Noir Fiction

Una wants nothing more than to teach, but she has been unable to secure steady employment in Reykjavík. Her savings are depleted, her love life is nonexistent, and she cannot face another winter staring at the four walls of her shabby apartment. Celebrating Christmas and ringing in 1986 in the remote fishing hamlet of Skálar seems like a small price to pay for a chance to earn some teaching credentials and get her life back on track.

From the Author: Don’t read this if you can’t handle finishing a book in one sitting, horrific crime scenes, or questions that mess with your morals. BUT The Izard County Incubus is a rural mystery thriller packed with fast-paced action, brutally vivid crime scenes, and psychological mayhem dripping with vigilante justice. Beta Readers Say: “It’s not as weird as you think!” and “How do you come up with this stuff?” Synopsis: Detective Dakota Diaz and Hilrey Higgins are back to investigate a twisted crime wave in the Arkansas Ozarks. A family is butchered, and one girl survives...

In the drought-stricken town of Warragulla, where water means survival, detective Maya Thorne investigates what appears to be a simple robbery gone wrong at a local agricultural supply store. What begins as a straightforward murder case soon reveals something far darker lurking beneath the surface of this isolated community. When an unusual fog blankets the region and an elderly drifter returns seeking answers about his long-missing brother, Maya must navigate both the disorienting weather and the closed ranks of locals, who harbour generations of secrets about stolen water rights. As the ...

He kills without motive. He vanishes without trace. And he wears a tuxedo to every crime. In 1911, the world met a new kind of villain: Fantômas. Master of disguise. Genius of terror. A phantom whose crimes made Sherlock Holmes look like an amateur—and whose shadow still darkens every masked killer, supervillain, and antihero today. In Fantômas: The Phantom Lord of Crime and the Birth of the Modern Villain, explore how this pulp fiction menace became the template for an entire century of evil. From his origin in French penny dreadfuls to his resurrection by Surrealist poets, from silent...

The world is in economic meltdown, but a mining town on the edge of nowhere is booming. With the town's population exploding, it's easy enough to hide a crime—or even a dirty past. Banished to the stock squad after the fallout from a police frame-up, Detective Senior Sergeant Cato Kwong is brought in from the cold to solve the case of a torso washed up on the wild shores of the Great Southern Ocean. When Kwong's investigation lifts the lid on the exploitation of migrant workers and disturbs an even darker criminal mind, the fallen cop faces powerful opposition.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Never before in audio, these vintage stories are the darkest of the dark, and the best of the best.

Crime fiction fans old and new will delight in rediscovering these taut, character-rich, heart-stopping tales, now on audio for the first time.

Little Brian Wilcox's murder is the hottest story in Scotland. Every major newspaper crowds its pages with stories examining the crime from every angle. If only Paddy Meehan could get a scoop on the case. A nationally syndicated story would surely launch her fledgling journalism career out of the free local rag she's been working at.

Journalist Juliet Brown is a ScandiGeek, a person who is enamored of all things Scandinavian. An unexpected opportunity sends Juliet to Sweden to interview an American jazz singer, and she is quickly drawn into the vibrant Stockholm music scene. When one of Juliet's new friends is murdered, she finds herself embroiled in a real-life Swedish mystery. Journalist Magnus Lindblom offers to help Juliet despite his own struggles, which include hiding the truth about Stieg Larsson's missing fourth book. Set in the depths of the cold and dark Swedish winter, amid the weaving cobblestone streets of ...

In the drought-stricken region between Warragulla and Merriwa, where dust storms sweep across isolated communities without warning, Detective Maya Thorne investigates the murder of an NBN technician found at a remote telecommunications tower. What begins as a seemingly isolated incident soon reveals a sophisticated conspiracy lurking beneath the surface of this fractured community of less than a thousand souls. When a second communications specialist is murdered during an intensifying dust storm, Maya must navigate both the blinding red haze and the closed ranks of locals harbouring decades...

Have you ever hated a lawyer? Michael St. John never lost a criminal case. He wasn’t a nice guy. He cheated his clients, destroyed criminal evidence, paid off judges, and ran around on his wife. He was an albatross around the neck of the Richmond Police Department. The District Attorney’s office loathed him until they found his mutilated corpse one beautiful, crisp fall morning, after an unusual outburst in Court the day before. Little did they know that Attorney St. John’s body was key evidence in a far more heinous crimes to come. Mic, K9 Angel and Dottie must solve this case before...

