Akashic Noir Books

This anthology of “ genuinely haunting noir fiction ” set in the Golden City features new stories by Jim Nisbet, Alejandro Murguía, Michelle Tea and others ( Publishers Weekly ). Oscar Wilde once quipped that anyone who disappears is said to be seen in in San Francisco. With its famous fog, winding streets, and hazardously steep hills, it is certainly an ideal place for getting lost. It’s also an ideal setting for noir fiction. From Fisherman’s Warf and The Golden Gate Bridge to The Haight-Ashbury, Chinatown, and Russian Hill, fifteen authors explore the sordid side of the City by the Bay in this sterling collection. San Francisco Noir features brand-new stories by Barry Gifford, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, Domenic Stansberry, David Corbett, Eddie Muller, Alejandro Murguía, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, John Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nisbet, and David Henry Sterry.

“Featuring short, edgy fiction on the Emerald City’s seamy underbelly . . . seedy characters, private detectives and the like from all over urban Seattle.” — Kitsap Daily News Early Seattle was a hardscrabble seaport filled with merchant sailors, longshoremen, lumberjacks, rowdy saloons, and a rough-and-tumble police force not immune to corruption and graft. Now it’s home to big businesses and a flourishing art, theatre, and club scene. Seattle’s evolution to high-finance and high-tech has simply provided even greater opportunity and reward to those who might be ethically, morally, or economically challenged (crooks, in other words). Seattle Noir features stories by G.M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcalá, Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta. You’ll find tales of a wealthy couple whose marriage is filled with not-so-quiet desperation; a credit card scam that goes over-limit; femmes fatales and hommes fatales; a group of mystery writers whose fiction causes friction; a Native American shaman caught in a web of secrets and tribal allegiances; sex, lies, and slippery slopes . . . “Stories that reflect Seattle’s ethnic diversity as well as tales from its rough past to its glory days of Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.” — Publishers Weekly “A new collection of stories all set in Seattle, with characters that break the mold. In many of the Seattle Noir stories, it’s the heroes, not the subsidiary characters, that are African-American, Native-American, Hispanic-American.” — The Seattle Times

Brand-new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Kevin Baker, Thomas Bentil, Lawrence Block, Jerome Charyn, Suzanne Chazin, Terrence Cheng, Ed Dee, Joanne Dobson, Robert Hughes, Marlon James, Sandra Kitt, Rita Laken, Miles Marshall Lewis, Pat Picciarelli, Abraham Rodriguez Jr., S.J. Rozan, Steven Torres, and Joe Wallace. S.J. Rozan was born and raised in the Bronx and is a lifelong New Yorker. She's the author of eight novels in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, and of the stand-alones Absent Friends and In This Rain (forthcoming). Her books have won Edgar, Nero, Macavity, and Shamus awards for best novel. She's at work on another series novel, Shanghai Moon. This audiobook is narrated by Michael Braun, Adam Chase, Karen Chilton, Paul L. Coffey, Jane Cramer, Kevin R. Free, Rob Granniss, Ginna Hoben, Erin Mallon, Samara Naeymi, Jennifer O'Donnell, Prentice Onayemi, and Chris Ruen.

This award-winning anthology of original crime fiction exploring Brooklyn’s many enclaves features new stories by Pete Hamill, Maggie Estep and others. New York’s punchiest borough asserts its criminal legacy with this collection of stories from some of today’s best writers. Brooklyn Noir moves from Coney Island to Bedford-Stuyvesant to Bay Ridge to Red Hook to Bushwick to Sheepshead Bay to Park Slope and far deeper, into the heart of Brooklyn’s historical and criminal largesse. Each contributor offers a new story set in a distinct neighborhood. Many of the stories that first appeared in this volume have garnered critical acclaim, including Pete Hamill’s Edgar Award finalist “The Book Signing”; Ellen Miller’s Pushcart Prize finalist “Practicing”; Pearl Abraham’s Shamus Award finalist “Hasidic Noir”; Arthur Nersesian’s Anthony Award finalist “Hunter/Trapper”; and Thomas Morrissey’s Robert L. Fish Memorial Award-winner “Can’t Catch Me”. Brooklyn Noir also features brand-new stories by Nelson George, Sidney Offit, Neal Pollack, Ken Bruen, Maggie Estep, Kenji Jasper, Adam Mansbach, C.J. Sullivan, Chris Niles, Norman Kelley, Nicole Blackman, Tim McLoughlin, Lou Manfredo, Luciano Guerriero, and Robert Knightley.

Brooklyn Noir is back with a vengeance, this time with the masters of yore: H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and more! “An assortment of the borough’s crime-fiction masterminds get down to the gritty details in this entertaining collection of chilling stories.” ― BKLYN “ Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics , edited by Tim McLoughlin, is the perfect companion to McLoughlin’s successful all-original anthology.” ― Publishers Weekly Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Featuring stories by: H.P. Lovecraft, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Irwin Shaw, Carolyn Wheat, Thomas Wolfe, Hubert Selby, Jr., Stanley Ellin, Gilbert Sorrentino, Maggie Estep, and Salvatore Lapuma. From the introduction by Tim McLoughlin: The success of Brooklyn Noir, launched in the summer of 2004, surpassed all expectations. I’m pleased to say . . . Working on this volume has been a different task than the first, in that there was little interaction, from an editorial point of view, with the writers, some of whom are deceased. This time I felt more like an archeologist, mining volumes old and new, looking for treasure. The rule for the first Brooklyn Noir had been that each story had to be previously unpublished. Here, just the opposite. Brooklyn Noir 2 stories had to have been printed somewhere else before they hit the doorstep. That was about the only difference. I tried again to capture the special dread, tension, and solid writing that good dark fiction possesses. The scary feeling of watching the average Joe getting in over his head, or accidentally brushing up against something sinister on the way to work . . . The tales cross all boundaries of past and present, well-known and unknown neighborhoods, literary and genre traditions. It all goes into that great cocktail shaker that is Brooklyn. As editor, I have the pleasure of picking the ingredients, mixing them, and serving them to you. And that makes me the luckiest bartender in the world. Enjoy.

