March 28, 2025, 9:15am

Small presses have had a rough year, but as the literary world continues to conglomerate, we at Literary Hub think they’re more important than ever. Which is why, every (work) day in March—which just so happens to be National Small Press Month—a Lit Hub staff member will be recommending a small press book that they love.

The only rule of this game is that there are no rules, except that the books we recommend must have been published, at some time, and in some place, by a small press. What does it mean to be a small press? Unfortunately there is no exact definition or cutoff. All of the presses mentioned here are considered to be small presses by the recommending editors, and for our purposes, that’s going to be good enough. All of the books mentioned here are considered to be great by the recommending editors, too. If one intrigues you, consider picking it up at your local bookstore, or ordering through Bookshop.org, or even directly from the publisher.

Today, we’re recommending:

Point Zero by Seichō Matsumoto, tr. Louise Heal Kawai
published by Bitter Lemon Press (2024)

While Pushkin Vertigo’s series of reissued noirs from across the world began with a bit of a hiccough—the initial fonts were a bit tricky to read—the series quickly became one of my favorites to both read and collect.

In Point Zero, a welcome reissue of a forgotten 1959 noir, a young woman is wed to a businessman via arranged marriage, only to have him disappear soon after their honeymoon. She barely knows the man, much less what could have happened to him, but still finds herself in dogged pursuit of the unvarnished truth. The immediate post-war era in Japan looms large as the backdrop to understanding the context of her husband’s disappearance, and her own reasons for searching.

What I really want to know is if Point Zero, in which sex work is portrayed sympathetically and in which wronged women seek redress and understanding, was a partial inspiration for the 1970s feminist classic Woman at Point Zero, in which a physician finds her worldview upended after visiting a death row inmate with zero regrets. Can anyone answer this burning question, perhaps in the comment field?

–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Managing Editor