One year ago, I was pleased to see Grove Atlantic, the celebrated independent literary publisher, announce a new crime-focused imprint. Atlantic Crime is celebrating its first birthday, and last week, I met with its senior editor to mark the occasion.

Joe Brosnan joins the Cluesletter to chat about acquiring and marketing books, nurturing a new imprint, and the mystery trends on his radar.

It’s a long interview (my first I’ve conducted verbally, not written), but it’s chock-full with insights about our favorite genre. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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I’d like to just start with sort of an origin story of the imprint, for a little bit of context. How long were you at Grove Atlantic before you had this idea? When did you feel like it was first worth starting a crime-focused imprint?

I joined Grove Atlantic in May of 2022. Before that, I was at Minotaur Books and St. Martin’s Press, so I had kind of come up in publishing through a mystery imprint, a place where everything we did was all united under one common type of book.

When I joined Grove Atlantic, it was very much the opposite. Grove’s reputation is as a literary house. They publish award-winning fiction and nonfiction—serious books. But at the same time, for the last fifteen to twenty years, they’ve been publishing crime fiction quite extensively. They wanted someone to come in and focus on that; someone who wasn’t interested in acquiring literary fiction or nonfiction, who just wanted to take over some authors who were already here and also bring in some new people. So it was a perfect fit for me.

Before I started editing, I was on the marketing team, so I always have a marketing approach to all books that I publish as an editor, thinking about how to bring it to market from the minute I buy it and acquire it. I quickly learned that the consumers and followers that we had at Grove—on social media, in our newsletters, our bookseller contacts—they didn’t know us or follow us for crime. They were there for the other books that Grove is known for. And so it made it tricky . . . I felt like you were tying one hand behind your back on behalf of these books, where you didn’t have as strong of an influencer program, or you didn’t have librarians and booksellers who you knew wanted these types of books from you, and so the idea I had was to unify all of this under an imprint. To really legitimize and call attention to what we were already doing and give us our own sandbox to play in.

It’s been really great, because we’ve been building our own influencer program, our own library and bookseller newsletters and mailing lists. We’ve encouraged all of our authors to adopt this Atlantic Crime team mentality, so they’re all getting to know each other, they’re doing events together, they’re communicating online, and kind of building this family feeling. It’s been really great for the books, because not every author comes pre-installed with a huge following, or is really doing a lot on social media themselves. Being able to give them more visibility through our own channels and know that it’s going to followers who want that sort of content has been really good.

We have a dozen plus mystery and crime writers, so the idea was to unite them, bring in new people, and expand this a little bit. It made it easy to launch the imprint, in a way, because we had books to give away, authors to help promote, and a backlist to lean on. It made it a really fun process.

Now, in February 2026, Atlantic Crime is celebrating your first birthday. What have you learned over the past year that has surprised you about having this type of imprint, and what do you look forward to in the next year and beyond?

Something that’s been kind of eye-opening is how—and this is maybe obvious—you have such a short window to get people’s attention for books and authors that they are not familiar with already. People put such an emphasis on that first look at the cover, or that first look at that tagline. And this has really shifted the way I’ve been thinking about how to announce books and what sort of covers are working or not working.

I personally am a huge espionage fan, I enjoy reading and publishing it, but that doesn’t connect quite as much online, at least with what we’ve experimented with. I think it skews a bit older, and the people who we’re connecting with for our influencer program are not requesting those sorts of books, so it’s just about drilling down into all of our datasets and learning where to direct attention. Like, we have Lucy Clark, who writes destination thrillers. Those move really quickly when we put them in our influencer program, so putting more of our efforts for Lucy into this certain channel. And then for my British espionage book, going more toward librarians, who I think have an understanding of the readers coming into their library systems who want that sort of book.

My whole career’s been in crime and mystery, so it’s fun to segment out into the broadness of the genre. I used to manage [the website] Criminal Element, and we’d have to put tags on everything. You would really question, is this more of a mystery? Is this a thriller? And then you drill down further. The trickiest part is to not misrepresent the book you have, because I think that’s just how you lead to readers leaving a 3-star review, when, had you represented it correctly, it’s a 4 or a 5.

We have a heck of a year lined up for our books. We have a book coming in March called Ruby Falls, a kind of locked room mystery set underground during the Great Depression. It’s about a middle-aged woman who’s at the height of her powers and her happiness—a character who just screamed to me that we need to tell this person’s story.