“If ever a city was made to be the home of noir, it’s Chicago. These writers go straight to Chicago’s noir heart” (Aleksandar Hemon, National Book Award finalist and New York Times –bestselling author of The Lazarus Project ). Chicago’s rough-and-tumble tough-guy reputation may have been replaced in recent years by the image of a tourist- and family-friendly town—but that original city isn’t gone. The hard-bitten streets once represented by James Farrell and Nelson Algren may have shifted locales, and they may be populated by different ethnicities, but Chicago is still a place where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival. The stories in Chicago Noir reclaim that territory, in tales of hired killers and jazz men, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies, of a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. Brand new stories by Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeffery Renard Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer. “ Chicago Noir is a legitimate heir to the noble literary tradition of the greatest city in America.” —Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby

Mystery writing titan Lawrence Block takes a bite into Manhattan crime. “A pleasing variety of Manhattan neighborhoods come to life in Block’s solid anthology . . . the writing is of a high order and a nice mix of styles.” ― Publishers Weekly Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Jeffery Deaver, Lawrence Block, Charles Ardai, Carol Lea Benjamin, Thomas H. Cook, Jim Fusilli, Robert Knightly, John Lutz, Liz Martínez, Maan Meyers, Martin Meyers, S.J. Rozan, Justin Scott, C.J. Sullivan, and Xu Xi. From the introduction by Lawrence Block: “Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood―Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the book’s contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivan’s Inwood and Charles Ardai’s Upper East Side, to Justin Scott’s Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamin’s Greenwich Village. The range in mood and literary style is at least as great; noir can be funny, it can stretch to include magic realism, it can be ample or stark, told in the past or present tense, and in the first or third person. I wouldn’t presume to define noir―if we could define it, we wouldn’t need to use a French word for it―but it seems to me that it’s more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.”

“For such a sun-stoked place, Miami sure is shady . . . this batch of dirty deep South Florida fiction might just send you packing . . . your own heat.” — SunPost Don’t let the fabulous weather, the beach bodies, and the high-end boutiques fool you. There is a darkness to Miami that can hit just as hard as a hurricane. If by day, the streets are lined with tourists, at night the gangsters, drug dealers, and desperate come out to play. It’s this Miami that has captured the imagination of some of the city’s best writers. Miami Noir includes stories by James W. Hall, Barbara Parker, John Dufresne, Paul Levine, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Tom Corcoran, Christine Kling, George Tucker, Kevin Allen, Anthony Dale Gagliano, David Beaty, Vicki Hendricks, John Bond, Preston Allen, Lynne Barrett, and Jeffrey Wehr. “For different reasons these stories cultivate a little something special, a radiance, a humanity, even a grace, In the midst of the noir gloom, and thereby set themselves apart. Variety, familiarity, mood and tone, and the occasional gem of a story make Miami Noir a collection to savor.” — The Miami Herald “Murder is nothing new in Miami—or any other big city, for that matter. But seldom has it been so entertaining as it is in the 16 short stories included in Miami Noir .” — Palm Beach Daily News “This well-chosen short story collection isn’t just a thoughtful compilation of work by some of South Florida’s best and upcoming writers. Each Miami Noir story also is a window on a different part of Miami-Dade and its melting pot of cultures.” — South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Sixteen stories of capital crimes and misdemeanors—the basis for the film directed by George Pelecanos, producer and writer of The Wire . Mystery sensation Pelecanos pens the lead story and edits this groundbreaking collection of stories detailing the seedy underside of the nation’s capital. This is not an anthology of ill-conceived and inauthentic political thrillers. Instead, in D.C. Noir, pimps, whores, gangsters, and con-men run rampant in zones of this city that most never hear about. This anthology includes brand new stories by George Pelecanos, James Grady, Kenji Jasper, Jim Beane, Jabari Asim, Ruben Castaneda, James Patton, Norman Kelley, Jennifer Howard, Richard Currey, Lester Irby, and others. “[Grady’s] ‘The Bottom Line’ is a tour de force of narrative bravado. A story of double-dealing on Capitol Hill, it crams enough plot to power a full-length novel into a mere 30 pages. From its opening sentence—‘The Capitol building glowed in the night like a white icing cake’—to the surprises at its finish line, this is a story that never stops barreling along.”— The Washington Post “Pelecanos . . . delivers a wholly satisfying volume. From his own ‘Confidential Informant,’ to James Grady’s ‘The Bottom Line,’ Pelecanos shows us how both trash-strewn alleys and oak-paneled offices can trap their occupants with dreams, compromise, and heartbreak.”— Booklist “Well written . . . Highlights include Pelecanos’s ‘The Confidential Informant’ and Laura Lippman’s ‘A.R.M. and the Woman.’”— Publishers Weekly

This original anthology of noir fiction set in Maryland’s Charm City includes new stories by David Simon, Laura Lippman, Jim Fusilli, and more. As fans of the HBO series The Wire have known for years, Baltimore is home to a rich and diverse underworld that is matched by an equally rich and diverse literary tradition. This is the city where Dashiell Hammett worked as a Pinkerton agent. It’s also where Zelda Fitzgerald came for psychiatric treatment. In this sterling collection of noir fiction, some of Baltimore’s best authors “confront the full irony that is Charm City, a place where you can go from the leafy beauty of the North Side neighborhoods to the gutted ghettos of the West Side in less than twenty minutes, then find your way to the revamped Inner Harbor in another ten” (Laura Lippman, from the introduction). Baltimore Noir includes brand-new stories by David Simon, Laura Lippman, Tim Cockey, Rob Hiaasen, Robert Ward, Sujata Massey, Jack Bludis, Rafael Alvarez, Marcia Talley, Joseph Wallace, Lisa Respers France, Charlie Stella, Sarah Weinman, Dan Fesperman, Jim Fusilli, and Ben Neihart.

Fiction. TWIN CITIES NOIR is an anthology of brand-new stories by David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Louge, Bruce Rubenstein, K.J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Brad Zellar, Mary Sharratt, Pete Hautman, Larry Millett, Quinton Skinner, Gary Bush, and Chris Everheart. "St. Paul was originally called Pig's Eye's Landing and was named after Pig's Eye Parrant--trapper, moonshiner, & proprietor of the most popular drinking establishment on the Mississippi...By the turn of the twentieth century [Minneapolis] was considered one of the most crooked cities in the nation [and] as recently as the mid-'90s, Minneapolis was called "Murderopolis" due to a rash of killings that occurred over a long hot summer...Every city has its share of crime, but what makes the Twin Cities unique may be that we have more than our share of good writers to chronicle it. They are homegrown and they know the territory..."--From the Introducion.

Serpent’s Tail novelist Unsworth teases, tickles, and horrifies with her stellar curation of London Noir . Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Desmond Barry, Ken Bruen, Stewart Home, Barry Adamson, Michael Ward, Sylvie Simmons, Daniel Bennett, Cathi Unsworth, Max Décharné, Martyn Waites, Joolz Denby, John Williams, Jerry Sykes, Mark Pilkington, Joe McNally, Patrick McCabe, and Ken Hollings. From the introduction by Cathi Unsworth: “That London has survived so long comes down to its foundation in the root of all evil. The river, as the Romans knew, meant the riches of the world could be shipped directly to its ravenous mouth. London has controlled the world for many of the years of its existence. London is the Grand Wizard. It’s no coincidence that Ken Hollings writes a future projection for the city from the gleaming towers of Canary Wharf, the monument to capitalism laid down on the ashes of the working class East End by the Wicked Witch of Westminster, Margaret Thatcher . . . So this is not really a collection of crime stories. This is a compass for the reader to chart their own path through the dark streets of London, to take whatever part chimes most closely with their soul and use it as a talisman.“

