Scottish man of letters (and several twisted novels) Irvine Welsh returns to the Bay Area on tour for his new novel Crime, which takes place in Miami, naturally. Welsh reads at the Edinburgh Castle, Litquake’s birthplace and office emeritus, on Saturday, September 20 at 9 pm. Admission is free, and books will be on sale. If you want a seat get there early — Welsh events traditionally are mobbed by the local U.K. expat community.

The September issue of The Believer magazine, published from the Mission district, contains an amazing feature about Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, a nearly-forgotten Kansas publisher once known as the “Henry Ford of literature.” Beginning in the 1920s, he produced an estimated 300 million “little blue books” for the masses, from literary classics to sex manuals and guidebooks for everyday life. Imagine any book publisher today, running an ad in a magazine that proclaims, “At last! Books are cheaper than hamburgers!” The Believer will host a Litquake reading this year at the Lit Crawl on Saturday, October 11, with contributors Joshua Clover, Jessica Fisher, Troy Jollimore, Miranda Mellis, and managing editor Andrew Leland as emcee.