Books

Brannigan’s Quest
Baron & Brannigan – Book 2
A Novel of the 1890s

It’s the 1890s. The Gilded Age. When fame on New York’s vaudeville stages becomes a shattered dream, young Billy Brannigan faces an uncertain future. Handsome, venturesome and savvy, he is more determined than ever to reach his goal of wealth and respect. But how?

Beginning his quest anew, he draws upon his abundant supply of charm and audacity honed by his teen-age years in Doc Noble’s medicine show. This time, it’s New York’s zany world of Tin Pan Alley with its odd assortment of songwriters, pluggers and music publishers. Once again, he teams up with his talented, younger pal, Daniel Baron, revives his romance with beautiful Lily Langford, renews his friendships with songwriter Monroe (Rosie) Rosenfeld and lovely Claire Noble, and mixes with popular celebrities of the Gilded Age including impresario Tony Pastor and composer Victor Herbert

The question is, can Billy’s relentless thirst for fame and fortune conquer the calamities that befall him—lost love, failed friendship, intense emotional conflict, even a charge of murder?

Billy will have to use all the skills and ballyhoo that Doc Noble taught him to finally reach his goal.

Baron & Brannigan
Book I, Song and Dance
A Novel of the 1890s

It’s the early 1890s. By chance, Billy Brannigan, age 17, meets young Daniel Baronovich, a runaway not yet 15, in front of Della Lacy’s brothel in St. Louis. Brash and handsome, Billy is a seasoned performer with Doc Noble’s medicine show helping to peddle Doc’s cure-all Elixir of the Incas. Daniel’s ability to play piano gets him an invitation to join Billy and Doc.

And so begins this story that follows the two youths on their haphazard journey from the medicine show to the Primrose and West travelling minstrel troupe and then on to old New York’s gas-lit music halls and vaudeville theaters where they perform as Baron and Brannigan, Song and Dance.

It’s a bumpy journey, though, with missteps and mayhem dogging their path. Along the way, the team mixes with talented acts, willing showgirls, zany song writers, and famous personalities of the gaslight era including John L. Sullivan, Victor Herbert and Tony Pastor.

Both young men find love; Billy meets Lily Langford, his own age and already a veteran vaudevillian, and Daniel dreams of Claire, Doc Noble’s daughter. Unfortunately, life, like love, seldom follows the road chosen. Before they can claim stardom, calamity strikes and threatens to end their career and friendship.

The Man on the Stairs
A Collection of Short Stories

A quartet of mystifying stories, each exploring the unexplainable. In brief but enjoyable reads, you will find yourself in an old, decaying plantation house at midnight where the impossible happens, peer into a mirror with strange consequences, discover an old journal that defies rational explanation, and visit with Madame Pompadour, infamous mistress of King Louis XV, of France in a baffling encounter.

This is a collection of short stories with a gothic haunted flare to them. Each one is intriguing and takes us on a lovely journey.
~ Siobhan Falen

Quick easy read. Stories were entertaining. I would recommend this collection and look forward to reading more from this author.
~ Kym C.

Echoes of Clara Avenue
A Collection of Short Stories

Take a stroll along an old, decaying, city neighborhood
with its now-empty, silent hulks and imagine the people who lived there through the years. That is precisely what author Edward Farber does in his collection of short stories, Echoes of Clara Avenue. In the collection are stories that appeared previously in literary magazines, an indication that these are not stories by a novice but by a practiced storyteller with a vital and varied voice.

Now the houses that remain await the wrecking ball,
but as the old saying goes, oh what stories they could tell. And the author obliges with 13 engrossing tales that begin in 1903 when fictional Clara Avenue was brand new. With each story, you will travel through time to the end of the century. Along the way, you’ll visit selected houses and flats where you’ll encounter a rich array of characters facing life situations both dramatic and humorous in stories as diverse as the houses and times in which they lived.

You’ll wonder who you will meet next as you stroll down
this old block and listen to its echoes.

Print editions coming soon. Join Ed’s Book Club for the latest news.

Looking Back with a Smile
Bits and Pieces of a Lifetime
A Memoir

There’s a chuckle on every page of Looking Back with a Smile as Ed Farber, recollects in brief but entertaining anecdotes bits and pieces of a life that has spanned more than seven decades. These are quick looks at what he calls an “ordinary” life, each served up with a laugh.

A sampling of the subtitle over each anecdote gives a little insight into Ed Farber’s humorous approach: A Wig in the Waste Can; Hiding from Cousin Sophie; A Low Point at High School; Hot Fudge Sundae, Hold the Fudge; Teeth? Who Needs Teeth?; Teenagers, A Whole New Brand of Kids; Lucky Ticks Me Off; What’s a Skink?; ESP on the Way to L.A.; An Instant Grandchild.

These and other bits and pieces take the reader on a merry romp through growing up during the Depression and wartime 1940’s, the transitions from grade school to high school to college to the military and, finally, to marriage, kids and grandkids. On the way we also laugh about pets, secretaries, bugs in the BOQ, being a canine midwife, and many more incidents and observations all dished out with warmth and wit.

Print editions coming soon. Join Ed’s Book Club for the latest news.

The Rover

Readers of Edward Farber’s novel, Baron & Brannigan, Book 1, meet Charles “Doc” Noble as the aging proprietor of a traveling medicine show peddling the cure-all medicine, “Elixir of the Incas.” They know him also as an inveterate vagabond always on the road to somewhere. But how did he get to that point in life?

In The Rover, author Farber takes a journey back in time to “Doc” Noble’s early years. Believing that the Union Army considers him a deserter, young Noble travels under the alias of Charles Bell from the bloody battlefields of the Civil War in Georgia to the untamed Indian Territory of Kansas. Always on the move, he becomes embroiled in a series of engrossing chance encounters, including serving as an Army scout and joining Bill Cody as a buffalo hunter. These youthful escapades shape him into “Doc” Noble, the spellbinding character we meet later, and reward you with a spirited tale of adventure.

Gambler’s Luck
and other short stories

Author Edward Farber is on a winning streak with a roll of eleven stories in this new collection of short stories. But there’s no luck involved here, just excellent story-telling talent. You will discover it in the lead story, “Gambler’s Luck,” an intriguing tale that keeps you guessing until the last bit of dialog.

The stories range from intense drama in “Faith,” an allegory that takes place in a Nazi concentration camp, to laugh-out-loud humor in “The Five-Step Flood.” In between, you’ll meet a diverse group of characters including an elderly American bartender in a British pub, a medicine show owner who dazzles the midwestern townfolks with a wild, buggy ride, a calculating business owner lamenting a lost love, and more stories to make reading this book a positive pleasure.

Here is one of the reviews by Advance Copy Reviewers: Bertrand Carter writes, “Once again, the author has shown his strength as a fiction writer with this collection of short stories that had me hooked with the first one, ‘Gambler’s Luck.’ I couldn’t put it down until I finished the last one. The book is a short but entirely captivating read.”

Ed Farber’s earlier collection of short stories, Echoes of Clara Avenue is currently on sale as a Kindle ebook.