Beneath the glitter of Mardi Gras lies the sleaze of Bourbon Street; under the celestial sounds of JazzFest, the nightmare screams of a city traumatized long before the storm. “ New Orleans Noir explores the dark corners of our city in eighteen stories, set both pre- and post-Katrina . . . In Julie Smith, Temple found a perfect editor for the New Orleans volume, for she is one who knows and loves the city and its writers and knows how to bring out the best in both . . . It’s harrowing reading, to be sure, but it’s pure page-turning pleasure, too.” ― Times-Picayune Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each volume comprises stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, Patty Friedmann, Barbara Hambly, Tim McLoughlin, Olympia Vernon, David Fulmer, Jervey Tervalon, James Nolan, Kalamu ya Salaam, Maureen Tan, Thomas Adcock, Jeri Cain Rossi, Christine Wiltz, Greg Herren, Julie Smith, Eric Overmyer, and Ted O’Brien. New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation. It’s everyone’s seamy underside, the city where respectable citizens go to get drunk, puke in the gutter, dance on tabletops, and go home with strangers, all without guilt. It’s the metropolitan equivalent of eating standing up―if it happened in New Orleans, it doesn’t count. The city was always the home of the lovable rogue, the poison magnolia, the bent politico, the sociopathic street thug, and, especially, the heartless con artist―but in post-Katrina times it struggles against . . . well, the same old problems, just writ large and with a new breed of carpetbagger thrown in. Combine all that with a brilliant literary tradition and you have New Orleans Noir, a sparkling collection of tales exploring the city’s wasted, gutted neighborhoods, its outwardly gleaming “sliver by the river,” its still-raunchy French Quarter, and other hoods so far from the Quarter they might as well be on another continent. It also looks back into the past, from that recent innocent time known in contemporary New Orleans as “pre-K,” to the mid-nineteenth century, the other time the city was mostly swampland.

Los Angeles Noir brings you tales of crime and passion and betrayal from some of the most innovative and celebrated writers working today. ―A Los Angeles Times best seller, Book Sense Notable Pick, and SCIBA Book Award Winner Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Héctor Tobar, Patt Morrison, Emory Holmes II, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Neal Pollack, Scott Phillips, Diana Wagman, Lienna Silver, Brian Ascalon Roley, and Denise Hamilton. From the introduction by Denise Hamilton: “Los Angeles is the birthplace of all things noir . . . Maybe it’s the seductive blur of artifice and reality, the possibility of shucking off the past like last year’s frock and reinventing yourself beyond your wildest dreams. Maybe it’s the desperation that descends when the dream goes sour, the duplicity that lurks behind the beauty, the rot of the jungle flowers, the riptides off the sugar sand beaches that carry off the unwary. Writers like James Cain, Dorothy B. Hughes, Nathanael West, Chester Himes, and Raymond Chandler understood both the hope and the horror that Los Angeles inspires, and they harnessed this duality to create their masterpieces . . . With Los Angeles Noir , we’ve brought you the ethos of Chandler and Cain filtered through a contemporary lens, showcasing some of the most innovative and celebrated writers working today. Open these pages and you’ll embark on a literary travelogue that stretches from the mountains through the hardscrabble flats to the barrios and middle-class suburbs, the mansions of the wealthy, and the shores of the Pacific Ocean where we finally run out of continent. The breadth of talent on display is as exciting and diverse as the city itself.“

This anthology explores the dark side of finance from Manhattan to Bangkok and Tel Aviv, featuring new stories by Jim Fusilli, Lauren Sanders and more. Wall Street often looks like a gleaming world of high-end professionalism where decisions to buy or sell are guided by expertise, formulas and dispassionate strategy. And sure, that’s one version of Wall Street. Let’s call it the CNBC edition. But this book is about another place, just beneath that shiny surface: a place where fear and greed have always held sway. Think WorldCom or Tyco; think Enron. Think Gordon Gekko. Wall Street Noir illuminates a place whose boundaries have spread well beyond Trinity Church and the East River. In today’s global economy, Wall Street is everywhere: a borderless, virtual city encompassing Midtown Manhattan, Main Street, U.S.A., the maquila s of Honduras, the office towers of Shanghai, and the brothels of Bangkok. It’s a shadowy metropolis, as the stories in this exciting collection reveal, and one that’s far more Jim Thompson than Warren Buffet. Wall Street Noir includes brand-new stories by John Burdett, Henry Blodget, Peter Blauner, Jason Starr, Megan Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Stephen Rhodes, Twist Phelan, Tim Broderick, Jim Fusilli, David Noonan, Richard Aleas, Lawrence Light, James Hime, Mark Haskell Smith, Peter Spiegelman, and Lauren Sanders.

“[A] superb collection . . . The 18 stories by current and former residents of Havana are gritty, heartbreaking and capture the city.” — Orlando Sentinel To most outsiders, Havana is a tropical sin city. Habaneros know that this is neither new nor particularly true. In the real Havana—the lawless Havana that never appears in the postcards or tourist guides—the concept of sin has been banished by the urgency of need. And need—aching and hungry—inevitably turns the human heart darker, feral, and criminal. In this Havana, crime, though officially vanquished by revolutionary decree, is both wistfully quotidian and personally vicious. In the stories of Havana Noir , current and former residents of the city—some international sensations such as Leonardo Padura, others exciting new voices like Yohamna Depestre—uncover crimes of violence and loveless sex, of mental cruelty and greed, of self-preservation and collective hysteria. Other authors include: Pablo Medina, Alex Abella, Arturo Arango, Lea Aschkenas, Moisés Asís, Arnaldo Correa, Mabel Cuesta, Michel Encinosa Fú, Mylene Fernández Pintado, Carolina García-Aguilera, Miguel Mejides, Achy Obejas, Oscar F. Ortíz, Ena Lucía Portela, Mariela Varona Roque, and Yoss. “[A] remarkable collection . . . gritty tales of deprivation, depravity, heroic perseverance, revolution and longing in a city mythical and widely misunderstood.” — The Miami Herald

Motor City’s finest literary talents―including Oates, Estleman, Holden, and Parrish―offer a shadowed spectrum of gripping, haunted visions. Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Joyce Carol Oates, Loren D. Estleman, P.J. Parrish, Nisi Shawl, Craig Holden, Craig Bernier, Desiree Cooper, Melissa Preddy, E.J. Olsen, Joe Boland, Megan Abbott, Dorene O’Brien, Lolita Hernandez, Peter Markus, Roger K. Johnson, and Michael Zadoorian. From the introduction by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking: “Detroit is an old and wounded city, broken into wildly diverse splinters, but it is not dead, for it is possessed of a unique vitality rooted in its complex history and in its hardy people. Detroit is noir, shadowed and striving, grim and powerful. It is impossible to truly know the city and not respect it . . . In Detroit Noir you will find noir in many forms, embodied by many characters. From a driven detective with a mystery to solve to a working man just trying to make it through another day, from a bemused outsider seeking a thrill to one so deeply inside the city as to see no outside at all. Urban professionals, night watchmen, tarot card readers, waitresses, caretakers, and criminals, all bound together by the city and by a dark dilemma that looms just ahead. A moment awaits each of them, a moment of truth or violence or epiphany or change. A noir moment.”

