Around the Press in 80 Books: Glass House

In celebration of LSUP’s 80th anniversary the staff selected 80 of our most memorable titles. Adding to our “Around the Press in 80 Books” blog series, financial operations manager Becky Brown writes about Glass House.

Glass House

In the fall of 1993, I had been working at LSU Press for about four and a half years and was still awed and captivated by the look, feel, and smell of all the new books we published. Back then we had a huge warehouse on River Road and our warehouse staff would bring boxes full to the brim with our new books so the staff could see the end result of their work. I also spent many an hour in that warehouse taking inventory, and some books called to me just because I found them aesthetically appealing.

Glass House: A Novel by Christine Wiltz was one of those books. I loved the artwork on the cover depicting a New Orleans Garden District mansion with the big white columns and stained glass doors. It was, in my opinion, a beautiful book. Then I read the blurbs from great writers James Lee Burke, Valerie Martin, and Vance Bourjaily. Kirkus Reviews gave it high marks, so I was all in. It remains one of my favorite LSU Press novels to date. In 2001 we published it in a paperback edition as part of our “Voices of the South” series, and it remains in print and pertinent. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I believe that, for me at least, the beauty of this book’s cover led me to experience and enjoy the beauty of the story within.

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