How to use this Page

After the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014, hardly anyone contests that the World Health Organization (WHO) made fatal mistakes during the crisis. It reacted too late and did too little to contain the outbreak before it got out of control. And it once again exposed its deeply entrenched dysfunctions that make it so difficult for the organization to live up to its role as the central standard setter, coordinator and crisis manager in global health

The post The exception should become the rule in the World Health Organization appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

It’s grant writing time, and for many public libraries, grants are the main driver of funding for new and existing programs. It’s a stressful time, both for those writing the grants, and those awarding them.
The best advice I can give is to be selective! Research what grants are available to you, and make sure what you’re asking for fits the selection criteria of the grant being awarded. Once you’ve identified a grant that matches your needs, review previous grant winners to see if you can identify what made that winning program stand out from the rest of the applicants. Also, work with your program staff to be sure your information is up to date and relevant. Avoid rhetoric and hyperbole. Try to provide anecdotes and testimonies that demonstrate need or previous success. Be specific about outputs and outcomes. The proposal should explicitly state expected practical, tangible outputs. Don’t be afraid to be realistic about your expectations! Make sure to adhere to the formatting and content requirements laid out in the grant application instructions. Proposals not meeting these requirements will often not be considered.

We are looking forward to reading your submissions! The ALSC Library Service to Special Population Children and Their Caregivers Committee will select the winner of  our “Light the Way” award based on the application process. Special population children may include but isn’t limited to: those who have learning or physical differences, those who speak English as a second language, those who are in a non-traditional school environment, those who live in foster care settings, those who are in the juvenile justice system, those who live in non-traditional families, and those who need accommodation services. The winner of this award will be announced at ALA’s Midwinter Meeting. The award consists of a $3,000 grant to assist in conducting exemplary outreach to under-served populations through a new program or an expansion of work already being done.

Not sure if this is the right grant for you? Review these other amazing opportunities!

The “Autism Welcome Here: Library Programs, Services and More” grant.

Looking to expand your collection? The Libri Foundation can help, so can The Lisa Libraries.

Do you need a wide variety of books for your collection? Ask the Library of Congress.

Are you working on a program that needs audio books or videos?

Best of luck to you during the grant writing season!

Lesley Mason is the Youth Services Manager at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the DC Public Library’s central branch. She is currently the chair of the ALCS’s Library Service to Special Population Children and Their Caregivers Committee. She earned her Master’s Degree in Library Science from Clarion University. She specializes in Early Literacy and can be reached at [email protected].

The post The ALSC/Candlewick Press “Light the Way: Outreach to the Underserved” Grant is now live! appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Add a Comment

By Eve E. Garrow

Does the government fund nonprofit human service organizations that serve and locate in the neighborhoods with the greatest needs? This is an important question, as much of the safety net now takes the form of human services delivered, for the most part, by nonprofit organizations. Access to government benefits therefore relies increasingly on the location of nonprofits that are awarded government funds to provide human services. While conventional wisdom holds that the partnership between government and the nonprofit sector does direct government benefits to poor areas, recent research finds an opposite effect in poor neighborhoods that are substantially African American.

The prevailing model of government-nonprofit relations argues that privatization of human services is a “win-win” partnership, because nonprofits need government support if they are to survive in resource-poor neighborhoods, and government fulfills its mandate to serve poor people by funding these organizations. Indeed, research shows heavy dependence on government funding among nonprofit human service organizations that serve poor populations and locate in poor neighborhoods.

Yet, this research does not take into consideration the influence of race on the distribution of government benefits. A recent study using data from a probability sample of nonprofit human service organizations in Los Angeles County examined the likelihood that organizations received government funding. It found that greater levels of neighborhood poverty improved the chances that nonprofit human services located in them received government funding — unless those neighborhoods were substantially African American.

As shown in the graph below, the analysis compared neighborhoods with small shares of African Americans to neighborhoods in which the share of African Americans exceeded 20 percent of all residents — the “tipping point” at which whites tend to view the neighborhood as being “too African American” and avoid it. In neighborhoods that are less than or equal to 20 percent African American, the likelihood that the organization will receive government support increases along with rising poverty, consistent with the partnership model of government-nonprofit relations. In neighborhoods that exceed 20 percent African American, however, the relationship between neighborhood poverty and government funding reverses. As neighborhood poverty increases, the likelihood that nonprofit human service organizations receive government funding decreases.

