As a child in her family’s Winter Park home, Jacqueline Bond constantly spent her time in her favorite room: a two-story library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. So it’s hard to imagine that the now-publisher would have ever run out of new stories to comb through. But tucked among the seemingly endless volumes on those towering bookshelves, one title always called her back.

“I fell in love with ‘Pride and Prejudice’ when I was 13 years old,” says Bond, who’s read the book five times. “I became a helpless romantic, and since then, I started collecting her novels, and so I have probably about 50-plus different versions of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”

While she physically moved away from the library that inspired her love for literature when she left for college, Bond’s passion for storytelling has remained steady. First as a journalism student at the University of Florida, then as a social change and public health communications expert in Washington, D.C. And today, at 35, she is a co-founder, along with her younger sister Savannah Bond, of Bond & Grace, a book publisher and art house creating specialty coffee-table books of beloved classics, like “The Secret Garden” and “Alice in Wonderland,” that are brought to life with original artwork.

To make their fine-art collectible editions, the Bonds first select public domain books from their own short list of the most popular titles. Next, they share the text with artists who read the book and pull inspiration from it to create original works to illustrate the hardcovers, which also include annotations from scholars who give context about the author’s life.

Take the Bond & Grace Art Novel of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” At 368 hand-sewn pages enveloped in an embossed fabric cover and shrouded in a dust jacket adorned with an image of an original paper sculpture of carnivorous plants, Bond & Grace’s version is a 21st-century take on gothic grandeur. Open the hefty book to take a visual journey into the full text of Shelley’s masterpiece, presented with haunting fonts and surrounded by annotations from the world’s preeminent “Frankenstein” experts, along with original interpretations of the sublime story by 12 artists.

“We don’t change one word; we’re very specific about that,” Jacqueline says. Although the words are exactly the same, the Bonds hope the accompanying art and insights from scholars who “live and breathe” the texts will create something new. For “Frankenstein,” for example, the sisters collaborated with scholars to learn more about the frequently overlooked female characters in the story, and an artist designed a pattern incorporating each of the women.

With the artistry and craftsmanship of each hard-bound book, it’s difficult to believe the team published its first Art Novel just three years ago. “We all come from worlds that have nothing to do with publishing. We had no idea what it even takes to make a book,” Jacqueline says. “But I think what was great about none of us knowing was that we were also able to question how things are currently done, and we didn’t accept the answer, which was usually, ‘Oh, we can’t do that.’”

Bond & Grace, now a bona fide boutique publisher, was born out of an exhaustive search for a large, beautiful collector’s edition of “Pride and Prejudice.” Unsuccessful, Jacqueline took matters into her own hands.

“I wanted something that gave me (a new) experience with the text that I have read over and over and over again, and I could not find it,” she says. “And finally, my mom, after complaining enough, said, ‘Well, if you want it so badly, why don’t you make it yourself?’ like any mom does. And I thought, ‘Yeah, sure, Mom, let me just start a publishing house and create this book from scratch.’ But then I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.”

So Jacqueline assembled the dream team: Savannah, who was working at Estée Lauder at the time, and their friend, Ayana Christie, who was at Google. Together, the three took the only universal step in any literary lover’s career trajectory: a leap of faith.

Now, after creating a small but mighty literary domain including three titles, elevated gifts like silk scarves and candles, a podcast, a newsletter and a haute book club that feels more like a private literary society, the team has turned their attention to bringing a bit of the roaring 1920s to the 2020s. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, “The Great Gatsby,” will be released as a Bond & Grace Art Novel this November.

The choice to feature one of the most prominent texts about the American Dream in a time of political uncertainty and chaos is no coincidence, the sisters say. “It’s fascinating, given everything that’s happening politically and in the world. There is a very big question of … what does it mean to be great?” Jacqueline says. “What is America’s legacy, and what will our legacy be?”

To every sibling’s surprise, the Bond & Grace founders rarely disagree on what titles to choose. “We don’t have any real debates on it. To be honest, every title has felt right,” Jacqueline says. For now, that’s “The Great Gatsby,” but down the road, it might be a Hemingway novel or even something by Jacqueline’s very first literary love, Jane Austen.

“I want them to feel a new connection to the text,” she says of bibliophiles exploring the collection of classics. “Because maybe they didn’t feel like that text was meant for them, but now that they’re seeing it through a different perspective or through different imagery, they’d be like, ‘Oh, this was also meant for me to read. This is something that I can fall in love with too.’”

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