It’s been a year of upheaval for Edward Stanton, a forty-two-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s lost his job. His trusted therapist has retired. His best friends have moved away. And even his nightly ritual of watching Dragnet reruns has been disrupted. All of this change has left Edward, who lives his life on a rigid schedule, completely flummoxed.But when his friend Donna calls with news that her son Kyle is in trouble, Edward leaves his comfort zone in Billings, Montana, and drives to visit them in Boise, where he discovers Kyle has morphed from a sweet kid into a sullen adolescent. Inspired by dreams of the past, Edward goes against his routine and decides to drive to a small town in Colorado where he once spent a summer with his father—bringing Kyle along as his road trip companion. The two argue about football and music along the way, and amid their misadventures, they meet an eccentric motel owner who just might be the love of Edward’s sheltered life—if only he can let her.Endearing and laugh-out-loud funny, Edward Adrift is author Craig Lancaster’s sequel to 600 Hours of Edward.About the AuthorCraig Lancaster is a journalist who has worked at newspapers all over the country, including the San Jose Mercury News, where he served as lead editor for the paper’s coverage of the BALCO steroids scandal. He wrote 600 Hours of Edward - winner of a Montana Book Award honorable mention and a High Plains Book Award- in less than 600 hours during National Novel Writing Month in 2008. His other books include the novel The Summer Son and the short story collection Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure. Lancaster lives in Billings, Montana, with his wife.

RetailA championship basketball coach caught between his team, his family and the rabid partisans in his town. A traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate stripped of everything but his pride. A teenage runaway. Mismatched lovers. In his debut collection of short fiction, award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster (600 Hours of Edward, The Summer Son) returns to the terrain of his Montana home and takes on the notion of separation in its many forms - from comfort zones, from ideas,from people, from security, from fears. These ten stories delve into small towns and big cities, into love and despair, into what drives us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every page.From BooklistThe success of any short-story collection hinges on the author’s ability to create characters that immediately connect with readers. Lancaster (The Summer Son, 2011) excels on this point, ironically so because the inability to connect is his underlying theme. The stories, set in small towns along back roads, are populated with a sad-sack lot: an estranged father and son, a disgruntled newspaperman, miserable husbands and wives. Many of these individuals are actively engaged in running away from or toward something, the art of departure referenced in the title, often with no goal in mind other than to escape loneliness. On occasion, Lancaster, who has a gift for illuminating workaday life, relies on surprise twists to juice the plot or provide speedy resolution, as if he doesn’t quite trust the innate drama of everyday situations. He’s at his best in “Alyssa Alights,” a tale about a teenage runaway that unfolds honestly and organically. Though generally bleak in tone, Lancaster’s collection offers a glimmer of hope, concluding on a grace note with the aptly titled “Comfort and Joy.” --Patty Wetli Review"Have you ever felt in your pocket and found a twenty you didn't know you had; how 'bout a hundred dollar bill, or a Montecristo cigar or a 24-karat diamond? That's what reading Craig Lancaster's Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure is like--close and discovered treasures."--Craig Johnson, author of The Cold Dish and Hell is Empty "Craig Lancaster understands the human condition, all of it. The funny, the absurd and the fault-ridden awesomeness that is each and every one of us--or at least someone we know."--Megan Ault Regnerus, managing editor of Montana Quarterly"It's a real delight to inhabit Lancaster's lonely, darkly majestic Montana locations and desperate characters, a look at a slowly eroding 21st-century America that's as strong as many more well-known titles by major presses. It comes strongly recommended." - Chicago Center for Literature & Photography "While it is a literary work that deals with serious themes, there isn't an ounce of pretentiousness between the covers. It's absorbing, attention-grabbing, and well-written." - Gary Robson, owner of Red Lodge Books in Red Lodge, Montana. "Lancaster continues to weave together hope and hopelessness with his cast of haunting, unpredictable characters." - Montana State of the Arts newspaper

A thirty-nine-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Edward Stanton lives alone on a rigid schedule in the Montana town where he grew up. His carefully constructed routine includes tracking his most common waking time (7:38 a.m.), refusing to start his therapy sessions even a minute before the appointed hour (10:00 a.m.), and watching one episode of the 1960s cop show Dragnet each night (10:00 p.m.). But when a single mother and her nine-year-old son move in across the street, Edward’s timetable comes undone. Over the course of a momentous 600 hours, he opens up to his new neighbors and confronts old grievances with his estranged parents. Exposed to both the joys and heartaches of friendship, Edward must ultimately decide whether to embrace the world outside his door or retreat to his solitary ways. Heartfelt and hilarious, this moving novel will appeal to fans of Daniel Keyes’s classic Flowers for Algernon and to any reader who loves an underdog.

RetailFrom the bestselling author of 600 Hours of Edward comes the story of a boxer and a sportswriter whose fates are inextricably linked. Hugo Hunter, a would-be champion who never quite made it, is on his last legs. Thirty-seven years old, soft around the middle, and broke, he’s plummeted from his glory days of title fights to small-time bouts against brawlers and punks. Watching ringside for nearly twenty years has been Mark Westerly, a sportswriter who has struggled to keep a professional distance from the man whose life and career have become enmeshed with his own tumultuous trajectory. Hugo and Mark share a history that runs deep and has at times gotten ugly. As Hugo lands on the ropes again, Mark steps in to try to save him—and unburdens himself of long-held secrets regarding Hugo’s past. But can these two men, who’ve lived so long under the weight of their own tragedies, finally help each other find redemption?

It’s been a year of upheaval for Edward Stanton, a forty-two-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s lost his job. His trusted therapist has retired. His best friends have moved away. And even his nightly ritual of watching Dragnet reruns has been disrupted. All of this change has left Edward, who lives his life on a rigid schedule, completely flummoxed. But when his friend Donna calls with news that her son Kyle is in trouble, Edward leaves his comfort zone in Billings, Montana, and drives to visit them in Boise, where he discovers Kyle has morphed from a sweet kid into a sullen adolescent. Inspired by dreams of the past, Edward goes against his routine and decides to drive to a small town in Colorado where he once spent a summer with his father—bringing Kyle along as his road trip companion. The two argue about football and music along the way, and amid their misadventures, they meet an eccentric motel owner who just might be the love of Edward’s sheltered life—if only he can let her. Endearing and laugh-out-loud funny, Edward Adrift is author Craig Lancaster’s sequel to 600 Hours of Edward .