Interaction between percent living in poverty and percent African American residents in location

The analysis also examined the relationship between the poverty rate and receipt of government funding for organizations in census tracts with different percentages of Latina/os, another minority group in Los Angeles County that experiences high levels of poverty. As shown in the figure below, higher neighborhood poverty seems to encourage government to fund local nonprofit human services regardless of the percentage of Latina/os in the neighborhood.

Interaction between percent living in poverty and percent Latina/o residents in location

What accounts for the failure of the partnership model in poor African American neighborhoods? First, and consistent with research that demonstrates a pattern of systematic government disinvestment in programs for vulnerable minority populations, the findings suggest that the allocation of government funding to nonprofits is subject to discriminatory forces. It could be that policymakers and public officials are reluctant to channel funding to neighborhoods that are negatively constructed and widely viewed as undeserving of government largesse, and direct limited funding to neighborhoods that are viewed as more deserving. It could also be that supposedly “color-blind” grant and contract programs that rely on competition tend to shut out historically oppressed minority neighborhoods that lack competitive advantages.

Yet, this does not explain why government is relatively responsive to poor neighborhoods with a high percentage of Latina/os. After all, Latina/os, like African Americans, are subject to discrimination in the American stratification system. The difference may lie in the relative electoral power of blacks and Latina/os in Los Angeles County. Political representation should influence allocation decisions, because groups with political power cannot be ignored even if they are negatively constructed. In Los Angeles County, African Americans represent a small percentage of the electorate — about 8 percent in 2010 — and their numbers have been shrinking in recent decades. By comparison, the percentage of Latina/os in the county, which stood at about 48 percent in 2010, is relatively large and increasing. Given their diminished electoral clout, poor African American neighborhoods may be more disadvantaged than poor Latina/o neighborhoods when it comes to attracting government funds.

The findings are particularly disturbing given that African American are more likely than other minority groups to live in neighborhoods that are both poor and highly segregated from whites. Indeed, the racial dynamics uncovered in this study suggests that the privatized welfare state may underserve neighborhoods where the need is greatest.

Eve E. Garrow is Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the implications of privatization of human services for poor and marginalized groups, especially racial minorities, and the commercialization of human services. She has published and presented works on government funding of human services, the role of nonprofit advocacy in promoting social rights, and the risk of client exploitation in nonprofit social enterprises that use clients as labor. Her most recent article, “Does Race Matter in Government Funding of Nonprofit Human Service Organizations? The Interaction of Neighborhood Poverty and Race,” was published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory serves as a bridge between public administration and public management scholarship on the one hand and public policy studies on the other. Its multidisciplinary aim is to advance the organizational, administrative, and policy sciences as they apply to government and governance. The journal is committed to diverse and rigorous scholarship and serves as an outlet for the best conceptual and theory-based empirical work in the field.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Racial diversity and government funding of nonprofit human services appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

As I mentioned yesterday, Target offers grant money to schools and organizations who need help with an early reading program. An early reading program might entail hiring a children’s book author/illustrator to present to students (he said rather shamelessly).

Dollar General also has a grant program for early literacy/youth development—as does Barbara Bush, Verizon, Scripps-Howard, and Clorox.

Here is a round-up of foundations who offer grant money for summer reading programs. Here are awards & grants available from the International Reading Association.

If you would like a detailed description of my presentations to help you apply for these grants, be sure to give me a yell!

Add a Comment

By Bill Wiist In 2009, there were 2,733 corporate foundations with assets of more than $10 billion and an annual donation of $2.5 billion. In that year foundations made grants of more than $38 billion of which $15.41 billion was from family foundations. In 2009, the 50 largest contributors to health donated more than $3 billion through almost 5,000 grants. The extent of corporate-based foundation funding in public health raises two critical questions for public health policy, research, and programming. First, should corporate-based foundations be setting the public health research and program agenda?

Add a Comment

Los Angeles citizens have passed charter amendment Measure L with 63 percent of the vote–helping the 72-branch library system recover from steep budget cuts in recent years.

Here’s more from Library Journal: “The charter mandates that the library receive .0175 percent of the assessed value of all property in the city. Measure L will, over the next four years, increase that percentage to .03 percent. The library projects that this will translate to $130 million four years from now”

Do you think this kind of bill could work in other cities? The measure will help cut the library loose from the city’s general fund, making the library system responsible for new costs like “custodial services, security services, employee benefits.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

Florida decided to restore state aid to Florida’s public library system. This is good news. There’s also a quirky feel good story about one Florida librarian a systems librarian at Wilderness Coast Public Libraries, who dedicated his vacation

to hanging around the Capitol which he did last year as well.

This year Paul spent days at the Florida Capitol, holding signs in suppport of State Aid funding for public libraries. At midnight on April 26 as funding was restored, Senator J.D. Alexander acknowledged that advocates could learn a lot from Paul’s example.

FLA blog mentions this, and Paul comments “Together, as a team we won a victory for the many patrons who rely on their libraries.” Thanks Paul, and Co.Longer story over at Tampabay.com and Library Journal.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Eugene H. Rubin, MD, PhD is Professor and Vice-Chair for Education in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis – School of Medicine.  Charles F. Zorumski MD is the Samuel B. Guze Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis – School of Medicine, where he is also Professor of Neurobiology.  In addition, he is Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Director of the Washington University McDonnell Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology. Together they wrote, Demystifying Psychiatry: A Resource for Patients and Families, which offers a straightforward description of the specialty and the work of its practitioners.  In the excerpt below we learn about the prevalence of psychiatric disorders.  In the original article below they argue for funds to support drug prevention rather than for research for the resulting medical problems.

Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are the leading causes of death in the US. This is well known. What is less well known is that cigarette smoking (nicotine dependence) is the most important preventable contributor to these causes of death and alcohol abuse is the third most important contributor. These two legal substances have substantial addiction potential and together account for more than 400,000 deaths per year in the US. Once a young person smokes more than about 100 cigarettes, his or her chances of becoming addicted are substantial. Long term risky drinking predisposes a person to many health consequences in addition to enhancing the risk of becoming alcohol dependent. Risky alcohol use is defined as drinking 5 or more alcoholic beverages (12 oz beer equivalents) over a few hours on repeated occasions (actually, it is 5 drinks for men and 4 for women).

When misused, alcohol can lead to job loss, destruction of relationships, and a myriad of physical ailments not to mention its contribution to increased rates of traffic accidents, violence, and suicides. Alcohol-related disorders are major reasons why our emergency rooms (ERs) are so busy.

Cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin are illegal drugs that with repeated use can take over a person’s ability to behave rationally. These addictive drugs have severe physical and psychiatric consequences. They destroy relationships as well and harm society in obvious ways. They also increase our health care costs and tie up our ERs.

All of these drugs, including nicotine and alcohol, hijack the brain’s motivational system and hamper its executive system (the part of the brain that helps us think, plan, and learn). Each drug interacts with the “wiring” of these brain systems in different, but related, ways. The cigarette smoker who reaches for a smoke before getting out of bed in the morning, the alcoholic who needs an eye-opener to start the day, and the woman who prostitutes herself in order to get her next injection of heroin – all are responding to the control of an abused substance.

<

Add a Comment

Philip A. Schwartzkroin has been a research scientist for over 35 years. Through his many years in the laboratory, he has trained and mentored numerous postdoctoral fellows and graduate and undergraduate students many of whom have gone on to establish successful leadership roles in their chosen areas of research. Dr. Schwartzkroin currently is Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California-Davis, an affiliate of the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, and holds the Bronte Endowed Chair in Epilepsy Research in the UC Davis School of Medicine. His book, So You want To Be A Scientist?, provides a glimpse into the job of being a research scientist, addressing explicitly many issues that are rarely addressed directly in training programs. In the original post below we learn how to react to the rejection of a research grant application.

Are you interested in a career as a research scientist? Do you have any idea what is involved in such a career? Graduate training programs do a good job in preparing students with facts and in teaching technical laboratory skills. But there is a lot more to the job of being a researcher than simply doing experiments. And many of the needed skills are not explicitly taught.

For example: How do you get grants to support your research?

Let’s say you’ve submitted a grant application and the reviewers don’t like it – and so recommend that the granting agency not provide funding. You try again, addressing the concerns and critiques of the reviewers – but the review scores for this second application are only marginally better than in the first round. What do you do then? This conundrum is not uncommon, and the appropriate response requires perseverance, confidence, and guidance. Here are some suggestions (certainly not exhaustive) about how one might proceed:

1) Do additional experiments that provide more compelling preliminary data.

2) Ask a senior mentor to help you “read between the lines.” While you may have, in your revised application, addressed the explicit criticisms expressed in the first review, you may have missed an important implicit message. For example, reviewers often try to let you know that they simply don’t find your questions or topic very interesting - without actually saying that. It would be important to know if that were the case.

3) Get input – hopefully honest and objective - from your colleagues who do not work directly in the area of the grant application. One of the difficult tricks in getting grant support is convincing the reviewers - who are likely not to be working in your area of interest - that your ideas are important and that your experimental approach will yield significant new insights. Sometimes it’s hard for a researcher to gain sufficient distance from his/her own work to get a good sense of whether the grant application succeeds on this level.

4) Request that your application be reviewed (in the next round) by a different review panel. This alternative might be effective if you suspect there is a member of the initial review group who is “sabotaging” your application, or if you think that the group simply doesn’t have the expertise/interests to review your application appropriately.

5) Try sending the application to another granting agency that has a more direct interest in your area of study. For example, a private foundation with a particular area of concern may be more sympathetic to work on “their” topic than a large government agency that deals with applications that cover a broad range of topics.

6) Alter the focus of your proposal if you think that will provide a more effective “hook.” Such an alteration does not necessarily mean changing your proposed experiments. Rather, it may involve a change in emphasis, using different key words, reorienting the background and rationale sections of the application.

7) Forget about the experiments proposed in your application, and develop another set of studies that you think are more likely to be funded. It is important to learn when to “cut bait” and go on to something more productive. This decision is very difficult. Indeed, we scientists usually resist pressures to change our research directions. But this alternative is always important to consider.

Add a Comment

Frederick Grinnell is Professor of Cell Biology and founder of the Program in Ethics in Science and Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. His newest book, Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic offers an insider’s view of real-life scientific practice. Grinnell demystifies the textbook model of a linear “scientific method,” suggesting instead a contextual understanding of science. Scientists do not work in objective isolation, he argues, but are motivated by interest and passions.  In the article below he looks at how graduate scientific education should be changed.  Read previous posts by Grinnell here.

In the 31 July issue of Science, Jeffrey Mervis’ News Focus discusses funding of graduate education in the sciences. Currently, the overwhelming majority of U.S. graduate students are supported by research grants to faculty members who hire the students to work in their laboratories. Some research leaders argue that the U.S. would benefit if more graduate students were supported by independent fellowships instead of research grants. For instance, independent funding would empower young investigators to follow their passions, be more creative, and function less as technical assistants – “a pair of hands.” However, others are less enthusiastic about the wisdom of removing from individual investigators the responsibility for selection of students.

Primarily, Mervis’ report concerns the economics of graduate education and the roles of the graduate student workforce in advancing university teaching and research interests. The article fails to address an ethical dilemma of the current system – the inherent conflict that occurs regarding mentorship. When graduate students are supported by research grants rather than by training programs, they become laboratory employees as well as trainees. Laboratory directors have a fiduciary responsibility to their grants to ensure that employees carry out the proposed research and maximize productivity. At the same time, investigators have a mentorship responsibility to ensure that trainees receive the education and experience necessary for future success.

What is in the best interests of laboratory productivity might not be in the best interests of a trainee. It is not enough that graduate students learn the technical skills – “a pair of hands” — to do experiments. Just as important is that they learn how to design experiments. Good mentoring may mean allowing students to design experiments even if doing so increases the likelihood of failure, an outcome that certainly does not advance laboratory productivity. Similarly, allowing students to write the first draft of papers may slow down the total time it takes to publish the research. Nevertheless, learning how to write papers is a key skill for students to acquire. Finally, imagine the situation of an advanced graduate student who comes up with a novel idea that she would like to explore. From the point of view of training, perhaps this development should be encouraged. But if the laboratory director is trying to finish up a paper for an upcoming grant submission, then the student’s tangential efforts likely will be discouraged. It is not the right time.

