The name Mulholland Books, according to publisher Michael Pietsch, “signifies anticipation.” Pietsch, who started piecing together the concept for the imprint in 2009, said the name Mulholland “resonates with classics” and that it’s something which is both “literary and cinematic.” With inspiration from the Los Angeles street--home to so many chase scenes in the novels of Cain, Chandler, and Connelly as well as in film and television--Pietsch sees Mulholland Books as an imprint that will publish books that provide “smart entertainment with velocity.”

So what defines a Mulholland author? For Pietsch, the uniting force of the initial list, which includes pillars of the genre like Lawrence Block (A Drop of the Hard Stuff, May 2011) as well as up-and-coming talents like Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski (Fun & Games, June 2011), is books that deliver “sheer pleasure.”

Little, Brown, where Mulholland Books lives, is known for publishing such giants in the field as James Patterson, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Ian Rankin, Kate Atkinson, and Denise Mina. But, Pietsch said, even with those writers on the LB list, he still felt more could be brought into the fold. “We had a superb suspense fiction list,” he said, of Little, Brown, but noted that he believed “there were excellent new writers coming along whose work we weren’t seeing, and types of suspense fiction we weren’t publishing at all.” Pietsch’s goal was to “expand the great new writers we publish in the strongest fiction category in the world.” We can’t wait to see what else they have coming around the curve.