8 July 30 - August 5, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ▼ BOOKS BOOK OF HORRORS BESTSELLING AUTHOR ASHLEY WINSTEAD TALKS REVENGE AND THE DEFIANT TEXAS SPIRIT THAT POWERED HER NEW THRILLER, “HOT GIRL MURDER CLUB.” BY PRESTON BARTA A shley Winstead knows exactly what a well-placed knife can do — to a chest, to a plot, to a reader who thought they saw the twist coming. Her new thriller, “Hot Girl Murder Club,” is a stiletto-sharp book about pop stardom and vengeance that hides a serious who- dunnit question inside its glossy packag- ing. She’s bringing it back to the city she says built her. Texas grit and fire Winstead didn’t grow up in any one place, exactly. As a self-described “Navy brat,” she moved every couple of years, packing and un- packing a childhood in boxes. Texas, though, is the place she’s stayed longest — the closest thing she has to home ground. Living in the “blue bubble of Houston” inside a famously red state has helped unveil the tension that feeds her. “It contributes to this sense of defiance,” she says. “It keeps my fire lit.” You can feel that fire in her fiction. Texas, she points out, has always harbored its share of defiant citizens, and that lineage runs straight into the feminist revenge thrillers she’s become known for — books like “The Last Housewife” and now “Hot Girl Murder Club.” Dallas gets a special share of the credit. Winstead earned her Ph.D. at South- ern Methodist University, and she doesn’t hedge about what the city meant to her. “It’s where my brain was born, in a lot of ways,” she says. Giving herself permission That brain was, for a long time, a very obedient one. Trained in academia and de- voted to the literary canon, Winstead spent years believing that “real” writing meant something austere and lofty — and, crucially, not female. For her undergraduate creative writing thesis, she wrote exclusively from male per- spectives. She was convinced, she admits, that women’s voices “didn’t deserve to be on the page.” It took over a decade — a decade of rejec- tion and working other jobs — before she gave herself the permission that changed everything. She could write, she finally real- ized, from “a bitch’s perspective or a cheer- leader’s perspective,” and find genuine value in those voices the canon had trained her to dismiss. The result is a writer who takes the most maligned, glittered-over versions of femi- ninity and treats them as worthy of scrutiny, sympathy and menace. That reclamation is the whole engine of her new book. Blood on the marble, lyrics on the wall Here’s the setup: Ten years ago, aspir- ing singer-actress Scout Sage lost the one person who mattered most, her younger sister, Georgia, who died under murky cir- cumstances at a fancy Hollywood Hills party. Scout has spent the decade since clawing her way up the music industry, gathering a cohort of ambitious women around her like armor. Then bodies start dropping. A string of targeted murders hit Los Angeles, each one aimed at a powerful figure who hurt a woman and walked away clean, and every crime scene points back to Scout. One killer even scrawls her song lyrics on the wall in blood. Overnight, she goes from mid-tier pop star to the world’s most famous alleged murderer, and detective Grey Holloway, no stranger to tragedy herself, is the one as- signed to untangle it. It’s propulsive, glamorous fun. But Win- stead is doing something sharper under- neath the sheen. The novel opens with one of its most haunting lines, spoken by Grey: “All dead women look alike, if you think about it… Like a man’s worst fear and his darkest fantasy combined.” It’s a book fascinated by how we con- sume violence against women, and how women themselves are pulled toward the spectacle. Balancing that darkness is the fierce loyalty at the story’s core, captured in the vow the women share: “I walk in the shadows but am not afraid, because you are with me. There is no such thing as one woman alone.” Even the title carries a double meaning. It arrived before the plot did, sparked by in- ternet culture — a riff on Megan Thee Stal- lion’s “Hot Girl Summer” and Winstead’s own private nickname for a wave of books by women under 35. Inside the novel, being a member of the “hot girl murder club” isn’t a badge of honor; it’s a way for outsiders to shrink and dismiss the women it describes. The book spends 300-plus pages daring you to underestimate them anyway. A homecoming at Interabang For Winstead, Dallas offers a return to the place where her intellectual life took root, and where she hopes readers will find a defiantly like-minded voice on the page. “Dallas readers are incredible,” she tells us. And if you want more where “Hot Girl Murder Club” came from, you can check out Winstead’s full bibliography of thrillers, like “This Book Will Bury Me,” “In My Dreams I Hold A Knife” and more on her website, ashleywinstead.com. Dallas readers can find “Hot Girl Murder Club” through Interabang Books (5600 W Lovers Ln. #142) for $29 online or in-store. ▼ FILM REEL GOOD WE’RE ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH 2026, BUT SO MANY STELLAR FILMS HAVE ALREADY BEEN RELEASED. HERE’S OUR TOP 10. BY PRESTON BARTA S ix months into 2026, and the projec- tor has been kind to us. The year sprinted out of the gate with a run of genuinely exceptional films, stumbled through a curiously quiet stretch of early summer, then steadied itself for whatever the fall promises. (Yes, “Digger” and “Dune: Part Three” loom, and yes, this list will surely shift.) But make no mistake: what we have gath- ered here are not fleeting curiosities. These are 10 films built to last, the kind that will be argued over, cherished and rewatched. Great cinema, it turns out, still knows how to arrive when we least expect it. Let us count down. 10. “Mother Mary” by David Lowery Dallas’ own David Lowery returns with a ghost story that haunts the heart rather than the hallway. Anne Hathaway, in a career-best turn, plays a pop icon reuniting with her es- tranged best friend and costume designer (a magnetic Michaela Coel) on the eve of a comeback. Think “Banshees of Inisherin” fil- tered through Lowery’s earthy, cosmic sensi- bility — two artists clawing toward one another through a decade of buried pain. With original songs from Charli xcx and Jack Antonoff, it’s a symphony of poetic dialogue and unresolved feeling that is profound, beautiful and unmistakably ours. 9. “Toy Story 5” by Andrew Stanton This is better than any fifth installment has a right to be. Wisely handing the reins to Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack), the film trades franchise nostalgia for a piercing meditation on technology and imagination — a story every modern parent will recog- nize. Woody and Buzz step aside, and the film is richer for it. Conan O’Brien steals the whole operation as a low-battery pot- ty-training toy, but beneath the laughs lies a genuine ache. It’s messy at the top, then it walks straight into your heart. 8. “The Sheep Detectives” by Kyle Balda On paper, a flock of computer-generated sheep investigating their shepherd’s murder sounds absurd. On screen, it’s one of the most emotionally devastating and reward- ing films in ages. Hugh Jackman is all warmth as the beloved shepherd, and the movie carries the charm of “Paddington 2” wedded to real, aching stakes. It goes to un- expectedly tender, sorrowful places. It’s sweet, endearing and quietly profound. ▼ Culture Luis Noble Texas author Ashley Winstead brings grit, glamour and female rage to her new thriller, “Hot Girl Murder Club.”
