With a little work before hand sort is the tool to use:

use warnings;
use strict;

my @things_to_sort =
  (
  { author => 'bart', title => 'skateboarding' },
  { author => 'lisa', title => 'postmodernism' },
  { author => 'marge', title => 'hairstyles' },
  { author => 'lisa', title => 'THIS BOOK FIRST' },
  { author => 'homer', title => 'donuts' },
  { author => 'bart', title => 'coolness' }
  );

my @authors = grep {$_->{title} eq 'THIS BOOK FIRST'} @things_to_sort;

print "$_->{author}: $_->{title}\n"  for sort TwistedSort @things_to_s
+ort;

sub TwistedSort {
  if ($a->{author} eq $b->{author})
    {# Same author, just check title
    return -1 if $a->{title} eq $authors[0]->{title};
    return 1 if $b->{title} eq $authors[0]->{title};
    return $a->{title} cmp $b->{title};
    }
    
  return -1 if $a->{author} eq $authors[0]->{author};
  return 1 if $b->{author} eq $authors[0]->{author};
  return $a->{author} cmp $b->{author};
}
[download]

Prints:

lisa: THIS BOOK FIRST
lisa: postmodernism
bart: coolness
bart: skateboarding
homer: donuts
marge: hairstyles
[download]