Chris Cander Books In Order

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Chris Cander is a bestselling American author. Cander has written novels for adults, children’s books and even screenplays.

+Biography
There are very few fitness athletes who went on to write fiction when they retired, and that makes Chris Cander quite unique.

The author has called Houston home for as long as she can remember and, as far as Cander is concerned, she is as close to a native as anyone could ever get.

The author was actually born in Atlanta. Her father was a commercial Airline pilot stationed there at the time. But the family moved to Houston when Cander was 3-months-old and they never left.

As a child, Chris Cander was quite the introvert. She wasn’t shy or anything. Cander had plenty of friends but she also loved spending time by herself. For that reason, she was drawn to activities that she could do on her own.

At first, that merely meant reading and writing and even drawing. But then she got into sports. And once again, she avoided the team activities in favor of swimming and karate and the like.

Cander was always pursuing new challenges. More than merely competing against and defeating other people, Cander wanted to push herself, to overcome her own personal obstacles.

So it isn’t so surprising that she was always drawn to career fields of a physically taxing nature. If the author had her way, she would have become a firefighter.

But her small size wouldn’t permit her to take that route. It was probably because of her limitations in the size department that the author eventually decided to lift weights.

Strength training was never Chris Cander’s passion but once she began to experiment with it, Cander fell in love. She couldn’t stay out of the gym. Interestingly enough, the author and her husband met and bonded in the gym.

The fellow showed Cander the ropes of weight lifting and the writer’s efforts produced quick results. Her disciplined attitude definitely helped.

The author would not stop pushing herself. She got so big and toned that when she eventually entered a fitness competition, Cander did quite well. She even appeared on an episode of Baywatch (TV).

No one expected Chris Cander’s bodybuilding obsession to guide her into publishing. But that is exactly what happened.

A time came when the author’s interest in the field began to wane. But her time in the arena had given Cander the experience to write about fitness and nutrition.

She began contributing content to magazines as a freelance writer. The work didn’t pay well enough for the author to solely depend on its earnings, so she also did some software marketing on the side.

At one point, Cander had to go on Maternity Leave. While she was away, some restructuring at her place of employment eliminated her position.

So quite suddenly, she was out of work. Chris Cander didn’t know it at the time but her firing was a blessing in disguise.

Rather than looking for more work, the former athlete decided to stay home fulltime. She had always toyed with notions of writing fiction but her work schedule always kept her busy.

With her days suddenly wide opened, she decided to give fiction a shot. The author’s first novel was called ‘One Last Time Forever’. The book was a failure, though it still served a purpose.

It was through ‘One Last Time Forever’ that the author met Jane Gelfman, her agent. Jane couldn’t sell the novel. Editors didn’t know what to make of Cander’s metaphysical twists.

But the author learned that she and Jane worked pretty well together. And Cander’s second novel (Whisper Hollow) actually elicited interest from publishers, getting her started on her publishing journey.

Whisper Hollow was picked up by a traditional publisher but the author wasn’t so lucky with ’11 Stories’, her third novel. The book wasn’t quite as commercial as ‘Whisper Hollow’.

But rather than giving up on it, Chris Cander joined forces with a few of her friends and they formed ‘Rubber Tree Press’, their own publishing company.

Rubber Tree Press sat idle for quite a while before Cander’s agent encouraged her to publish ’11 Stories’ under its banner.

Cander will be the first to tell you that she was initially ashamed of the fact that the novel was self-published. But the response to ’11 Stories’ was so positive that it began to change the author’s opinion on the state of publishing.

Around that time, Cander started experimenting with children’s books. ‘The Word Burglar’, the book that came out after ’11 Stories’ was inspired by her daughter.

As a child, Sasha always demanded original stories from her mother every night. So when she went off to camp for the first time, the author used the opportunity to write as many original stories as her imagination could create.

‘The Word Burglar’ was merely one of nearly two dozen stories that Cander wrote in those three weeks.

When Cander isn’t writing, she is teaching children in schools how to write.

+Whisper Hollow
Myrthen Bergmann and her twin sister were playing tag in the small town of Verra, West Virginia. Their fun ended in tragedy when Myrthen’s twin died.

To escape the guilt, Myrthen shunned all relationships, pursuing a haunted, isolated life.

Her neighbor Alta Krol, an aspiring artist, yearned for freedom. But she was stuck caring for her father and siblings. And her dissatisfaction only deepened when Myrthen married the man she loved.

A decade later, Lidia is a teenage girl living in Verra. She has a son called Gabriel who everyone believes harbors demons.

+The Weight of a Piano
In 1962 in the Soviet Union, Katya was eight-years-old when she received a Bluthner Piano, an instrument she came to treasure more than anything or anyone else in the world.

But then she married and her husband took them to America, leaving her piano behind.

When Clara was 12, her father gave her a Bluthner Piano she never learned to play. That was shortly before her parents died in a fire. 2012 finds Clara with a dilemma.

She is 26 and she just lost her boyfriend which, in turn, lost her their apartment. Clare’s attempts at finding an apartment for her and the piano leads to a broken hand; so she decides to sell the item to the most unexpected party.