Otherwise, I’m looking forward to hopefully acquiring some new stuff. We don’t have a ton of space on our list, but we have some slots. We’re picky. I’m picky. But I know there’s something out there I’m looking forward to buying. I’m hoping to buy something a little more speculative, maybe something tinged in horror, just kind of diversifying the list, right? Because I think you want to have all the different sorts of mysteries, all these subgenres. I think there are some blind spots on the list.

You touched on this already, but you have this background in marketing, specifically for crime fiction, at Criminal Element and at St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books. How is that work in marketing informing your work as an editor?

The difference between being an editor and being a marketer is that when you’re an editor, for the most part, you get to choose what you work on. You acquire it, it’s your decision, you do so because you love it. In marketing, you get assigned your books, so it’s not always a love thing, right? And you have to really learn what works. And what doesn’t work—both on the story level and the types of books, but also with the author.

I’m very protective of my time as an editor, and so I only want to give it to people who I can see myself working with. I don’t need to be good friends with them, but I do look for someone who I think is aligned with me in how this business works. Because when the stakes are feeling like they’re impossible, it can lead to a really pressure-filled experience. We’re going to give it our all, but sometimes books don’t work, bad reviews come in, and it can be tricky to work with authors who aren’t understanding of that.

From a marketing perspective, I pay attention to how people are talking about books. At the time of publication, booksellers, librarians, consumers . . . what they’re doing when they’re posting about it on Instagram or TikTok, or what the shelf talkers in the stores are saying. It helps me write my copy, come up with taglines, and figure out how to pitch the book to get people excited. If you do a good job of setting up a book, that tagline and that description and that elevator pitch will follow it right down to the consumers.

My time at Minotaur really helped. I worked on so many books, from the coziest mysteries you could think of to some really dark, dark stuff, and even some nonfiction and high-profile authors. With all of these different books at these different levels with these different budgets, you realize what’s working and what’s not. And now I get to apply it to the books I’m really, really passionate about, and publishing, and it’s led to a rewarding imprint experience for Atlantic Crime.

Maybe it’s just confirmation bias, because I’ve been reading this genre for so long, but I see a lot of crime-focused imprints at various publishers—more than, I think, any other genre. What about the genre do you think makes it worth investing in, as a publisher?

I think there’s a few things . . . Crime can almost be, at times, synonymous with tension, and most, if not all, good narrative stories contain tension in some way. And so, this genre is almost, like, a foolproof way to guarantee tension. At the highest of stakes,the world needs saving, but sometimes it’s literally a secret between two people, and it’s all internalized. But even that, as a device, lets you talk about bigger things, right?

I think right now you’re seeing a lot of important books under the guise of a crime or a mystery book. But they’re talking about things that are important to us readers, and also people in general. Crime lets you do that without it feeling too preachy, or too much like, “I’m doing my homework.” You still get some escapism. It’s like when you read historical fiction, you don’t realize you’re learning, but now all of a sudden you know all these different things about whatever era you’re reading about. I think good crime fiction holds up a mirror. It shows the complexities inherent to humankind.

I also think series are one of the most reliable ways to build an audience as an author. With mystery, many series come out with a new book every year. Then they backlist well, so publishers are incentivized to really invest in the series—whether it’s in the crime space, romance, whatever. I’m not spending any marketing dollars on books 2, 3, 4, 5, but they’re still selling, and that’s how you stay profitable. It’s why it’s so hard to start any sort of publishing enterprise from scratch, because you have no backlist. It takes a long time for a book to be profitable.

I have an oddball, fun question: Are there any book trends that you want to see, whether it’s in the publishing side of things, or tropes in the actual books, that you want to see left behind in 2025?

There’s a lot of stuff coming in with quirky, oddball titles and characters. I think it’s born out of the really fun books, like Finlay Donovan [by Elle Cosimano] or Vera Wong [by Jesse Q. Sutanto], where it’s like a title, with a character’s name, and they’re getting into mischief. I think these stories are hard to pull off. I think those books [Finlay Donovan and Vera Wong] are really good because those authors have aced that character and their humor, and humor is subjective. I see a lot of submissions that are purporting to be the next and they’re falling flat for me, so I’ll be interested to see how that trend continues.