Brooklyn Noir is back, this time with a true-crime vengeance. Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new true-crime stories by: Robert Leuci, Dennis R. Hawkins, Tim McLoughlin, Thomas Adcock, Errol Louis, Denise Buffa, CJ Sullivan, Kim Sykes, Reed Farrel Coleman, Patricia Mulcahy, Aileen Gallagher, Christopher Musella, Robert Knightly, Jess Korman, Constance Casey, and Rosemarie Yu. From the introduction by Tim McLoughlin: There is a difference, as editor, between cheering the literary accomplishment of a fiction writer who has delivered a brilliant story about a serial killer or hit man, and reading the true account, however beautifully written, of a young woman raped, murdered, and forgotten. So this book, though it has its light moments (and thank God for those), is for me the darkest of the Brooklyn Noir series. These pieces remind us that crime is personal. It happens to us and to our neighbors. Sometimes it happens because we do nothing to prevent it. Life does not always offer the moral arc we so desperately crave in fiction. If it did, we’d have no need for myths and fables, religion or miracles . . . Read this book. Enjoy it. Be horrified by it. Carry it with you always. And the next time you’re watching a particularly bizarre and salacious news item on the television set in your neighborhood pub, and the guy on the next stool says, ‘You can’t make this shit up,’ smack him with it.

“Stories of murder, passion, betrayal . . . grounded very firmly and specifically in Toronto—Dundas Square, The Beach, Dufferin Mall, Yorkville, etc.” —BlogTO A multicultural nexus, Toronto hosts Indian, Portuguese, African, Italian, and Chinese communities that provide fertile backdrops for crimes of passion and perfidy. Toronto Noir proves that Ontario’s clean-cut capital hides an underworld of sin, scandal, and everyday evil. This anthology features stories by RM Vaughan, Nathan Sellyn, Ibi Kaslik, Peter Robinson, Heather Birrell, Sean Dixon, Raywat Deonandad, Christine Murray, Gail Bowen, Emily Schultz, Andrew Pyper, Kim Moritsugu, Mark Sinnett, George Elliott Clarke, Pasha Malla, and Michael Redhill. “With the help of some very skilled local writers, they’ve shown Toronto Noir is no oxymoron . . . Our authors also come up with rattling good and dark yarns from such yuppie hangouts as the Beach, Bloor West Village and the Distillery District.” — Toronto Reads “The collection by no means neglects the multi-racial, multi-ethnic character of the new Toronto . . . a most successful anthology.” —ReviewingTheEvidence.com

This anthology spans more than a century of noir fiction set in the heart of the Big Apple—“17 sure winners” from Edith Wharton, Donald Westlake, and more ( Publishers Weekly , starred review). The island of Manhattan has been a breeding ground of crime, longing, and discontent since its earliest days as a city—and a natural setting for noir fiction since the genre was invented. And from Harlem to Greenwich Village to Wall Street, it has also been home to many a great writer. After the success of the first Manhattan Noir, dedicated to all-new stories, Lawrence Block combed through the borough’s long literary history to deliver this stellar collection of classics, even stretching the bounds of noir to include poems by Edgar Allen Poe and others. Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics features entries by Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs.

Dennis Lehane steps up to the plate as editor and presents a scintillating collection of deep, dark fiction. “Dennis Lehane advises us not to judge the genre by its Hollywood images of sharp men in fedoras lighting cigarettes for femmes fatales standing in the dark alleys . . . [Lehane] writes persuasively of the gentrification that has . . . left people feeling crushed.” ― New York Times Crime Fiction Column Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O’Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, J. Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron. From the introduction by Dennis Lehane: “Boston is a city that produces guys―or, in the city’s vernacular, knuckleheads―who once stole the replica of a cow that sat in front of a Braintree steak house. The cow weighed what a car weighed, and yet these knuckleheads had the industry to get it onto a pickup truck, drive it back to South Boston, and deposit it in the middle of Broadway. They did this solely so they could then call the Boston Police Department and ask them to respond to a “beef going down on Broadway” . . . So we have our distinct humor and our distinct accent and our distinct vocabulary. All of which―sadly, possibly―is now endangered by progress. Because one can’t ignore that Boston has been beset by a new class war of late, one you’ll see reflected in the stories herein. It’s a war of gentrification. As the city continues to lose its old-school parochialism and overt immigrant tribalism, it’s also losing a lot of its character. Whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing is up for debate, but what can’t be argued is that it is, in fact, happening . . . That’s the paradox of the new Boston―what’s lost has, in many cases, been taken; what’s left is what people can’t sell. Noir is a genre of loss, of men and women unable to roll with the changing times, so the changing times instead roll over them . . .”

“This book is a chance to get a fix on some of India’s best crime writers” ( The Globe and Mail , Toronto). These fourteen original stories, from some of India’s most outstanding literary talents, take you into a world of sex in parks, male prostitution, and vigilante rickshaw drivers. Set in a city plagued by religious riots, soulless corporate dons, and murderous servants, this collection offers bone-chilling, mesmerizing take on the country’s chaotic capital, where opulence and poverty clash, and old-world values and the information age wage a constant battle. Brand new stories by Irwin Allan Sealy, Omair Ahmad, Radhika Jha, Ruchir Joshi, Nalinaksha Bhattacharya, Meera Nair, Siddharth Chowdhury, Mohan Sikka, Palash Krishna Mehrotra, Hartosh Singh Bal, Hirsh Sawhney, Tabish Khair, Uday Prakash, and Manjula Padmanabhan. “Like the rest of this superb series ( Brooklyn Noir, L.A. Noir, Toronto Noir, etc.), we are introduced to the city by stories set in locations iconic to the city. In the case of Delhi, that means we go to some very dark spots indeed.” — The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “ Delhi Noir has no lack of true-to-life characters getting twisted, mangled and discarded. Which is why, like the proverbial train wreck, even as you cringe, you won’t be able to look away.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Lee Child, Diana Gabaldon, James Sallis, and others reveal how, in Phoenix, sunshine is the new noir. “Patrick Millikin . . . as if to prove his witty claim that ‘sunshine is the new noir,’ offers one superb specimen, ‘Whiteout on Van Buren,’ in which [author] Don Winslow makes skillful use of a city street at high noon to provide the perfect metaphor for life and death.” ― New York Times Crime Fiction Column Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, James Sallis, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Talton, Megan Abbott, Charles Kelly, Robert Anglen, Patrick Millikin, Laura Tohe, Kurt Reichenbaugh, Gary Phillips, David Corbett, Don Winslow, Dogo Barry Graham, and Stella Pope Duarte. From the introduction by Patrick Millikin: “Early boosters promoted Phoenix as a desert paradise, a lush resort town where health-seekers could enjoy the benefits of clean dry air and warm winter weather . . . Yet from the very beginning, Phoenix has always had a darker side. It is a city founded upon shady development deals, good ol’ boy politics, police corruption, organized crime, and exploitation of natural resources. Close proximity to the Mexican border makes the city a natural destination spot for illegal trafficking of all kinds―narcotics, weapons, humans . . . Modern-day Phoenix is a textbook case of suburban sprawl gone unchecked. Endless cookie-cutter housing developments, slapped up on the cheap, metastasize outward into the desert, soaking up energy and water that we don’t really have. All of that concrete and asphalt traps the heat, raising temperatures to apocalyptic extremes . . . The stories in this collection represent our city in all of its contradictory glory, the good and the bad, urban blight and stark natural beauty, everything jumbled together and served up smokin’ hot, just the way we like it.“

