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This last fall, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merged, creating a mega publishing house, the ultimate Rat King of publishers, if you will, that could be putting out about a third of mainstream, published books this year.

When something this huge happens in an industry, it often means that the industry is either thriving or dying.

What if we woke up tomorrow and big publishing was gone? What would the world look like? Would there be books?

What would happen without big publishing?

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Is there anything better than the story of a scam? I've got one to get us started.

My mom, to reduce her sewer bill, came up with a scam.

My mom’s sewer bill for the entire year is calculated by the city tallying how much she puts into the sewer for one month. They get that number, multiply by 12, bam, sewer bill set.

What the city didn’t count on was someone willing to go pretty far to save a few bucks. If my mom put as little as possible into the sewer during her bill calculation month, she’d save some dough.

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The door has finally closed on wretched 2020, and we’re all eagerly looking forward to what we hope will be a much brighter year. What better way to celebrate the start of 2021 than with a list titles we’re most excited to read? Here are our top 10 picks for upcoming books in 2021, in order of release date for your convenience.

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Author photo courtesy of Gabriel Hart

Last month, Mannison Press released my riot-noir novelette, A Return to Spring — a fictionalized, alternate history of the 1986 Palm Springs Riots. The ’86 Riots were a true-crime event that altered that city as we knew it, putting an end to the Spring Break destination for Southern California high school/college kids, ushering in the town’s quieter, more civilized demographic that we see there today.