Lee Child was fired and out of work when he hatched a harebrained scheme to write a best-selling novel, thus saving his family from ruin. Killing Floor launched the New York Times #1 best-selling Jack Reacher series. The series has spawned two feature films and an upcoming Amazon Prime Video series. The Nicotine Chronicles (Akashic Books) features 16 stories about our smoking habit by contributors including Child, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Ames, Eric Bogosian, Achy Obejas, and Michael Imperioli. The problem, argues Lee, is not nicotine, which he says is “naturally present in potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants,” but the delivery system. Burning dried tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke gets nicotine in your brain in seconds, according to Child, “doing good in all its various ways. Unfortunately, the rest of the smoke doesn’t do good. To get the good, we risk the bad. Or we prohibit ourselves the good, for fear of the bad? Which approach makes more sense?” Publishers Weekly noted that “The most successful entries delve bone-deep into addiction…These writers capture the mental gymnastics behind the characters’ bad decisions, and the joy such bad decisions can bring.”