“This entry, with its high-quality stories from such genre masters as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, outshines the typical all-original anthology.”— Publishers Weekly In Akashic Books’s acclaimed series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. This collection of classic stories—the sequel to the award-winning, bestselling Los Angeles Noir —“reaffirm[s] that the shadows cast by the Southland’s sun, and its gloomy ocean fog, have proved some of noir’s most fertile territory” ( Los Angeles Times ). This anthology features stories by Raymond Chandler, Paul Cain, James Ellroy, Leigh Brackett, James M. Cain, Chester Himes, Ross MacDonald, Walter Mosley, Naomi Hirahara, Margaret Millar, Joseph Hansen, William Campbell Gault, Jervey Tervalon, Kate Braverman, and Yxta Maya Murray. “If you love either mysteries or tales about our corner of the world, pick up Noir 2 . . . Hey, the concept of ‘noir’—dark, steamy mystery stories—was invented here.”— Los Angeles Daily News

Latin American noir at its finest. “[A] diverse collection of stories which reflect the harshness and also the brittle brilliance of life in Mexico City.”— MostlyFiction Book Reviews Akashic Books’s acclaimed series of original noir anthologies has set a high standard for portraying cities and their neighborhoods in all their dark and violent splendor. Now, “ Mexico City Noir surpasses that standard with phantasmagorical tales of double-dealing, corruption, violence and self-delusion . . . This collection is such a varied literary feast. Fans of Jorge Luis Borges will find surprises galore in the story ‘Violeta Isn’t Here Anymore.’ The noir-ish maze that Myriam Laurini constructs with her flair for the shifting realities of ‘magical realism’ is dazzling enough, and then up pops Borges . . . “Peel back one layer and find something totally unexpected, these tales tell us again and again. As Eduardo Monteverde writes, ‘the heart of Mexico City is made of mud and green rocks, and the God of Rain continues to cry over the whole country.’ And standing on that ground, the 12 writers here find inspiration to die for” ( Shelf Awareness ). This anthology includes brand-new stories by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Eugenio Aguirre, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Bernardo Fernández Bef, Óscar de la Borbolla, Rolo Díez, Victor Luiz González, F.G. Haghenbeck, Juan Hernández Luna, Myriam Laurini, Eduardo Monteverde, and Julia Rodríguez.

The River City emerges as a hot spot for unseemly noir in this anthology with a foreword by New York Times –bestselling author Tom Robbins. A rich literary tradition sets the stage for this talented group of authors who take their inspiration from Virginia’s capital city. Edgar Allan Poe has left his mark on the atmospheric town, giving its residents a taste for walking on the dark side. It’s no wonder that three local writers took it upon themselves to curate this moody and menacing collection, featuring stories by Dean King, Laura Browder, Howard Owen, Yazmina Beverly, Tom De Haven, X.C. Atkins, Meagan J. Saunders, Anne Thomas Soffee, Clint McCown, Conrad Ashley Persons, Clay McLeod Chapman, Pir Rothenberg, David L. Robbins, Hermine Pinson, and Dennis Danvers. “[Fifteen] gritty and ominous tales . . . The writing of Poe—who grew up and forged a literary reputation in Richmond, and is usually credited with inventing the detective story—may have set the stage for the town’s kiss-me-deadly tradition.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch

Orange County, California, brings to mind the endless summer of sand and surf, McMansion housing tracts, a conservative stronghold, and tony shopping centers. It's a place where pilates classes are run like boot camps, real estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic, and ice cream parlors on Main Street, USA, exist side-by-side with pho shops and taquerias. Orange County Noir pulls back the veil to reveal what lurks behind the curtain. Features brand-new stories by: Gordon McAlpine, Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Rob Roberge, Nathan Walpow, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Dan Duling, Mary Castillo, Lawrence Maddox, Dick Lochte, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips, Martin J. Smith, and Patricia McFall. Editor Gary Phillips is the author of many novels and short stories. He lives in Southern California.

Fourteen brutal and passionate stories by both Native American and non-Native writers, including New York Times –bestselling author Lawrence Block. Step into Indian Country—which comprises the entire North American continent, from the uppermost reaches of Canada to the island of Puerto Rico. Enter the dark welter of troubled history throughout the Americas, where the heritage of violence meets the ferocity of intent. An integral part of Native American culture, storytelling now takes a bleak turn to showcase the scope of indigenous peoples’ experiences. Indian Country Noir features brand-new stories by Mistina Bates, Jean Rae Baxter, Lawrence Block, Joseph Bruchac, David Cole, Reed Farrel Coleman, O’Neil De Noux, A.A. HedgeCoke, Gerard Houarner, Liz Martínez, R. Narvaez, Kimberly Roppolo, Leonard Schonberg, and Melissa Yi. “Whatever the case, each situation is built around individuals doomed by their heritage. Ultimately, each story gives readers a disturbingly insightful and relatively unknown view of the lives of thousands of fellow citizens all but invisible to mainstream America.” — The Denver Post “Written by both Native American and non-Native authors, the 14 stories in this worthy volume in Akashic’s noir series range geographically from northern Canada to Puerto Rico and from New York’s Adirondacks to Los Angeles.” — Publishers Weekly

“Authors whose dark take on humanity would be familiar to the likes of Cornell Woolrich and Jim Thompson. Story after story offers haunting images.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review The more you watch Moscow, the more it looks like a huge chameleon that keeps changing its face—and it isn’t always pretty. Following Akashic Books’ international success with London Noir , Delhi Noir , Paris Noir , and others, the Noir series explores this fabled and troubled city’s darkest recesses. Moscow Noir features stories by: Alexander Anuchkin, Igor Zotov, Gleb Shulpyakov, Vladimir Tuchkov, Anna Starobinets, Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, Sergei Samsonov, Alexei Evdokimov, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Maxim Maximov, Irina Denezhkina, Dmitry Kosyrev, Andrei Khusnutdinov, and Sergei Kuznetsov. “Sordid crimes, gangsters and other underworld characters, sometimes supernatural themes, and a hefty body count . . . The best stories in the collection have some reverberations of a hoary past on the everyday life of a neighborhood . . . It is hard to over-emphasize the power of the locations described in some of these stories.” — MostlyFiction Book Reviews “This anthology is an attempt to turn the tourist Moscow of gingerbread and woodcuts, of glitz and big money, inside out.” — Bookslut “I am particularly struck by how it is the shortest stories here that seem the most fresh, bold and interesting. There we see often impressionistic touches in the prose or plotting and some really impressive exploration of theme. In particular, I would recommend ‘In the New Development’ and ‘The Point of No Return’ as highlights.” — Mysteries Ahoy!