In addition to teaching stipends, three types of mechanisms commonly are used to support graduate students in the sciences: research grants to individual investigators, department/program research training grants and independent student fellowships. Amongst these three mechanisms, perhaps the time has come to transition to training grants as the primary mechanism of support. Training grants retain local institutional control over graduate education and empower local programs (vs. individual laboratories) to define more clearly what education should entail and how long it should take. More robust consideration becomes possible about how graduate science education can advance career goals beyond the traditional path towards academic scientist. Students gain flexibility. Nationally, strategic planning for graduate education will be facilitated. Deciding how much money to allocate for research training grants can influence the size of the graduate student workforce. Deciding which institutions receive training grants can nuance multiple outcomes such as best scientific opportunities vs. other important factors, e.g., the marginal impact of training grants on traditionally underfunded institutions and the communities in which they are located.

Thirty years ago, one and two author research papers were common; papers with many authors were rare. Now, research groups have become larger and collaborations more frequent. Papers with five to ten authors are common. Increased size and complexity challenge implementation of the traditional dual roles of mentor and laboratory director. Funding graduate students in the sciences through training programs rather than research grants will help focus attention on the importance of both these roles.

Add a Comment

So if you read the papers at all, you know that even though things are tough, people use libraries like crazy. That said, libraries are getting funding cuts, despite, in many cases, increased use. This sucks. One of the things about living in Vermont is that there’s not that much to even trim from our budgets, but the state library (and the newish state librarian whose job I do not envy at all) closed one of Vermont’s very few regional libraries to the public and libraries who want to borrow materials now have to make appointments. This is at a time when library circulation in the state is up amost six percent and local tax support is up five percent. In other state library news

• Ohio’s libraries are looking at a potential 50% funding cut. The Shuttered Library blog has been set up to track this issue.
• The State Library of Michigan (almong with other Michigan state government offices) is implementing unpaid furlough days on Fridays through the summer.
• Pennsylvania will consider themselves lucky if they wind up with level funding after defeating a bill that proposed 50% cuts.
• Nevada State Library is cutting hours, from being open to the public 8-5 to being open 10-2.

Display Comments Add a Comment

I had first learned about Shelf Awareness and Author Buzz when a reader brought it to my attention in early 2006. I’d already been a fan of MJ Rose’s blog Buzz, Balls & Hype (even guest blogging on it in early March the same year) for some time, but had not put together the very obvious clues that she was also responsible for Author Buzz and other marketing tools to help authors reach a wide selection of booksellers, librarians and book clubs.

Around September, Ms. Rose asked if I would like to be part of an informal focus group of booksellers for her novel The Reincarnationist. Due to time constraints I was unable to follow up on the project, but the idea of book focus groups seemed so perfect for the publishing world that it stayed in the back of mind. Last month I contacted Ms. Rose to find out how the focus groups had gone, only to discover that she was now involved with putting together Thrillerfest as well as marketing class for authors to be taught at the event. Never one to miss an opportunity to pester someone about marketing, I shot off an email full of questions on all things Thrillerfest, marketing, focus groups, and why authors need to get their names out there in an efficient manner.

The following interview resulted from that email exchange.

Linsey (aka Bookseller Chick): You're involved with the Thrillerfest (July 12th-15th in Manhattan) along with James Patterson, Lisa Gardner, Clive Cussler, James Rollins and others, which is billed as "a four-day annual celebration of the fiction world's most popular genre." How are you involved?

MJ Rose: I'm on the board of ITW as well as being a founding member. I became involved after the first meeting in the fall of 2004 --excited at the idea of an organization whose goals including building readership. Strangely enough, we're the only writer's organization that has that goal.

Linsey: What makes it fictions most popular genre? What is it about the Thriller that appeals to readers world wide?

MJ: Since the beginning of storytelling, "then what happens" has been what’s kept people transfixed and that's the essence of our genre.

Linsey: What opportunities does Thrillerfest offer readers? Writers?

MJ: We're not an organization that helps writers get published , find agents or get legal advice. Those orgs already existed.

