Dear Zoe

Philip Beard’s stunning debut novel is fifteen-year-old Tess DeNunzio’s letter to her sister, Zoe, lost to a hit-and-run driver on a day when it seemed that nothing mattered but the tragedies playing out in New York and Washington. DEAR ZOE is a remarkable study of grief, adolescence, and healing with a pitch-perfect narrator who is at once sharp and naïve, world-worried and self-centered, funny and heartbreakingly honest. Tess begins her letter to Zoe as a means of figuring out her own life – her place in the world – but the result is a novel of rare power and grace that tells us much about ours.

DEAR ZOE is soon to be a feature film, starring Sadie Sink of Stranger Things.

Swing

John Kostka is three feet tall but larger than life, moving through the world on gloved hands and powerful arms as if on a set of parallel bars. Henry Graham is a ten year-old boy whose father has just left home for good. When the two meet at a downtown bus stop, all they seem to have in common is their love of the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates. But that is enough to begin a life-long friendship that, eventually, enables both men to confront old enemies and heal old wounds.

Philip Beard's third and most accomplished novel swings between two narratives the way John Kostka swings through life. The result is a multifaceted meditation on childhood heroes, the beauty of baseball and the power of love to heal a family in crisis.

Lost In The Garden

LOST IN THE GARDEN follows over privileged, under motivated, golf-and-sex-obsessed Michael Benedict, as he navigates a mid-life crisis that is both hilarious and compelling. As he did in his powerful debut, DEAR ZOE, Philip Beard has created a voice so authentic you won’t read it so much as you will hear it. A deft tightrope walk between heartbreak and hilarity, LOST IN THE GARDEN is a sports book that’s about everything but sports, a man’s book that’s just as much for women, and a novel for anyone who wakes up some mornings feeling like life is a work in progress.