A chilling collection of tales from Texas, a state that, according to coeditor Bobby Byrd, “bleeds noir fiction.” “What makes Texas noir different from any other noir? Is it just that the gumshoes wear cowboy boots? . . . Akashic Books finally turns its attention to the biggest state in the Lower 48, but all that land just means more places to bury the bodies. As father-son editing partnership Bobby and Johnny Byrd observe in their introduction, this isn’t J.R. Ewing’s Lone Star State. This is the Texas of chicken shit bingo, Enron scamsters, and a feeling that what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico . . . So what defines Texas noir? Who knows, but you better pray that blood doesn’t stain your belt buckle.” ― Austin Chronicle “ Lone Star Noir ‘s 14 hard-boiled short stories take readers into life’s ragged edges . . . It reminds how humanity’s darkest possibilities float just beneath everyday life’s thin surface.” ― The Dallas Morning News Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: James Crumley, Joe R. Lansdale, Claudia Smith, Ito Romo, Luis Alberto Urrea & David Corbett, George Wier, Sarah Cortez, Jesse Sublett, Dean James, Tim Tingle, Milton Burton, Lisa Sandlin, Jessica Powers, and Bobby Byrd. From the introduction by Bobby Byrd: “Seems like everybody who lives in Texas has a snotty attitude about the place where they live. Even if they hate it. Like the bumper sticker from the 1980s, Lucky me, I’m from Lubbock. That was popular the year after Lubbock almost got wiped off the map by a series of God’s worst tornadoes. But what you learn from living in this state is that most of Texas is not Texas. It’s not the stereotype that the rest of the nation carries around in the collective consciousness . . . "The real Texas hides out in towns and cities like you’ll find in Lone Star Noir, and in that very Texas reality, among the everyday good folks of Texas, you’ll find the hard-boiled understanding of guns and dope and blood money and greed and hatred and delusion that makes these fourteen stories come alive on the page. Sure, you might catch a glimpse of J.R. and old Woodrow Call, like a shadow at the edge of your sight, feel their heat at your back, catch a whiff of the dead flowers which are their Texas dreams. This is basic foodstuff for a Texas writer telling a story, but the story must always stay true to its place and the people who live there. That’s the strength of these stories in Lone Star Noir ―the particular place they come from, the language that the characters speak. Yes, they are pieces of the larger puzzle that is Texas, but they are more true to the pieces of ground they reveal.”

“A collection enhanced by an unerring sense of place, with no clinkers . . . that will please the most discriminating lovers of the dark side.” — Kirkus Reviews From its posh Main Line to its blue-collar enclaves, Philadelphia is a city of contrasts. History has shown that brotherly love and murderous intentions can exist, if not side-by-side, then at least on the same block. Its this dichotomy that gives local writers their inspiration in this gritty collection of stories from Meredith Anthony, Diane Ayres, Cordelia Frances Biddle, Keith Gilman, Cary Holladay, Solomon Jones, Gerald Kolpan, Aimee LaBrie, Halimah Marcus, Carlin Romano, Asali Solomon, Laura Spagnoli, Duane Swierczynski, Dennis Tafoya, and Jim Zervanos. “It took long enough for Akashic’s noir series to get to Philly. Now that it has, compiled under the shadowy auspices of Inquirer literary critic/West Philly native Carlin Romano, the fun begins.” — Philadelphia City Paper “One of the US’s oldest, and darkest cities has a collection of its own . . . Overall, this collection was excellent, but left me wanting more.” — MostlyFiction Book Reviews

“A wide-ranging collection from the beloved but besieged Caribbean island,” from a lineup of authors including two National Book Award finalists ( Kirkus Reviews ). “The Haitian-born Danticat has brought her country’s literature back into the world of English-speakers. Filled with delights and surprises, Haiti Noir , taken as a whole, provides a profound portrait of the country, from its crises to its triumphs, from the tiny bouks of the countryside to the shanties of the sprawling bidonvilles. Danticat herself has a lovely story in the collection, and permits two distinguished foreign writers on Haiti, Madison Smartt Bell and Mark Kurlansky, to slide in there among all the brilliant Haitians.” — Daily Beast Brand-new stories by Edwidge Danticat, Rodney Saint-Éloi, Madison Smartt Bell, Gary Victor, M.J. Fievre, Mark Kurlansky, Marvin Victor, Josaphat-Robert Large, Marie Lily Cerat, Yanick Lahens, Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Kettly Mars, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel, Evelyne Trouillot, Katia D. Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zoboi, Nadine Pinede, and Patrick Sylvain. “This anthology will give American readers a complex and nuanced portrait of the real Haiti not seen on the evening news and introduce them to some original and wonderful writers.” — Library Journal “A collection possessing classic noir elements—crimes and criminals and evil deeds only sometimes punished—but also something else, perhaps uniquely Haitian too.” — Los Angeles Times

Southern California is not all sun, sand, and surf in this gripping collection of noir tales from T. Jefferson Parker, Don Winslow, Maria Lima, and others. San Diego is home to miles of beaches, Balboa Park, a world-famous zoo, and some of the country’s most expensive home and resort real estate. Yet the city also houses a few items that aren’t actively promoted by the visitor’s bureau: a number of the country’s most corrupt politicians, border-related crimes, terrorists, and the occasional earthquakes. A noir feast! In the fifty-plus years since Raymond Chandler set Playback in Esmeralda, his name for La Jolla, the population has grown by more than a million, and crime has proliferated as well. San Diego of the past and the present offers the book’s contributors a rich selection of settings, from the cross on Mount Soledad to the piers of Ocean Beach, and perpetrators and victims from the residents of its wealthiest enclaves to the inhabitants of its segregated barrios. San Diego Noir includes stories by T. Jefferson Parker, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Martha C. Lawrence, Diane Clark & Astrid Bear, Debra Ginsberg, Morgan Hunt, Ken Kuhlken, Taffy Cannon, Don Winslow, Cameron Pierce Hughes, Lisa Brackmann, Gabriel R. Barillas, Gar Anthony Haywood, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Maria Lima. “When it’s done right, noir is a darkly delicious thrill: smart, sharp-tongued, surprising. The knife goes in at the end with a twist. San Diego Noir , a new 15-story collection by some of the region’s best writers, has all that going for it, and the steady supply of hometown references makes it even more fun.” — The San Diego Union-Tribune

