Gary Jansen, QPB's brilliant, sly, lowkey Executive Editor, is a man of many talents. 

He's a former brake mechanic and furniture delivery man, but has always had a devote love for books. "My grandfather was a grave digger," Jansen says, "but he was the most well-read person I'd ever met. He had problems dealing with people. He was shy, sometimes aggressive and abrupt, and sometimes he seemed like a lost angel. He would always call me a schweinhund, which I think is German for 'dirty dog.' But he loved to read and he would pass his books along to me after he had finished them and I would sit in my room at night and read them by flashlight. I remember all his books smelling vaguely of cigarettes and dirt, so there was always an earthiness to the words and to the stories. I don't think you can truly appreciate a good book unless you make it concrete in your life. Reading is, and always will be, a very physical experience for me - words are always one step removed from experience and it's the reader's job to eliminate that distance, to make a book his or her own."

Jansen has served as an editor for History Book Club and Book-of-the-Month Club. His writing has appeared in USA Today, New York Newsday and the Chicago Sun-Times and he is the author of The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved.