Whiffs of Seattle's Hempfest (mid-August) may still be lingering as L.A. novelist and screenwriter Mark Haskell Smith visits with his newest novel, Baked (Black Cat/Grove). Published in the season that California's Proposition 19—which would legalize marijuana use—this entertaining mystery has ganga growing at its core. Protagonist Miro Basinas is a botanist whose skills result in his winning Amsterdam's Cannabis Cup—which sets in motion a whole array of intrigues and escapades. "A laugh-out loud, thrill-a-minute, tour de force of bad behavior, weirdness, and contemporary illegal commerce. For years, the author's work has been an open secret to connoisseurs of monstro prose and outrageous, transcend-the-genre crime action. With Baked, Mark Haskell Smith may just have written his masterpiece." - Jerry Stahl. "As cockeyed and riotous as Carl Hiaasen on really good dope." - Kirkus Reviews. Moist, Delicious, and Salty are Mark Haskell Smith's three previous books.

The wonderfully prolific Rick Bass, already author or editor of twenty-five books of both fiction and non-fiction, makes this welcome return to Elliott Bay from his home in northwest Montana's Yaak Valley. The occasion is the delightful new Nashville Chrome (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a novel one which returns him to his more southern roots. "In his grand return to fiction, Bass summons—with a lyrical style befitting his best nature writing—Arkansas and backwoods trio the Browns, the true-life country music trailblazers who pioneered the 1950s sound from which the novel takes its title ... Like the sound Chet Atkins pulls from the Browns in the studio, the narrative has a pitch-perfect chorus of longing and regret, with an undertone that connects and heals." - Publishers Weekly.