2026 reading list 03

Bill Pennington, Billy Martin. NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. The book opens with a notorious drunk dead in a ditch after an auto accident, then spends five hundred pages showing why thousands of people jammed his funereal. Peter Brown, Wild Robot. NY Little, Brown, 2016. Source of the DreamWorks film, this elementary school chapter book follows Roz from her accidental activation on an island after her cargo ship sinks through her escape from it -- but the real story is, of course, the friends made along the way. Talia Hibbert, Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute. NY: Joy Revolution, 2023. A young adult romance in which former best friends are forced together and, y’know. One suffers OCD, which adds a distinct color. Laurent Hopman & Renaud Roche, Lucas Wars. NY: 23d Street, 2025. A biography of filmmaker George Lucas, told, appropriately, as a graphic novel. The expressive black and white is emotionally accented with color to produce a story almost as thrilling as the Star Wars movie at its center. Ally Carter, Blonde Who Came in from the Cold. NY: Avon, 2025. This installment either closes the clamshell on the Blonde Identity, by telling the other twin’s tale, or sets the stage for Further clandestine adventure with now-familiar characters. Hope for the later. Eric Larson, Hadrea Broccardo, Marika Cresta, et. al; Spider-Man Noir: The Gwen Stacy Affair. NY: Marvel, 2026. NYC, 1939. Spider-Man is back from visiting other dimensions to take on the Nazi threat in this source material for the Amazon series staring Nic Cage. Loren Esleman, Stress. NY: Open Road, 1996. Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Street -- it sounds like Rudy Guliani’s Broken Windows plan for stopping crime, and was just as (in)effective. The Detroit PD unit existed to abuse and accuse Black folk, an inappropriate response to rising murder rates after the 1967 riots. Coleman Young’s first act as mayor was to disband the group. Stephen King, Misery. NY: Viking, 1987. Another book about the writing life, from one of our favorite authors. The title says it all.

2026 reading list 02

Loren Estelman, Motown. NY: Open Road, 2012. The second Detroit Crime novel jumps ahead to the 1960s, when a new generation has taken over -- though Connie Minor does make an appearance. This time, disputed control of the numbers racket leads to the Kercheval incident -- which became famous as a trial run for the nationally-know riots a year later. Loren Estleman, King of the Corner. NY: Open Road, 2012. Bringing Detroit Crime into the 1980s, where Doc, the Tigers’ star left-hander now getting out of prison after serving time for throwing a party where someone overdosed in an election year, is dragged into the consequences of the prior generation’s sins. L. Sprague deCamp, Tower of Zanid. NY: Airmont, 1958. Anthony Fallon is a rogue. He once had a kingdom on the planet Krishna, and he wants it back. To fund the project, he undertakes a dangerous mission to penetrate the sacred Tower of Zanid. Loren Estleman, Edsel. NY: Open Road, 2012. It’s the end of the 50s, and after his exile from journalism at Prohibition’s end, Connie Minor has been an ad man. The best photo he ever took gets him hired at Ford, making this an insider account of the namesake automobile. Mikhail Bulgakov (trans. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhovsky), Master and Margarita. NY: Penguin, 2001. The Devil went down to Moscow -- of this, there can be no doubt, as the trail of arson and murder shows. To what end? Releasing an unpublished writer from an asylum? Well, of course it never happened. You imagined it. Paul Somendinger, Greatest New York Yankees by Uniform Number. Tijeras, NM: Artemesia, 2026. While I don’t recall seeing this approach before, it’s an easily-replicated method for slicing up all the players in a team’s history for high level abstract consideration. For Yankees’ fans, though, the only surprise might be Bobby Murcer over Billy Martin wearing #1. Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, & Albert Monteys, SlaughterHouse-Five. LA: Archaia, 2024. This graphic novel is a stunning adaptation of Vonnegut’s effort to understand Dresden’s bombing during World War II. So it goes.

2026 reading list 01

Chris Lamb, Blackout. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2004. This slim biography of Jackie Robinson, the first Black man to play Major League baseball in the twentieth century, focuses on the first spring training of his career. Signed to be the icebreaker, Robinson dealt with discrimination at every turn yet, with support from a few key people, was able to maintain his composure, find his batting stroke, and prove that he -- and anyone else with the skill and temperament, regardless of skin color -- could play the national game. Ally Carter, Blonde Identity. NY: Avon, 2023. When Zoe wakes up on a snowy Paris street, she has no memory -- but does have a hot guy with a gun standing over her, calling her Alex. Who is she? Who is Alex? And the hot guy? Is it a mystery, or a romance? Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary. NY: Little, Brown, 2022. Sam Adams comes down to us as a bottle of beer, labelled “Brewer. Patriot.” The line has it backwards: Adams failed as a maltier, running his father’s business into the ground, before finding his place in Boston’s back rooms, where he more than anyone espoused the idea of liberty and organized to that end. His work, in fact, was largely done before the Continental Congress in Philadelphia declared independence and, while he was later elected governor of Massachusetts, his influence quickly faded, in large part because he made no effort to secure a legacy. Yet this grand experiment of democracy never happened if not for Samuel Adams, our founding grandfather. Loren Estleman, Whiskey River. NY: Open Road, 2012. The story of Prohibition-era gangster Jack Dance, as told under oath by newsman Connie Minor, is the first of Estelman’s Detroit Crime series. Bill Freehan, Behind the Mask. NY: World Publishing, 1970. This insider diary of the 1969 season and its championship hangover by the Detroit Tigers’ long-time All-Star catcher doesn’t pry too deep. A casual mention of greenies in the clubhouse is jarring, as is description of Denny McLain’s utter disregard for others. On the other hand, these two nuggets and Freehan’s bits of insight make it a good example of its genre.