Dear Reader:

Richard Bach is kind and gentle and stubborn as rocks about his writing. His books are visions of why we're here and where we're going, ideas that change lives, and he hides them behind titles so modest that nobody can tell what they're about:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Illusions.

One.

These are not life-changing titles.

"If a reader is meant to find my books," he insists, "she'll find them wherever they're hidden."

Back-to-back, Richard's books have been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years. His last story was told in five separate volumes, a delicious entertainment about lives of action and adventure, but free of evil or menace, crime or wickedness, or war. The best books, some say, that he's ever written, but guess his title:

The Ferret Chronicles.

We could have told him how many copies those books would sell, and we would have been right. They went invisible in bookstores; readers walked past?we're not into ferrets just now.

The Books That Nobody Read, and we knew why. It should have been one volume, not five. Ferrets tell his stories about living, but they're the actors, not the subject. Why did he call them ferret books?

Here they are, last chance, one volume. Richard budged on the title, but not much. Finally he said that we could put a note to readers on the back cover, if that would make us feel better.

We're a small publisher.

We love this book.

Truth must be told.

Hampton Roads Publishing Company