Noir Anthology

This second volume of a must-listen collection contains 15 bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Now, West Africa enters the Noir Series arena, meticulously edited by one of Nigeria's best-known authors. The 13 stories that comprise this volume stretch the boundaries of "noir" fiction, but each one of them fully captures the essence of noir, the unsettled darkness that continues to lurk in the city's streets, alleys, and waterways.

La collection «Asphalte Noir» revient en France et, après Paris, explore Marseille, de l'Estaque au Vieux-Port, de la Joliette à la Plaine, de la Belle de Mai au stade Vélodrome, en passant par le Panier ou les îles du Frioul... Marseille dans toute sa diversité, toutes ses communautés, toutes ses contradictions. Des nouvelles noires inédites, écrites spécialement pour ce recueil, par des auteurs marseillais de naissance ou d'adoption, œuvrant aussi bien dans le polar que la littérature générale.

Some locales seem to come with their own soundtrack. Don Ho and his tiny bubbles provide the background music for Hawaii, Edith Piaf for Paris. The reggae of Bob Marley evokes Jamaica. The soundtrack for Alabama is without question provided by our troubled troubadour Hank Williams. The 2016 biography Hank by Mark Ribowsky paints a dark picture of the musician's short, alcoholic, drug-filled life: a life of loneliness and pain. He goes so far as to call Hank's life story "noir-ish"....

From the introduction by James Thompson: Finland, the myths and truths. Internationally, it has a reputation as perhaps the best place in the world to live. A great economy. A low crime rate. Good and nearly cost-free health care. The needy are provided for by the state and live in reasonable comfort. Finns: peaceful and quiet people, living in the perfect example of a social democracy functioning as it should. A tourist, or even a person who has lived here for a length of time, might well view Finland as such.

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.

Running from a world which wants him dead, ex-detective Sergeant Jake Pettman journeys to the isolated town of Blue Falls, Maine, home of his infamous, murderous ancestors. But Jake struggles to hide from who he is, and when a child disappears, he finds himself drawn into an investigation that shares no parallels to anything he has ever seen before. Held back by a chief of police plagued and tormented by his own secrets, Jake fights for the truth. All the way to the door of Jotham MacLeoid. An insidious megalomaniac who feeds his victims to a killing pit.

Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat edits this collection of stories that puts a noir twist on the Haitian experience. From kidnappings gone wrong to deadly sibling rivalries, Haiti Noir features some of the Caribbean nation’s leading voices, including Gary Victor, Evelyne Trouillot, Kettly Mars, and Patrick Sylvain.

A brilliant reporter, haunted by her husband's death....A disgraced cop, tangled in a web of lies....Two unlikely heroes, brought together by one unthinkable crime....

On the 12th floor of the Acme Building, on a cold February day in St. Paul, Guy Noir looks down the barrel of a loaded revolver in the hands of geezer gangster Joey Roast Beef, who is demanding to hear what lucrative scheme Guy is cooking up with stripper-turned-women's-studies-professor Naomi Fallopian. Everyone wants to know, and Guy faces them one by one, as he and Naomi pursue a dream of earning gazillions by selling a surefire method of dramatic weight loss.

Killing Me Softly introduces Key West private eye Gideon Lowry, who moonlights as a piano player at a local jazz club. When Virginia Murphy shows up one night to ask him to investigate her sister's death 40 years earlier, Gideon is led down the darker side of memory lane where secrets linger. Some are buried as deeply as the paradise that was once Key West, now entombed in concrete. Key West's Hemingway Days is in full swing in Night and Day, when Gideon is pulled into the world of a famous nightclub singer known only as Asia.

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. In the wake of Chicago Noir, Twin Cities Noir, and Kansas City Noir - all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series - comes the latest Midwest installment, St. Louis Noir. Masterfully curated by Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest (adapted for film, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton), this volume will chill the listener with heartland menace.

Sara non vuole esistere. Il suo dono è l'invisibilità, il talento di rubare i segreti delle persone. Capelli grigi, di una bellezza trattenuta solo dall'anonimato in cui si è chiusa, per amore ha lasciato tutto seguendo l'unico uomo capace di farla sentire viva. Ma non si è mai pentita di nulla e rivendica ogni scelta. Poliziotta in pensione, ha lavorato in un'unità legata ai Servizi, impegnata in intercettazioni non autorizzate. Il tempo le è scivolato tra le dita mentre ascoltava le storie degli altri.

It starts with a few near-accidents: A car almost swipes Mike Hammer when he’s crossing the street. A junkie robs the notoriously hardboiled detective at knifepoint. A fight on a subway platform comes close to pushing him in front of a train. While any one of these could be a coincidence, together they make a conspiracy—one that Hammer will have to end in order to survive. And when it comes to finishing something—or someone—nobody does it better than Hammer.

This wry collection of Hanukkah noir features eleven stories by critically acclaimed authors that run the gamut from hardboiled to heartfelt, curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg. Across eleven stories, award-winning authors spin tales of family, corruption, buried treasure and delightful yet twisted capers that will entertain listeners through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.

"Another Role" is a short story from the collection Indian Country Noir. Step into Indian Country. Enter the dark welter of troubled history throughout the Americas, where the heritage of violence meets the ferocity of intent.

Noir contains three classic thrillers by Richard Matheson, the grand master of suspense. Originally published in the 1950s, at the very beginning of Matheson’s distinguished career, these page-turning classics are finally on audio for your listening pleasure. Now listeners everywhere can savor three unforgettable tales of crime, corruption, and cold-blooded murder.

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 Despestre - uncover crimes of violence and loveless sex, of mental cruelty and greed, of self-preservation and collective hysteria.

The southwestern-most metropolis in the contiguous United States, resting a mere 40 feet above sea level, tends to garner positive national attention. San Diego is home to the world-famous San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park (with its history reaching back to the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition), temperate climes, and a sunny reputation. It is also the home of shooter Brenda Ann "I Don’t Like Mondays" Spencer, disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and San Diego County medical examiner-turned-killer Kristin Rossum.

What marks life in Addis Ababa are the starkly different realities coexisting in one place. It's a growing city taking shape beneath the fraught weight of history, myth, and memory. It is a heady mix. It can also be disorienting, and it is in this space that the stories of Addis Ababa Noir reside....