Collector's Corner: Eliot Pattison's BONE RATTLER Mystery Mystery!

No, that's not a typo ... Here's Dave's exploration of a collecting conundrum:

Eliot Pattison’s Bone Rattler Mystery Mystery

Eliot Pattison for the last few years has made a summer author appearance at our shop Kingdom Books in Waterford, Vermont. Because of Elliot’s busy schedule, he makes few author appearances. So we were more than glad to have him sign and to read from his newest book Ashes of the Earth on July 31. (We still have some signed copies for purchase.)

Over the summer we gathered some books for Eliot to sign that we have now placed on the shelves, including his first book, the Edgar Award winner, The Skull Mantra.

I also purchased over the summer a green-colored softcover Advance Readers Copy (ARC) of the start of Eliot’s second mystery series, set in Colonial America: Bone Rattler. And here is where the collector's mystery starts. Advance readers copies are given to reviewers and to bookstores, usually months before publication of a hardcover edition. I already had an Advance Readers Copy of Bone Rattler in pictorial covers that was published by Counterpoint in my collection. The edition that I found this summer was published by Carroll & Graf Publishers, and I couldn’t find any information about them publishing Bone Rattler. So, after the customers left and Eliot generously signed some additional books, I handed him the green copy of Bone Rattler to sign. And the mystery finally was explained: Carroll & Graf was to be the original publisher and they went out of business. Counterpoint picked up the contract and published the series. Eliot said that the green ARC is scarce and he didn’t think he had one in his own collection.

The final cover art.

So now we have two Advance Readers Copies of the same book by two different publishers. Another mystery solved. -- DK