Thomas Pluck reviews Noir Nation editor Les Edgerton’s award-winning novel, The Bitch, about an excon facing the federal habitual offender law: http://bit.ly/wkXgMz

Johns Hopkins professor Tristan Davies said this about the book: “Eddie Vega’s funny, poignant, and smart debut is a bildungsroman charting its protagonist’s transformation from exile to homecoming—broken guitars, noses, and hearts scattered along the way. Vega’s intelligence is clear at every turn in his writing, but like the poetry of his tramp-traveling hero, it’s kept under wraps. This is a novel that knows novels, not one that strains and fails to be literary. It—and Vega—are the real thing.”