Noir Fiction

In an alternate 2009, the United States has been a second-rate power for a quarter of a century, ever since Argentina’s victory in the Falkland’s War thanks to their development of “psychopigments.” Created as weapons, these colorful chemicals can produce almost any human emotion upon contact, and they have been embraced in the US as both pharmaceutical cure-alls and popular recreational drugs. Black market traders illegally sell everything from Blackberry Purple (which causes terror) to Sunshine Yellow (which delivers happiness).

After narrowly escaping with his life at the hands of a murderous Hollywood pimp, detective Happy Doll, bullet-ridden but healing, has landed on a remote Mexican beach. In a humble shack and with his dog for company, Doll settles into a peaceful idyll of Buddhist study. But then trouble, as it always does, comes to paradise. Doll is the witness to a murder for which he is framed, and now, with an expired passport and the Mexican authorities on his tail, he must sneak across the border back to L.A. by any means necessary, with the goal of bringing the true murderer to justice.

One day changes Jody's life forever. She has shut herself down, haunted by her memories and unable to trust anyone. But then she meets Abe, the perfect stranger next door, and suddenly life seems full of possibility and hope. One day changes Mags' life forever. After years of estrangement from her family, Mags receives a shocking phone call. Her brother Abe is in hospital, and no one knows what happened to him. She meets his fiancée, Jody, and gradually pieces together the ruins of the life she left behind. But the pieces don't quite seem to fit....

It should be the perfect opportunity: a manor house available rent free in exchange for a bit of housesitting. But when Cass and James dig deeper, they find the place has been abandoned since a robbery left almost all the inhabitants dead almost thirty years ago. But they’ve got to save for a deposit somehow, so they move in, and things quickly take a strange turn. Objects disappear and turn up in odd places, the clock always stops at the same time, and the house is oppressive yet strangely familiar. Could it just be bad memories, or are the house’s secrets a little closer to home?

TV reporter Candy Sloan has eyes the color of cornflowers and legs that stretch all the way to heaven. She also has somebody threatening to rearrange her lovely face if she keeps on snooping into charges of Hollywood racketeering. Spenser's job is to keep Candy healthy until she breaks the biggest story of her career.

Set in and around the Mexican city of Veracruz, This Is Not Miami delivers a series of devastating stories—spiraling from real events—that bleed together reportage and the author’s rich and rigorous imagination.

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.

William Wisting, en vacances depuis deux semaines et las de tondre la pelouse, suit avec attention l’intérêt grandissant de la presse nationale pour une disparition locale : depuis maintenant trois jours, personne n’a vu Agnete Roll, ni eu la moindre nouvelle d’elle. Et la police n’a recueilli aucun indice. C’est alors que Wisting trouve dans sa boîte aux lettres une enveloppe anonyme ; à l’intérieur, une série de chiffres. Ils désignent le numéro d’archive d’une vieille affaire, le dossier 1569. Un soir de l’été 1999, Tone Vaterland, 17 ans, avait été tuée sur la route en rentrant du travail.

Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash - no credit check, no lease. It's the kind of place you end up when you you've run out of other options.The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don't know is that one of them is a killer. He's already chosen his next victim, and he'll do anything to protect his secret.

When Deputy Coroner Mattie Winston and her boss/best friend, Izzy, are called to the home of waitress and part-time model Shannon Tolliver, they find the ghoulish Halloween decorations a bit too authentic. Among the fake blood and skeletons is the corpse of Shannon herself. Since the whole town knows Shannon recently had a very public spat with her estranged husband, Erik, he's suspect number one. But Mattie happens to know Erik truly loved his wife and is simply incapable of the brutal act - even if he owns the exact same caliber handgun as the murder weapon....

Ace, a young card shark, has worked her entire life to achieve one goal. Bring Burlone Allegretti to his knees. As the head of a mafia family who dabbles in human trafficking, he’s far from innocent and Ace can't wait to exact her revenge. As her plan is set in motion, the alluring head of a rival family, Kingston Romano, approaches her with a proposition. One that she’s desperate enough to accept. Soon, she finds herself in the crosshairs of a war she isn’t prepared to fight.

La France de 1834 est une poudrière. Sourde à la colère du peuple, la monarchie réprime de plus en plus durement les émeutes qui gagnent le pays. À Paris, au milieu de la nuit du 14 avril, l'armée abat les habitants d'un immeuble situé au 12 de la rue Transnonain. Un repaire d'insurgés ? Les victimes sont pourtant des vieillards, des femmes, des enfants… Une paire de bas gît au fond d'un des lits taché de sang ; ils appartiennent à une fille des rues portée disparue. Elle sait. Le préfet de police lance l'agent Joseph Lutz sur sa trace.

To the rest of the world, I'm a damsel; rejected by my own mates and bonded against my will. Now, I need them to see that broken omega, so easily underestimated, because it's up to me to save my pack. With threats closing in, time is running out, and if I can't find answers, I might lose Dusk, Ransom, and Umbra—the alphas I've fallen for. Alphas who have already had everything stolen from them.

Welcome to Maple Street, a picture-perfect slice of suburban Long Island, its residents bound by their children, their work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world. But menace skulks among this exclusive enclave. When the Wilde family arrive, they trigger their neighbors’ worst fears. Dad Arlo’s a gruff has-been rock star with track marks. Mom Gertie’s got a thick Brooklyn accent, with high heels and tube tops to match. Their weird kids cuss like sailors. They don’t fit with the way Maple Street sees itself.

On the day Stockholm police officer Hanna Ahlander’s personal and professional lives crash, she takes refuge at her sister’s lodge in the Swedish ski resort paradise of Åre. But it’s a brief comfort. The entire village is shaken by the sudden vanishing of a local teenage girl. Hanna can’t help but investigate, and while searching for the missing person, she lands a job with the local police department. There she joins forces with Detective Inspector Daniel Lindskog, who has been tasked with finding the girl. Their only lead: a scarf in the snow.

Nina - a career girl living alone in Manhattan - offers Travis McGee companionship and the first loose thread in the elaborate fabric of a gigantic swindle. Now, she's leading McGee on a wild and tortuous chase into the decadent world of high society, the ruthless world of big money, and the weird world of hallucinatory drugs.

Gus Murphy thought he had the world all figured out. A retired Suffolk County cop, he had everything a man could want: a great marriage, two kids, a nice house, and the rest of his life ahead of him. But when tragedy strikes, his life is thrown into complete disarray. In the course of a single deadly moment, his family is blown apart, and Gus is transformed from a man who believes he understands everything into a man who understands nothing.

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.

À 15 ans, Henri Lamothe se voit déjà entrepreneur. Débordant d’énergie, d’idées et de débrouillardise, il met son talent au profit de son école et du Club des arts métis de Sainte-Rita. En lançant sa première entreprise en ligne, le jeune homme profite des ressources de sa communauté métisse tout en y découvrant ses points sensibles. Quand Henri dégringolera de héros à zéro dans ses affaires professionnelles et personnelles, qui viendra à sa rescousse?

Mike Romeo is an ex-cage fighter living off the grid in LA. Running from a dark guilt that dogs him, he's finally found a place where he can rest and even heal. Then a church blows up. And with it all of Romeo's hopes to be left alone. When he stops to help an injured woman whose kids are missing, someone decides to put a target on his back.