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25 Roxbury Street,  Keene NH 03431 (603) 499-6500

Surry Cottage Books was formed in 2006 by Craig Brandon, an award-winning author of four non-fiction books, to commemorate the centennial of the Gillette murder case with the publication of Grace Brown's Love Letters. These letters were written by the victim to the murderer before the crime and had not been published in nearly a century. The idea was to sell them during Craig's public appearances,

The phenomenal success of that book allowed Craig to consider self-publishing his next book, Monadnock: More than a Mountain. That book, which has many color photos, was a major investment for the new business. The 2000 initial copies quickly sold out and allowed Craig to publish 5000 more.

That success allowed Craig to resign from his position at Keene State College, where teaching students who didn't want to learn anything had become increasingly tedious, and set up a office at the Hannah Grimes Business Incubator in Keene. Since then, Surry Cottage Books has published Elizabeth Weston Timlow's The Heart of Monadnock and a collection of outdoor columnist Dick Jenkins columns under the title Monadnock Region Odysseys.

Later this year, Surry Cottage Books plans to publish the first murder mystery set on Mount Monadnock -- Murder on Mount Monadnock by first-time author J.S. Winter. Set in 1910, the book includes an all-star cast including Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Franklin Roosevelt, prizefighter Jim Johnson, Boston Red Sox pitcher Smoky Joe Wood, mystery writer Mary Rinehart and a host of others, seeking to find who killed the 20-year-old daughter of vaudeville singer Lillie Langtree.

Planned for 2009 are a reprint of Allen Chamberlain's Classic Annals of the Grand Monadnock, a book on the state's historical markers and the first full biography of Adirondack murderer Chester Gillette.