…follows the rise of the Vandals MC, a Chicago outlaw motorcycle club. Seen through the lives of its members and their families, the club evolves over the course of a decade from a surrogate family for local outcasts into a violent organized crime syndicate, threatening the original founder’s unique vision and way of life. Watch trailer
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Bibliophiles will find plenty of centuries-old tomes, graphic novels, modern works and more in this French city, which also happens to be this year’s UNESCO World Book Capital. Read more
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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association announced the winners of the 2023 Nebula Awards at the 2024 Nebula Conference and Awards, held June 6-9, 2024 at the Westin Pasadena in Pasadena CA, and virtually online. Read more
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An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike. Read more
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Morgan Talty, award-winning author of ‘Night of the Living Rez’ and ‘Fire Exit,’ recommends his favorites. Read more
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New Orleans is a thriving hub for festivals, music and Creole cuisine. Here, the novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin shares books that capture its many cultural influences. Read more
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One hundred years after his death, the Czech writer circulates as a pop idol of digital alienation. Read more
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Goodness and community may not be the first words that spring to mind when thinking about the thriller genre, a broad category that the International Thriller Writers (ITW) association defines as including “murder mystery, detective, suspense, horror, supernatural, action, espionage, true crime, war, adventure, and myriad similar subject areas.” But both were at the heart of the 19th ThrillerFest, which culminated with an awards banquet on June 1 at the Sheraton Times Square in Manhattan. Read more
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Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. government aggressively pursued the privatization of many government functions under the theory that businesses would compete to deliver these services more cheaply and effectively than a bunch of lazy bureaucrats. The result is a lucrative and politically powerful set of industries that are fueled by government anti-poverty programs and thus depend on poverty for their business model. These entities often take advantage of the very people they ostensibly serve. Today, government contractors run state Medicaid programs, give job training to welfare recipients, and distribute food stamps. At the same time, badly designed anti-poverty policies have spawned an ecosystem of businesses that don’t contract directly with the government but depend on taking a cut of the benefits that poor Americans receive. I call these industries “Poverty Inc.” If anyone is winning the War on Poverty, it’s them. Read more
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Last fall, while reporting Esquire’s “Future of Books” predictions, I asked industry insiders about trends they’d noticed in recent years. Almost everyone mentioned that debut fiction has become harder to launch. For writers, the stakes are do or die: A debut sets the bar for each of their subsequent books, so their debut advance and sales performance can follow them for the rest of their career. For editors, if a writer’s first book doesn’t perform, it’s hard to make a financial case for acquiring that writer’s second book. And for you, a reader interested in great fiction, the fallout from this challenging climate can limit your access to exciting new voices in fiction. Unless you diligently shop at independent bookstores where booksellers highlight different types of books, you might only ever encounter the big, splashy debuts that publishers, book clubs, social-media algorithms, and big-box retailers have determined you should see. Read more
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