Stop me… stop me before I small-press shoutout again!

I know, I know. I promised one last shoutout before the holidays. But then I ran across Overlook Press. They are bigger than some of our other shoutoutees, but I’m not holding that against them. They have that indie spirit – and if anything, their size is a testament to the success you can have if you publish good things and hang around for a while.

Founded by a publishing bigshot who wanted to give overlooked titles a chance (I guess the name really should have been “No Longer Overlooked Press,” which is obviously not as catchy), Overlook’s catalog of authors is self-described as eclectic. I would describe it as the deep-dive authors.

What do I mean by that?

Okay, you watch a James Bond movie, and then you read Robert Ludlum, who isn’t all that great but kind of fun, so you find John LeCarre, who’s much better and just as fun, but you finish all of those and you think you’ve exhausted the genre… and then someone tells you that there’s this guy named Charles McCarry, he’s pretty good too, and an American…

That’s the Overlook author.

Or the Coen Brothers’ movie True Grit comes out, and the dialogue knocks you out, and you wonder how in the world they manage to come up with this stuff. And then a reviewer points you toward the world of Charles Portis. And there’s Overlook again.

So as a holiday gift… well, I guess there might not be time to get them in Santa’s bag, but there are always those people who surprised you by giving you a gift but you didn’t give them anything. (The overlooked!) And of course, we’re almost at 2014 and we might as well start with our New Years’ Resolutions. Read more books, read better books, find the quality among the dreck: if those are your plans (and I hope they are), you could do worse than start your year out with a trip through Overlook.