Noir Fiction

A burned out, cynical cop. A serial killer who loves the hunt as much as the kill. Corrupt politicians in bed with a crooked Chief of Detectives. At the center of it all is a beautiful young woman with a troubled past. If you think its Los Angeles in the 1950’s you’re wrong.It’s the year 2454 and Capital City on the frozen planet of Beta Prime is no place for the timid. Meet Inspector Thomas Sullivan. Sent to a world where the strong make the rules, sometimes it’s hard for Sullivan to tell who is the predator and who is the prey. Take a chance on this hard boiled noir from the ...

Following the success of Paris Noir, the Akashic Noir Series has expanded to include the famously diverse and sometimes controversial suburbs of this legendary city.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

LOS ANGELES, 1932: Lulu Wong, star of the silver screen and the pride of Chinatown, has a face known to practically everyone, especially the Chow sisters—May, Gemma, and Peony—Lulu’s former classmates and neighbors. So the girls instantly know it’s Lulu when they discover a body one morning in an out-of-the-way stable, far from the Beverly Hills home where she lived after her fame skyrocketed. The sisters suspect Lulu’s death is the result of foul play, but the police don’t seem motivated to investigate.

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.

Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything.

New York Rainby Harper Stanwick, Sr. is a mystery novel set in 1920s New York City. The story follows Dennis Lament, a young man who seeks solitude and freedom but finds himself drawn into a web of intrigue and danger. Dennis Lament boards the S.S. Faraway with a firm resolve to avoid all human connections. His journey to New York, however, takes an unexpected turn when he receives a mysterious note from a supposed cousin, Amy Lament Riley. Desperate and in serious trouble, Amy begs for his help. Driven by curiosity and a sense of duty, Dennis decides to investigate. Upon arriving in New ...

In Berlin, Germany, in the early 1930s, the acclaimed Swiss film director Emil Nägeli receives the assignment of a lifetime: travel to Japan and make a film to establish the dominance of Adolf Hitler's Nazi empire once and for all. But his handlers are unaware Nägeli has colluded with the Jewish film critics to pursue an alternative objective - to create a monumental, modernist, allegorical spectacle to warn the world of the horror to come.

Tomás Cruz swore he would never be like his father, an abusive cocaine junkie whose gangland exploits are notorious throughout the underbelly of northern Argentina. When Samuel Cruz is sentenced to thirteen years in prison, he leaves a laundry list of unfinished cartel business. Seba, Tomás’s revered older brother, has no choice but to abandon his straight life and take over his father’s underworld debt. Now fifteen years has passed, Seba has been arrested, and the ruthless cartel boss is holding his wife and daughter as collateral—just in time for the holidays.

It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans—but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins.

Summer has come to Atlantic City but the boardwalk is empty of tourists, the casino lights have dimmed, and two Jane Does are laid out in the marshland behind the Sunset Motel, just west of town. Only one person even knows they’re there. Meanwhile, Clara, a young boardwalk psychic, struggles to attract clients for the tarot readings that pay her rent. When she begins to experience very real and disturbing visions, she suspects they could be related to the recent cases of women gone missing in town.

A homecoming should be a happy event. Not an opportunity for betrayal. For Inspector Thomas Sullivan, a man who trusts few people, returning home only to find those he calls friends have kept dark secrets from him, accused him of multiple murders, and are plotting against him is an act of betrayal. Worst of all, one of those people is his partner and girlfriend, Sarah. Sully's universe has been turned upside down in this tale of betrayal, murder, and political intrigue in Capital City on the frozen world of Beta Prime. On the run, alone, and with a price on his head, can Sully survive long ...

An implacable family of criminals. A detective at the bottom of his career. An investigation that will lead him to unpredictable consequences. Silvana, the mistress of the mafia’s big boss, went to Vico pleading for help, but now she is dead. The most evident explanation is suicide, but detective Vico is not convinced. In the course of the investigation, Vico will end up in the grip of the Italian mafia, in a war against Chinese drug smugglers for the control of the power in the city. In a corrupted and violent world, where Vico can trust no one, will he be able to solve Silvana’s death...

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his 16-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no".

Two years ago, my whole world was ripped apart when my husband and best friend were killed in a car accident in Norfolk. Since then, I've struggled to come to terms with my overwhelming grief and to understand why they were together in Charlie’s car that fateful night. Following a friend’s advice, I sign up to a reputable dating site, IntoYou. She tells me it’s the perfect way to meet someone, and when I quickly get a match, I believe she is right. I am surprised how easy this is. But it seems I have a lot to learn.

Vivienne Lane thought she left the drama behind when she traded big-city chaos for the quiet charm of Foxwick Harbor. Now, she spends her days running Lane & Co. Antiques, sipping lattes at Bean & Bloom, and avoiding her nosy neighbor’s unsolicited opinions. But when she stumbles upon the town’s most scandalous socialite dead in a wedding dress—and in a very inconvenient place—Vivi suddenly finds herself at the center of a mystery far messier than her shop’s storage room. Gwendolyn Fairchild wasn’t just any bride-to-be; she was a journalist with a reputation for unearthing ...

In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. And now Lennox is on the lam, and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe.

It is the present day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking, and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: The Civil War never occurred. A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshal Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four". On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right—with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself.

John Shannon is on the run, facing life in prison or death by lethal injection. Then, a bizarre text message draws him to a meeting in the dark of night. A foreigner who calls himself the Identity Man offers Shannon an incredible chance to start again: a new face, a new home, a new beginning. Soon Shannon is living a life he never dreamed possible. In a ruined city that is trying to rebuild, he finds work as a carpenter and a wood carver. He falls in love. But then all hell breaks loose....