We are here to celebrate the genre. To get more attention via innovative and creative ways for our authors and their books with the press and with readers.

We're the first writers' organization that has a reader's newsletter. And we set up our convention, ThrillerFest, to bring readers and writers together with more than 85% of the panels aimed at readers. Our anthology, Thriller, is one of the best selling anthologies ever published and had met its goal of getting an enormous amount of attention for our authors. Our big name authors wind up introducing readers to our not yet big name authors. Its a great example of the generosity of our membership. And there's lots more to come.

Linsey: Your class at Craftfest (the writer orientated portion of Thrillerfest) is a bonus session focused on creating book buzz--your area of expertise--will you be focusing on internet buzz, reaching booksellers, reaching readers or all of the above?

MJ: All of the above.

Linsey: How can one go about defining the audience they are trying to reach with their book and then reaching them?

MJ: This is really complicated and part of the problem our industry is facing since publishers don’t do much research and don’t know a lot about our users – in other words - readers. It’s not an industry that spends as much time innovating as it does producing and in this overcrowded marketplace, that’s a problem for everyone, including every one of us.

I think if you are a writer you need to read a lot - both in your category and out of it and evaluate your work in light of what you read. That will help you get a sense of how to identify your own work.

Then your main goal should to identify the niche markets your book can reach, find them, and then connect to them, get to know them and help them to get to know you.

You can sell a lot of books by starting with identifiable groups and working outwards.

It doesn't help to say my book is for all readers everywhere. There's no way to reach them with a limited budget. But if you can say my book is for women who love mysteries and like to knit ... then we're getting somewhere. Or my book is for athletic men who like to scuba dive.

Knowing the niches you can start searching out listservs, blogs, sites, newspapers, magazines, venues where your target audience lives.

Linsey: How does Author Buzz--your marketing service--help simplify this process?

MJ: It's enormously time intensive to market your own book. It can take months and months of work. I found that I was teaching authors how to do it in my online class only to discover they'd come up with great ideas of how to market their books but when it came time to do the work, they didn't want to execute their plans.

And rightly so, we're writers. We want to write the next book! If we wanted to be marketers we'd be in advertising. (I know since I left advertising to be a novelist only to discover I had to stay in advertising to stay alive as a writer.)

I saw so much of this problem, and lived it myself, that I though up the idea of a one stop marketing solution for authors. Buy the program and reach readers and leaders of 7500 bookclubs, over 350,000 readers, 10,000 librarians and 3000 booksellers. Add another one of the programs and do a book blog tour or run ads on the top 1o blogs that cater to your audience.

It's four hours at the most of the author's time instead of four moths. So we can do what we wanted to do all along - write.

Linsey: For your book, The Reincarnationist, you used a focus group of booksellers. Why? What information did that group provide and would you do it in the future?

MJ: Back when I was in advertising I did a lot of focus groups and found that if used correctly the information was invaluable.

Objectivity is hard to come by for authors, editors, agents. Yes, there's expertise and it counts for a lot, but my agent and editor and I had all read my book three or four times each and I wanted to know what booksellers were going to say. What the overall impression of the book was going to be. I wanted to know early on, if the book met the goals I set for it.

I didn't do formal focus groups-though I would have loved to - the cost would have been prohibitive. But I did manage to get enough booksellers to read the book that I was able to get an early read on the manuscript that did provide the information I was hoping it would.

Not only would I do it again, I'd do it bigger.

I don't why people in our industry are so afraid of the words marketing or focus groups or research.

I wouldn't ask a group to tell me how to end a book or to judge a concept before it was written, but to take a finished book or a finished cover to a group of readers and/or booksellers and find out it the book meets your expectations -- why not? After all, you don't have to listen to what the group says.

Linsey: And since this is a bookselling blog, what thriller novels should readers check out right now?


MJ: I'm going on vacation and taking Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble & Barry Eisler's Requiem for an Assassin.

Thank you so much, MJ, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with us today.

For your enjoyment--and because I'm strangely addicted to book trailers--here's the festival trailer for Thrillerfest. If you have any questions for MJ that you would like for me to follow up with her, please leave them in the comments section below or email them to me at the Bookseller Chick email address in the side bar.

Add a Comment