Howdy Basil: I hope you're going to come to the Miéville reading we're hosting on May 28th! It's like a book club, only with a band and the author in attendance.

(I bet you'd like Chronic City.)

Aha! Okay. We shall get obscure and foreign, then.

Boston Teran is a writer of dark thrillers who gets practically no attention at all. His book God Is a Bullet is a nasty dark thriller about a cult running riot in a small town. Never Count out the Dead is great, too. (Another great modern-day crime writer is Ken Bruen.)

Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling is a dark thriller about a hustler and a heist gone wrong. It's one of those just-when-you-think-it-can't-get-any-worse stories. It was out of print and was just brought back into print from New York Review of books. Another recent NYRB reissue, Nightmare Alley by William Gresham was turned into a pretty-good Tyrone Power movie, but the book is awesome. It opens with a terrifying, unforgettable description of a circus geek and turns into a con game that goes, as they are wont to do, horribly awry.

Do you read Natsuo Kirino? Her book Out was a dark thriller that kind of broke out into a weird mainstream success. It's about a woman who murders a man and drags her salary-woman friends into the mess that ensues. An older, lesser-known Japanese author is Egowa Rampo, which was a pseudonym for an Edgar Allan Poe fan who wrote creepy Poe-inspired short stories.

And French author Fred Vargas's mysteries, starting with Have Mercy On Us All are excellent, offbeat cop-and-killer fare.

Sorry! I meant: "Suggest to the other editors as a very good idea that we should do something with," not "shoot down."

I thank you for your non-poetical outrage. Are there any other topics you would like to rage at me about? I'd be happy to field anything you've got.

Oh, I address it in tomorrow's Genius profile, but I was kind of hoping that there would be an outraged poet itching for confrontation. Sadly, it seems to be a popular choice.

Dan is right on. Half Price Books pays the least of just about anybody in town, but if they don't take it, it's probably un-sell-able.

Derp! http://www.arsobscurabookbinding.com/

Fnarf gets it exactly right. Gay Talese's books were just re-released and you should have no problem finding them. There are a few anthologies of Esquire's journalism; I bet you could find a good one at any good used bookstore.

Hey Protosaurus: That was by Charles Mudede (I edited it in a state of sheer delight), and it was a great piece about how Joyce committed a terrorist attack on the English language. I should have linked to that before:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/assassinating-william-shakespeare/Content?oid=1669800

Thanks for reminding me!

I think Kristen would like to talk with somebody about the book, is all.