BOOKS
A BAR IN TOLEDO
When Duane Abbajay took over his brother’s bankrupt nightclub in 1962, he promised his wife it would be a quick turnaround to protect his family’s name. Instead, he became the face of a bar that transformed Toledo’s entertainment scene and inspired a Grammy-winning country song—all under the thumb of a trigger-happy mafia boss.
Informed by interviews with crime historians, bartenders, and bargoers and corroborated by FBI reports, this Rust Belt psychodrama offers a new perspective into the worlds of organized crime and the music business, which were closely entwined.
Emotional, theatrical, and dripping with nostalgia, A Bar in Toledo is a love letter to the golden age of American music—and the dark underworld that made it all possible.
GRAY SLEEP
Nathan Mansfield is flailing through his quarter-life crisis in the glittering wasteland of LA, where $27 cocktails are self-care and clout is the dominant social currency. His pathological appetite for validation sparks an impulsive plan to dodge an existential spiral—but a soulless, sun-drenched summer drowns his ambition in champagne and self-pity.
After an unimpressed mentor takes a scalpel to Nathan’s delusion, this trust fund baby hatches a desperate idea to torch his precious safety net.
Told through the unreliable blur of Nathan’s inner monologue, Gray Sleep ruthlessly dissects nepotism, toxic romance, male loneliness, boundless indulgence, and the burning desire to escape the traps we set for ourselves.