Bonita Faye - $20 *

Margaret Moseley

Bonita Faye was inspired by a visit with her first husband to a small restaurant in Heavener, Oklahoma, where they began talking about plots and stories. "Then I looked over at a woman with blue-gray silver hair who was sitting in the corner," Margaret recalls. "She had on a powder-blue polyester pantsuit. I said, 'For instance, this woman has a life; it would make a story. Imagine she's a murderer; she just killed somebody.' We talked about that, and I came home and sat down at the computer and wrote three pages of it. Four months later, I had the book." Bonita Faye was the first novel published by Three Forks Press. It was named a finalist in the 1996 Edgar Awards competition. This very popular novel about an unassuming, matronly woman who through unusual circumstances murdered not just one but two individuals without being caught was translated and published in Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, and Danish. Harper/Collins produced a mass market paperback edition for American readers. First-edition copies of Bonita Faye, of which initial printing was only 1,000, have been bringing a premium as a collectible.

1996. Hardcover, 2nd printing. 180 pages. ISBN 0-9637629-4-X.