I think we’re all looking for lighter escapist reads, because everything is so dark everywhere. So I am interested to see how the Golden Age and locked room mysteries continue. Cozies are tricky—I love them, but I think the cozy concept is changing. It was a very different sort of book when I was starting out. It was tea shops and cats, right? Those are still there, but I think it’s gotten broader. And I don’t know if we found another word to quite capture that. I’m also curious about horror . . . I would love to find a good horror crime novel.

What are you looking forward to this year?

I’m excited for ThrillerFest coming up, and I think I’ll be going to Bouchercon in Calgary, Canada. I like when I get to mingle with the community. I feel like I always leave very refreshed and affirmed in what I’m doing, because the lonely months of editing and not talking to people get dark, when you’re doing the same thing all the time. But otherwise, yeah, just looking forward to lots of good books, and hopefully finding some new ones.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Many thanks to Joe for his time and insights. Subscribe to the Cluesletter here.

Hi folks!

I’ve had a wild reading week. I’ve been flat out at work and instead of cosying up with comfort reads, I delved into conceptual sci fi and weird horror instead. Everything I read was great though! But perhaps not for the squeamish.

There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm.

A mind-bending conceptual sci fi thriller about an organisation dealing with unknown entities that manipulate and wipe memories.

One of the best sci fi books I have EVER read. I’m still thinking about it. Confusing, enthralling, dark, funny… a masterful piece of writing.

Chomp Chomp by Azalea Crowley

A horror romance novella from one of my absolute favourite writers. An elegant Asian-American woman goes on a date in the 80s, but the evening has surprises in store…

This is a lot gorier than Azalea’s usually cute/creepy work, and I am so here for it. But be warned, it’s a… well… it’s a LOT. I had a blast though. I really am in my horror phase.

How to Cook and Eat the Rich by Sunyi Dean

A short story about cooking and eating the rich. I don’t want to say more than that other than I loved it! Very funny and I loved the format, all done in second person one-sided dialogue, which worked fantastically for the story.

And one of the coolest covers ever.

Let me know what you’re reading in the comments, or join us on the Discord!

Love,

Disco

Hello, Sickos! I'm still scrambling to catch up with content/filming after spending last week at the Rancho Mirage Writer's Festival (which was an amazing experience I'll have to tell you more about), but I do have a special giveaway for you today.

I have obtained an extra hardcover copy of our February History Book Club pick, Fear & Fury by Heather Ann Thompson. As an aside, I will also be interviewing Thompson on YouTube later this month, so I'll be able to include some questions from the community. She was also just on The Daily Show last night promoting it if you want to know more.

To enter, be a "Kist Reads" Follower, Sicko, or Mega Sicko in the US and leave a comment on this post (it can be a fire emoji or whatever, just do it so we can make the winner selection & shipping as quick as possible). I'll throw all the terms & conditions* at the bottom. Here's what she looks like:

I'll randomly draw the winner on 2/6 and reach out via email if you've won. Good luck!

Here's the blurb:

In this masterful, groundbreaking work, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Heather Ann Thompson shines surprising new light on an infamous 1984 New York subway shooting that would unveil simmering racial resentments and would lead, in unexpected ways, to a fractured future and a new era of rage and violence.

"A gripping and powerful account of one of the 20th century's most important criminal cases." --James Foreman Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Locking Up Our Own

On December 22, 1984, in a graffiti-covered New York City subway car, passengers looked on in horror as a white loner named Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teens, Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur, at point-blank range. He then disappeared into a dark tunnel. After an intense manhunt, and his eventual surrender in New Hampshire, the man the tabloid media had dubbed the “Death Wish Vigilante” would become a celebrity and a hero to countless ordinary Americans who had been frustrated with the economic fallout of the Reagan 80s. Overnight, Goetz’s young victims would become villains.

Out of this dramatic moment would emerge an angry nation, in which Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and later Fox News Network stoked the fear and the fury of a stunning number of Americans.

Drawing from never-before-seen archival materials, legal files, and more, Heather Ann Thompson narrates the Bernie Goetz Subway shootings and their decades-long reverberations, while deftly recovering the lives of the boys whom too many decided didn't matter. Fear and Fury is the remarkable account and a searing indictment of a crucial turning point in American history.

*No purchase needed. Open to U.S. residents, 18+ only. Void where prohibited.
How to enter:
Open to all “Kist Reads” Bindery members - any tier (including free “Follower” members) – comment to enter (Limit 1 entry per person.)

