Hugh Merrill, the printmaker, has a dirty little secret: for many years, he has been covertly writing ... poetry. His debut book of poems, Nomadic? Rover by Days Singing These Gang Plank Songs of the Ambler, reflects the intense and unguarded energy of a vital artist and natural storyteller who has deep connections to both historic and current movements. His subject matter ranges from childhood memories of racial inequality to contemporary ideas of gender fluidity, and his absurd ditties tickle the what the fuck bone in all of us. Littered amongst the poems are...

"From the 1950s through the 1980s, John Dann MacDonald was one of the most popular and prolific writers in America. He was a crime writer who managed to break free of the genre and finally get serious consideration from critics. Sixty-six of his novels and more than four hundred of his short stories were published in his lifetime. When he died in 1986, more than seventy million of his books had been sold.

"But it was not just sales figures that made MacDonald important. London Times critic H. R. F. Keating selected his 1979 novel, The Green Ripper, as one of the one hundred...