriously disappears and his mother responds by becoming more and more reclusive, Billy maintains hope that his father's absence is not by choice—despite the rumors and taunts of his classmates who believe otherwise. Twelve days before Christmas, Billy acquires a magical tree with a dozen ornaments, each of which holds a clue to finding his father. In order to do so, however, Billy must solve one puzzle each day, so he enlists the help of his best friend Katherine, not realizing that in doing so, he has placed them both in grave danger. The forces of evil that have captured Billy's father are revealed to be manifest in the landscape of their very own small hometown outside of Oxford, England, as well as in some of its seemingly benign inhabitants. A beautifully woven narrative with rich, compelling characters, this novel is sure to strike a chord with any fan of fantasy literature.

The stories in Muscle Cars explore the unique and sometimes flawed relationships between men, their families, and their friends. Featuring a diverse cast of inarticulate misfits—including a compulsive body builder obsessed by the death of his brother, a former boxer forced to sell his prized 1946 New York Yankees–autographed baseball, and two boyhood friends who plan to steal Ted Williams’ scientifically frozen head—this stand-out debut from Pushcart-nominated Eoannou is a powerful journey through the humor, darkness, and neuroses of the modern American everyman.