Prize Value: $35.00
Timing: Runs 2/3/26 - 2/6/26
Winner will be selected at random and notified via email within 3 days of the giveaway’s end. The winner must respond within 3 days to claim their prize.
Other details:
By entering, you agree to these rules and all U.S. & Florida laws. No cash substitute. Sponsor not liable for entry or delivery issues.
Sponsor: Kist Reads, Sun City Center, FL • Kistreadsbooks@gmail.com

If Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score stole your heart or you know it will, this one’s for you. We’ve created a fully themed book club kit inspired by Knockemout, grumpy barbers, runaway brides, found family, and the kind of love that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. And yes, it’s available exclusively to members of The First Editions. 💙🐶

Joining The First Editions gets you access to:
✨ Our Things We Never Got Over book club kit
✨ Engaging discussion questions on grumpy/sunshine romance, family, and community
✨ Knockemout-inspired food ideas, activities, and themed door prizes
✨ A cozy, welcoming reading community that loves swoon-worthy stories with heart

This is a story about starting over, letting people in, and discovering that family isn’t always who you’re born with and our kit is designed to help you talk, laugh, and swoon through all of it together.

📚 Join The First Editions and read Things We Never Got Over the way it deserves to be read!

❓ Bookish question: Are you a sucker for grumpy heroes like Knox, or is the found-family vibe what gets you every time?

It’s finally here! If you’ve been itching to dive deeper into Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score, this is your moment. 💙✂️🐶

✨ Tap the link for instant access to:
📚 A fully themed Things We Never Got Over book club kit
📖 A fun, thoughtful discussion guide covering grumpy/sunshine romance, found family, small-town chaos, and character growth
🍔 Knockemout-inspired food ideas, cozy activities, and themed door prize suggestions done for you

Whether you’re planning your next book club meeting or lining up future romance reads, this kit is designed to help your group laugh, swoon, and dig into everything that makes Knox, Naomi, and Knockemout unforgettable.

👉Tap the link to access the kit now and turn your next book club into a small-town romance experience worth talking about. https://tinyurl.com/mtaf3nc5 

❗️Don’t forget to come back and tell us how your meeting went!

💥Happy reading!📚💙

What happens when a grumpy, bearded barber meets a runaway bride in a town that thrives on chaos?🦊✨

Reading Things We Never Got Over felt like being wrapped in a cozy small-town blanket that occasionally gets set on fire. From the very first chapter, I was pulled into Knockemout and its cast of messy, lovable, meddling characters. Knox is peak grumpy hero energy closed-off, fiercely loyal, and absolutely no match for Naomi’s sunshine resilience or her unexpected role as guardian to an 11-year-old with a grown-woman attitude.

I loved how Lucy Score balanced swoony romance with real emotional weight. Naomi’s journey from abandoned and overwhelmed to finding her footing hit hard in the best way, and Knox’s slow unraveling had me smiling every time he did something kind while insisting he didn’t care. The banter was sharp, the tension delicious, and the found-family vibes made this feel like more than just a romance it felt like coming home.

This was a book club dream: plenty to gush about, lots to debate, and characters I’m still thinking about long after the last page. Grumpy/sunshine lovers, small-town romance fans, and anyone who enjoys a protective MMC with a soft center, this one’s for you.

❓️Are you more likely to fall for the grumpy loner like Knox or the chaotic small-town charm of Knockemout itself?

Happy Tuesday, mis internet amigxs,

I wanted to begin this week's newsletter by highlighting a few action items you can take in the book community to help our friends in Minnesota.

#MeltIceBookStack Challenge on Instagram: Through the end of February, for every post of a “flame” stack of yellow/orange/red books using #MeltIceStack hashtag and tagging @readerbotdiaries, Lou will be donating $1 to the @womensfndnmn Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, up to $200. 30 other bookstagrammers have joined the cause, meaning that the first 200 posts will raise $3,900 for the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund. You have 4 weeks to join us and contribute your stack.

In addition, I created the flyer below and posted it across all my social media platforms supporting Stand With Minnesota a comprehensive list of mutual aid for Immigrants, legal defense funds, individuals and businesses whose lives and livelihoods have been interrupted by ICE in the Twin Cities. Please donate and share widely. This flyer is available for you to download and share on your socials. No need to credit me.

In case you’d just like to amplify my social media posts instead, you can find them on all my channels, particularly Instagram and Tik Tok.

In addition, Haymarket Books has 3 free ebooks for those that would like to learn about migrant justice and border abolition.

