A note from the Crooked founders
“We are so excited to be launching Crooked Media Reads. We know our audience of passionate engaged dweebs loves reading and they’ve questioned if we’d ever do more with books than just using them as background props to seem smart on Zoom. Turns out the answer is yes. We can’t wait to point listeners to brilliant authors telling stories and breaking down issues in ways that are inspiring, challenging, and entertaining. And we’re thrilled to be working with Zando to help us lift up those voices.”
- Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor
Crooked Novels
Mobility by Lydia Kiesling
Available Now!
A propulsive novel about class, power, politics, and desire by the celebrated author of The Golden State.
The year is 1998, the End of History. The Soviet Union is dissolved, the Cold War is over, and Bunny Glenn is an American teenager in Azerbaijan living with her Foreign Service family. Through Bunny’s eyes, we watch global interests flock to the former Soviet Union during the rush for Caspian oil and pipeline access, and hear rumbles of the expansion of the American security state and the buildup to the War on Terror. Both geopolitical exploration and domestic coming-of-age novel, Mobility is a propulsive and challenging story about class, power, politics, and desire told through the life of one woman—her social milieu, her romances, her unarticulated wants. Mobility deftly explores American forms of complicity and inertia, moving between the local and the global, the personal and the political, and using fiction’s power to illuminate the way a life is shaped by its context.
Untitled by Ema O'Connor
Coming 2024
Thrilled to announce our latest acquisition for Crooked Media Reads, which will publish in 2024! Investigative journalist and longtime BuzzFeed News reproductive rights, gender, and politics staff writer Ema O’Connor’s untitled book is an urgent work of narrative nonfiction that introduces readers to the precarious landscape of American reproductive justice and privacy and the compelling people at the forefront of this new reality, in the vein of bestsellers such as EVICTED, DOPESICK, and THREE WOMEN.
Woodworking by Emily St. James
Coming January 2025
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. For now, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing the community theater by night.
But everything changes the day that Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl, Abigail Hawkes, enters her detention classroom. Admittedly, guiding the English teacher through her transition wasn’t on Abigail’s agenda for senior year, but she remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. And besides, who else will take the job?
So begins an unlikely friendship that teaches both women, as well as the community around them, that there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you are.
About Zando
Launched October 2020, Zando is an independent publisher that leverages the influence of high-profile cultural figures, platforms and institutions to launch imprints. Founder and CEO Molly Stern has published multiple award-winning, genre-defining bestsellers, including Becoming by Michelle Obama, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Zando is founded on her belief in the essential value of books, the enduring influence of great stories and powerful ideas, and the need for literary diversity.
For more information on Zando and its approach to publishing, visit www.zandoprojects.com.
Books: the podcasts you can stare at.