In the autumn of 1971, Cleveland Police Lieutenant Alex Wesner is given a case that may be no case at all, or it may be several cases tied together. Did a workman perish in a vat of molten steel, or is his disappearance part of an elaborate ruse? To find the answers the lieutenant and his team must navigate the Byzantine procedures and furnaces of the Rubicon Steel Corporation while relying on mostly unhelpful witnesses: an enigmatic young man who might be talking in riddles, or a left-for-dead comatose security guard, knifed like so many other victims. The lieutenant's investigative team ...

China Doll, another comical and exciting adventure, ripped straight from the files of Honolulu’s most incorrigible and languid, soft-boiled private eye, Richard Bishop.People come to Richard Bishop’s shabby Hotel Street office for professional help when trouble raises its ugly head because trouble is his business. But when the private investigator accepts an assignment from Nikki Kwan, a stunning and curvaceous China doll, to protect her and to deliver a sealed envelope to her ex-boyfriend, Rick soon has plenty of trouble all his own. He finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of rival...

Tyrant magus Edrin Walker destroyed the monster sent by the Skallgrim, but not before it laid waste to Setharis, and infested their magical elite with mind-controlling parasites. Edrin's own Gift to seize the minds of others was cracked by the strain of battle, and he barely survives the interrogation of a captured magus. There's no time for recovery though: a Skallgrim army is marching on the mountain passes of the Clanhold. Edrin and a coterie of villains race to stop them, but the mountains are filled with gods, daemons, magic, and his hideous past.

William’s father is a beloved opera singer in Stockholm, charismatic and unpredictable. Raised in the shadow of his father’s addictions—women, drink, and cruelty—he knows the man’s dark side. William believes he’s found the light when he falls in love with a fellow university student, a young woman named Ebba. But his father’s hold on his life is not so easily broken. Even in death.

Liv loves her son, Adrian. That's why she keeps a low profile in Sandefjord, Norway: just another tired single mother, trying to make ends meet. She has never told her son about the secrets she carries or the life she lived before he was born. She will do anything to keep him safe. Anastasia's life is transformed when she moves from Russia to Milan and starts modelling. Suddenly, she's rich. She's desired. But then she begins to see the dark side of her new life and she will do anything to escape.

Gideon Oliver expects to be amicably bored when he takes on the role of "accompanying spouse" at a lodge in the magnificent wild country of Glacier Bay, Alaska, where his forest ranger wife, Julie, is attending a conference. But it turns out to be exactly his cup of tea. There is another group at the lodge: six scientists on a memorial journey to the site of a 30-year-old glacial avalanche that killed three of their colleagues. Their leader is TV's most popular science personality, the unctuous M. Audley Tremaine - the sole survivor of the fatal avalanche. But he does not survive long.

Ever wonder how law enforcement operates in small town Arkansas? Seek no further. From the Author: Don’t read this book if you can’t handle gritty drugs fiction with meth labs and addicts, a deputy who’s more redneck than refined, or a plot that punches harder than a 400-pound hillbilly. It’s raw, messy, and not your mama’s cozy mystery. BUT If you do, County was written by a retired small town cop (that’s me), inspired by real-life experiences (but everything, including people, places, or events, in the book is fictional, to be clear), and I only held back a little. Cops talk a...

Vincent LaRue is all wrong — too polished, too pretty, and too full of secrets. But when his brother turns up dead in a motel room dressed to scandalize, he walks into detective Nash Vega’s office with blood on his hands and a plea for help. Nash should’ve walked away. He’s been burned before. But Vincent’s kiss is as dangerous as the case — and someone out there is filming their victims like it’s high art. Lies. Lust. Murder on reel. Hollywood’s dirty secrets are about to light the screen on fire.

When Amos Walker was a teen, he had a poster of Gail Hope on his wall. A 60s bombshell in the beach-blanket tradition, she has fallen hard since her glory days as one of the dying studio system’s final starlets. But when she calls on Amos Walker she remains as lovely as ever: an elegant beauty with a $750,000 problem.

Sammy Dee is a mid-level Long Island mafioso in witness protection. Didier Onyekachukwu was the corrupt minister of finance of the former Upper Volta. Both men find themselves in middle age, living in the Southern California version of genteel poverty in a down-market condo complex called Paradise Gardens. Enter Marcy Gray, a "mature" actress barely getting by on a meager SAG pension.