By now, you’ve probably seen the photo of 70-year old Greg Ketter, owner of Minneapolis bookstore DreamHaven Books and Comics, emerging from a cloud tear gas last week. This and his interview about ICE created such interest in the bookstore that the online site was down for days. This is your reminder that you can add many Twin City bookstores doing work on the ground as your supported bookstores on both LibroFM and Bookshop to help them through these difficult times in addition to buying gift cards or ordering books directly from their websites.

BIEN LEIDOS BOOK CLUB UPCOMING EVENTS

We have a number of events coming up in the next few weeks I wanted to remind you about (Events are available exclusively to Bindery subscribers, check out THIS POST for registration links) :

• We’re finishing up reading Orange Wine by Esperanza Hope Snyder for January and have 2 upcoming events:

  • Tomorrow, we’ll be doing an all day rolling spoilery chat to get all our thoughts about the book out in the open on Discord. If you’ve been wanting to chat Orange Wine, save the date!

  • On February 10th at 8PM EST, we’ll be chatting on Zoom with Esperanza!

• We're currently reading our February Book is Sparks Fly by Zakiya N. Jamal AND we’ll be continuing our nonfiction side quest reading of Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality by Tanya Kateri -Hernandez

• Our March-April nonfiction side quest book is Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. I have opened up discussion early in case anyone wants to begin early, seeing as this is a very in-depth look at US immigration policy and the founding of ICE. Today, the publisher reached out and we’re planning some giveaways as well as other events you should stay tuned.

• We’re currently voting on April’s fiction pick and the Discord poll has landed us on fantasy and science fiction. I’ll be putting up options to vote on in Discord this week.

...and without further ado, this week's Latine releases...

New Latine Books

Young Adult

Carnival Fantastico by Angela Montoya (audiobook)

Few Blue Skies by Carolina Ixta (audiobook)

Translated Literary Fiction

Autobiography of Cotton: A Novel by Cristina Rivera Garza and translated by Christina MacSweeney (audiobook)

xoxo,

Carmen

Our February book is The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride! This won by a lot of votes, so hopefully we will finally have a winner this time haha. Looking forward to another great discussion!

Meeting will be on February 25th at 8pm EST.

https://meet.google.com/yts-vtpz-yeb

Link will be reshared closer to the meeting date.

I read 9 books in January, let’s talk about them! Starting with our bookclub picks

Thriller book picks:

1. Twenty Years Later by Charlie Donlea: 3⭐️ I have been absolutely loving Charlie Donlea lately and they have quickly become one of my new favorite thriller authors. This book is the most popular one of his and honesty I was quite disappointed! Not sure if it was the expectations going into it were too high? It had an interesting premise but I felt it to be a little long and dragged out. And I haven’t thought about this book a single time since I finished. Can’t remember any details honestly. I think there are far stronger books by this author. Let me know if you want a list and breakdown of which books I would recommend!

2. The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens: 4⭐️ another solid thriller read! This one actually really stood out to me and will be a thriller I recommend to many people in the future. I also listened to this one on audio and was very well done. It’s very rare I actually CARE about characters in suspense thrillers/horror books. But I loved the representation in this and how much love the brothers had for eachother. I was absolutely hooked from the very beginning and loved how it ended. It can be predictable but it’s still enjoyable nonetheless!

Fantasy pick: The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

Well… this is a SOFTTTTT dnf for me… so I heard the audiobook was amazing so I tried this on audio. Got to like 30% and realized I didn’t know what was happening what’s so ever 🤪I can see why people love the audiobook narrator. I can FEEL the passion and love the voice actor has for his job but I think for me it was too goofy?????? I can’t exactly pin point it because a part of me was having fun with it but the I realized I wasn’t following AT ALL!! So I think this is one I need to read physically. And I was planning on picking it up right away but then I got accepted to read an ARC on NetGalley that I’m VERY EXCITED ABOUT so I got a little distracted and started that instead. Oops. But I will be trying this out soon!!!

Other non book club reads

1. The Last Word by Taylor Adams: 3.5 ⭐️

2. Ruin by John Gwynne 4.75 ⭐️

3. Wrath by John Gwynne 4.75 ⭐️

4. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini 4⭐️

5. It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica 3.5 ⭐️

6. The Surrogate Mother by Freida McFadden 3⭐️

7. Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden 3.5 ⭐️