Journey to Spain with “stories that tap into history, politics and culture to cast a cloak of horror and humor on the city’s distinctive neighborhoods” ( The Miami Herald ). For some, Barcelona is a European enchantress of nouveau architecture, fusion tapas, and fine cava. To others, it’s a Gothic labyrinth of tiny streets to lose oneself in; hashish-clouded after-hours bars to forget the time; dimly lit plazas with global bohemians squatting, prostitutes tempting. But come morning, its cold cobblestones and misty beachfronts have even darker stories to tell. This collection of crime fiction includes brand-new stories by Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Imma Monsó, Santiago Roncagliolo, Francisco González Ledesma, Valerie Miles, David Barba, Isabel Franc, Lolita Bosch, Eric Taylor-Aragón, Antonia Cortijos, Cristina Fallarás, Raúl Argemí, Teresa Solana, and Andreu Martín. “The 14 stories . . . hew closely to the bleak spirit of the noir genre, whether reaching back to the 1920s . . . or chronicling chaotic immigrant-infused present-day Barcelona.” — Publishers Weekly “Each [contributor] presents his or her own personal picture of the city, and as a whole, the anthology projects a many-hued sense of place. As portrayed here, Barcelona is a city that looks different from every angle.” — Booklist “With 50 titles in its noir series and counting, Akashic adds another fine anthology to the lineup. . . . Fans of Spanish literature and crime fiction will enjoy.” — Library Journal

Malice and mayhem simmer beneath the surface of one of America's favorite vacation areas. “Youthful alienation and despair dominate the 13 stories in Akashic’s noir volume devoted to Cape Cod. [It] will satisfy those with a hankering for a taste of the dark side.” ― Publishers Weekly “David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe.” ―T he Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: William Hastings, Elyssa East, Dana Cameron, Paul Tremblay, Adam Mansbach, Seth Greenland, Lizzie Skurnick, David L. Ulin, Kaylie Jones, Fred G. Leebron, Ben Greenman, Dave Zeltserman, and Jedediah Berry. From the introduction by David L. Ulin: “Here, we see the inverse of the Cape Cod stereotype, with its sailboats and its presidents. Here, we see the flip side of the Kennedys, of all those preppies in docksiders eating steamers, of the whale watchers and bicycles and kites. Here, we see the Cape beneath the surface, the Cape after the summer people have gone home. It doesn’t make the other Cape any less real, but it does suggest a symbiosis, in which our sense of the place can’t help but become more complicated, less about vacation living than something more nuanced and profound . . ." "For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began. There are lines here, lines that get crossed and lines that never get crossed, the kinds of lines that form the web of noir. Call it what you want―summer and smoke is how I think of it―but that’s the Cape Cod at the center of this book."

New York's fifth borough finally enters the Noir Series arena, completing the series tour of the world's noirest city. “Staten Island is the forgotten borough, lacking a subway system, left out of Jay-Z’s songs, known for organized crime, bad accents, fake tans, and garbage―which makes it a rich setting for Akashic’s noir series . . . In a thrilling tilt-a-whirl of crime and drama, editor Patricia Smith has carefully chosen writers concerned with the true nature of the small suburban borough.” ― Electric Literature’s “The Outlet” Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Bill Loehfelm, S.J. Rozan, Ted Anthony, Todd Craig, Ashley Dawson, Bruce DeSilva, Louisa Ermelino, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Michael Largo, Michael Penncavage, Linda Nieves-Powell, Eddie Joyce, Shay Youngblood, and Patricia Smith. From the introduction by Patricia Smith: “There’s crime here. Good crime. Mystery. Dark, scary stuff. Big crime. The noir kind, without a good guy in sight. Just scan the headlines: Skeleton in Staten Island Basement Points to Unsolved Murder; Staten Island Man Commits Murder after Victim Had Spit in Wife’s Face . Then there’s the haunted Kreischer mansion on Arthur Kill Road. Mob Wives, for Chrissakes, with all that squalling, hair-pulling, and Botox. A recent spate of hate crimes against blacks, Mexicans, Muslims. Mist-shrouded abandoned psychiatric hospitals. Guys named Eddie. Underground caverns. Willowbrook. The ghostly ship graveyard. The legend of Cropsey. That rolling landfill and all those secrets buried beneath it. Even the one movie that was named after the borough got it exactly right. Here’s the synopsis: A Staten Island mob boss Parmie is robbed by septic tank cleaner Sully who has a pal Jasper, a deaf deli employee moonlighting as a corpse chopper . . . That’s a damned sunshiny day on the island. I’m not sure why Staten Island is the borough bringing up the rear in Akashic Books’ Noir Series, but here we are, as rotten, vengeful, unforgiving, and badass as any one of its quartet of brothers.”

“The stories in this noir anthology are as raw and diverse as the city of Mumbai itself, humming with the feel for the city’s pulse and patter.” — The National Today Mumbai is like any other Asian city on the rise, with gigantic construction cranes winding atop upcoming skyscrapers and malls. Right-wing violence, failing electricity and water supplies, overcrowding, and the ever-looming threat of terrorist attacks—these are some of the gruesome realities that Mumbai’s middle and working classes must deal with every day, while the city’s super-rich zip from roof to roof in their private choppers. Abandoned by its wealthy, mistreated by its politicians and administrators, Mumbai continues to thrive primarily because of the helpless resilience of its hardworking, upright citizens. The stories in Mumbai Noir depict the many ways in which the city’s ever-present shadowy aspects often force themselves onto the lives of ordinary people. What emerges is the sense of a city that, despite its new name and triumphant tryst with capitalism, is yet to heal from the wounds of the communal riots of the 1990s and from all the subsequent acts of havoc wreaked within its precincts by both local and outside forces. Mumbai Noir features stories by: Annie Zaidi, R. Raj Rao, Abbas Tyrewala, Avtar Singh, Ahmed Bunglowala, Smita Harish Jain, Sonia Faleiro, Altaf Tyrewala, Namita Devidayal, Jerry Pinto, Kalpish Ratna, Riaz Mulla, Paromita Vohra, and Devashish Makhija.

Between these covers, Long Island emerges as a region far more complex and sinister than merely a playground for the rich and famous. ―“The Shiny Car in the Night” by Nick Mamatas was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 , edited by Otto Penzler and Lisa Scottoline “There is plenty of mayhem for fans of dark fiction in the pages of Long Island Noir : shootings, killings, all manner of brutality . . . Suburbia may be even meaner than the big city.” ― The New York Times Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Jules Feiffer, Matthew McGevna, Nick Mamatas, Kaylie Jones, Qanta Ahmed, Charles Salzberg, Reed Farrel Coleman, Tim McLoughlin, Sarah Weinman, JZ Holden, Richie Narvaez, Sheila Kohler, Jane Ciabattari, Steven Wishnia, Kenneth Wishnia, Amani Scipio, and Tim Tomlinson. From the introduction by Kaylie Jones: “ The Great Gatsby could be seen as the first noir novel of Long Island―a poor boy who doesn’t have two cents to rub together falls for a rich girl who would never marry him. So he makes himself a massive fortune the only way he can―illegally. And buys himself a mansion on Long Island. Despite his fortune he is never truly accepted, never truly safe, comfortable, or content. And of course, she leaves him because he’ll never be part of her set. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s mansions of Great Neck and Little Neck are still there, lording imposingly over their lesser neighbors. The American dream of suburban bliss has never died, only grown more desperate, more materialistic, and less romantic as it has shoved its way further east, until now there is literally nowhere left to go . . . The most die-hard fans of noir fiction may find a few of these stories a little gris. Not everyone here is literally down and out, though spiritually, they’ll give you a run for your money . . . They are all characters driven by some twisted notion of the American Dream, which they feel they must achieve at any cost. This is real-life noir. These people are our neighbors.“

Venice, Italy, behind the tourist veil is revealed and dissected. “Drifter” by Emily Mandel was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 , edited by Otto Penzler and Lisa Scottoline “Forget the magnificence of Venice’s art, architecture, and music, and delve into this tour of the City of Water’s murky depths . . . visions of a Venice not seen in tourist brochures.” ― Publishers Weekly Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir . Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: Peter James, Emily St. John Mandel, Barbara Baraldi, Mike Hodges, Mary Hoffman, Maria Tronca, Matteo Righetto, Tony Cartano, Francesco Ferracin, Isabella Santacroce, Michelle Lovric, Francesca Mazzucato, Maxim Jakubowski, and Michael Gregorio. From the introduction by Maxim Jakubowski: “It’s one of the most famous cities in the world. Immortalized by writers throughout the years, frozen in amber by film and photography, the picturesque survivor of a wild history whose centuries encompass splendor, decay, pestilence, beauty, and never-ending wonders. A city built on water, whose geographical position once saw it rule the world and form a vital crossing point between West and East. A city of marchants, artists, glamour, abject poverty, philosophers, corrupt nobles, refugees, courtesans, and unforgettable lovers, buffeted by the tides of wars, a unique place whose architecture is a subtle palette reflecting the successive waves of settlers, invaders, religions, and short-term rulers . . . Change in this most curious of cities is something almost imperceptible and invisible to the naked eye. Walking just a few minutes away from the Rialto Bridge, for instance, and losing yourself in backstreets, where the canals and small connecting bridges leave just enough space to pass along the buildings without falling into the water, it’s as if you are stepping into a past century altogether, with no indication whatsoever of modernity. You wade through a labyrinth of stone, water, and wrought-iron bridges, and after dark feel part of another world where electricity isn’t yet invented, a most unsettle feeling nothing can prepare you for . . .”

“Subverts the simplistic sunshine/reggae/spliff-smoking image of Jamaica at almost every turn . . . with a rich interplay of geographies and themes.” — Los Angeles Times From Trench Town to Half Way Tree to Norbrook to Portmore and beyond, the stories of Kingston Noir shine light into the darkest corners of this fabled city. Joining award-winning Jamaican authors such as Marlon James, Leone Ross, and Thomas Glave are two “special guest” writers with no Jamaican lineage: Nigerian-born Chris Abani and British writer Ian Thomson. The menacing tone that runs through some of these stories is counterbalanced by the clever humor in others, such as Kei Miller’s “White Gyal with a Camera,” who softens even the hardest of August Town’s gangsters; and Mr. Brown, the private investigator in Kwame Dawes’s story, who explains why his girth works to his advantage: “In Jamaica a woman like a big man. She can see he is prosperous, and that he can be in charge.” Together—with more contributions from Patricia Powell, Colin Channer, Marcia Douglas, and Christopher John Farley—the outstanding tales in Kingston Noir comprise the best volume of short fiction ever to arise from the literary wellspring that is Jamaica. “Thoroughly well-written stories . . . fans of noir will enjoy this batch of sordid tales set in the sweltering heat of the tropics.” — Publishers Weekly “An eclectic and gritty mélange of tales that sears the imagination . . . Kingston Noir proves its worth as a quintessential piece of West Indian literature—rich, artistic, timeless, and above all, draped in unmistakable realism.” — The Gleaner (Jamaica)

“Fourteen uniformly strong stories in [this] outstanding noir anthology devoted to Russia’s second city . . . an ideal backdrop for crime fiction.” — Publishers Weekly The origins of St. Petersburg’s rich noir tradition come from the city’s history, urban landscape, and the weather. The freezing winds from the Baltics give rise to hopelessness, despair, and the darkest of humor. The swamps upon which the city was built cloak it in a thick haze that inspires ghostly tales and furtive behaviors. In St. Petersburg Noir , you’ll find original stories by Lena Eltang, Sergei Nosov, Alexander Kudriavstev, Andrei Kivinov, Julia Belomlinsky, Natalia Kurchatova & Ksenia Venglinskaya, Anton Chizh, Vladimir Berezin, Andrei Rubanov, Vadim Levental, Anna Solovey, Mikhail Lialin, Pavel Krusanov, and Eugene Kogan. “The Russian soul is well suited to a style defined by dark, hard-edged moodiness in underground settings. With St. Petersburg, the tsar’s ‘Window on Europe,’ we get European-style existential angst as well—not to mention the scary sociopolitical realities of the new Russia . . . For all sophisticated crime fiction readers.” — Library Journal “A riveting collection. An insightful ‘tour’ of St. Petersburg. And a spellbinding introduction to Russian literature and perspective.” — Killer Nashville

Dark and gritty tales set in the “Paris of the Plains,” including Nancy Pickard’s “Lightbulb”—selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 . Akashic Books’ groundbreaking, globetrotting noir anthology series sets all-new stories in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective metropolitan area. Now “Kansas City, famous for its jazz, its barbecue, and its shady history, provides the venue for this solid addition” ( Publishers Weekly ). This collection includes brand-new stories from J. Malcolm Garcia, Grace Suh, Daniel Woodrell, Kevin Prufer, Matthew Eck, Philip Stephens, Catherine Browder, John Lutz, Nancy Pickard, Linda Rodriguez, Andrés Rodríguez, Mitch Brian, Nadia Pflaum, and Phong Nguyen. “Hard-used heroes and heroines seem to live a lifetime in the stories . . . Each one seems almost novelistic in scope. Half novels-in-waiting, half journalistic anecdotes that are equally likely to appeal to Kansas City boosters and strangers.”— Kirkus Reviews “Travel has many unexpected benefits, so even if you’ve never had a reason to visit the city itself, you’ll find Kansas City Noir surprisingly well worth the price of the ticket.”— Bookgasm “Picture steam rising from a sewer grate on a rain-slicked street. The sound of footsteps comes closer and closer behind you as you walk down a dark, downtown Kansas City alley. If this scenario entices you, then you just might enjoy Kansas City Noir .”— Kansas City Public Television