Noir Fiction

Humans have always been fascinated by darkness. Especially the darkness of a city at night, when the black sky is made ever more inky by the pools of illumination dropped under streetlights. Whether the mean streets be in an alternate past charmed with dark magic or the dirty alleyways of futuristic crowded space stations, the city—and its darkened streets—will always fascinate us. Here then, an anthology of all new stories of science fiction and fantasy with a hardboiled noir twist that acknowledge that the city is a living, breathing entity...and it isn’t always on our side.

Juillet 1942. Jamais l'issue du conflit n'a semblé aussi incertaine. Si l'Angleterre a écarté tout risque d'invasion, la Russie de Staline plie sous les coups de boutoir des armées d'Hitler. L'Europe est sur le point de basculer.

The streets are about to explode…and Puyallup’s local paranormal investigator Jimmy Kincaid is caught right in the middle of it. The neighborhood’s criminal syndicates are on the brink of all-out war, and if they go at it, the streets will run red—literally. But Jimmy’s got more problems. Someone’s sending him a particular message by sending him severed limbs. And then there’s the hitmen coming after him. Last but not least, he’s got to broker a deal between the biggest elven street gang in Seattle and a vicious Triad gang—and not get himself killed in the bargain.

Fired from his longtime job as captain of the Coal Patrol, two-foot-three-inch, 1,300-year-old elf Gumdrop Coal is angry. He's one of Santa's original elves, inspired by the fat man's vision to bring joy to children on that one special day each year. But somewhere along the way, things went sour for Gumdrop. Maybe it was delivering one too many lumps of coal for the Naughty List. Maybe it's the conspiracy against Christmas that he's starting to sense down every chimney.

There's Bella, stay-at-home mum of Teddy. She suffered postpartum psychosis after Teddy's birth. There's Chrissy, divorce lawyer, married to Russell. They're having some problems with their sex life. There's Electra, mother to twins, who is struggling with her son's behaviour. There's Skye, a single mother, who used a sperm donor to have her baby. Then there's Jen. She was supposed to be a mother, but it hasn't worked out like she expected.

The concluding Hammer novel begins with a 21st-century funeral before flashing back to summer, 1973. Nine years after the events of Dig Two Graves, Hammer takes another unlikely vacation—this time on Long Island to help look after his partner Velda Sterling’s seventeen-year-old sibling, Mikki. When Mikki gets hooked on heroin, Hammer—filled with contempt for dope dealers—goes on a rampage. He will find those behind the drug racket and teach them what shooting up is all about.

In this first installment in Georges Simenon’s legendary Inspector Maigret series, M. Maigret hunts down an elusive and notorious confidence man, but finds that identifying him is a game of doubles, intrigue, and hidden crimes. When Detective Chief Inspector Maigret receives notice from...

Two days before Christmas, a young woman is found dead beneath the cliffs of the deserted village of Kalfshamarvik. Did she jump, or did something more sinister take place beneath the lighthouse and the abandoned old house on the remote rocky outcrop? With winter closing in and the snow falling relentlessly, Ari Thor Arason discovers that the victim's mother and young sister also lost their lives in this same spot, 25 years earlier....

One of the 20th-century's most darkly beautiful works of crime fiction - a story of carny life, spiritualism, and a con man of merciless resolve.

They call it Company Town - a city-size oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bioengineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig - making her doubly an outsider as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire.

"Le Rouge et le Noir", publié en 1830, est le premier grand roman de Stendhal.

At the start of another pitiless winter, the wolves have come for the children of Keelut. Three children have been taken from this isolated Alaskan village, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. Saken with grief and seeking consolation, Medora contacts nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core. Sixty years old, ailing in both body and spirit, and estranged from his daughter and wife, Core arrives in Keelut to investigate the killings.

Although the Green Dolphin is a bar of ill repute, it is there that Tancred Palmieri, a thief with elegant and erudite tastes, meets Willow Azarian, an aging heroin addict. She reveals to Tancred that her very wealthy father has recently passed away, leaving each of his five children a mysterious object that provides one clue to the whereabouts of a large inheritance. Willow enlists Tancred to steal these objects from her siblings and solve the puzzle.

Beneath the glitter of Mardi Gras lies the sleaze of Bourbon Street; under the celestial sounds of JazzFest, the nightmare screams of a city once at war within its neighborhoods, but after Hurricane Katrina, seemingly at war with nature and the rest of the country as well. New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation.

1313. En Terre Sainte, une compagnie de brigands attaque une cité isolée. Leur chef, Roncelin de Fos, parvient à s'emparer de la ville, sans se douter qu'elle intéresse fortement deux personnages clés : le Grand maître des Templiers et le légat du Pape. Roncelin prend la fuite avant d'être récupéré par le Temple. Pour payer sa dette, il devra retrouver le seul rabbin capable de décrypter le message que les Templiers ont découvert dans les souterrains du Temple de Salomon.

Mass killer Cara Lindstrom is in the wind after a deadly encounter which leaves FBI Special Agent Antara Singh questioning her own sanity and fitness to serve. ASAC Matthew Roarke exiles Singh to Portland to work as an assistant to his old mentor, retiring profiler Chuck Snyder - but a mysterious break-in alerts Singh and Snyder to an active threat revolving around an old case: a series of brutal murders of homeless teenagers on the streets of Portland and Seattle.

A novel set in the underbelly of upstate New York that's as hardboiled and punchy as a swift right hook to the jaw, a classic noir for fans of James Ellroy and John D. Macdonald. Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska--he's tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends...

The year started badly and only got worse - blizzards, strikes, power cuts, and political unrest were the norm. For journalist Allie Burns, however, someone else's bad news was the unmistakable sound of opportunity knocking, and the year is ripe with possibilities. But Allie is a woman in a man's world. Desperate to get away from the "women's stories" the Glasgow desk keeps assigning her, she strikes up an alliance with wannabe investigative journalist Danny Sullivan. From the start, their stories create enemies.

Is someone systematically killing the judges called to the British Columbian bar? At least one has been murdered and several have disappeared. Arthur Beauchamp returns from retirement once again to take on the case, this time defending his former nemesis, backwoods poet Cudworth Brown. He finds himself chasing all kinds of leads, including tracking down a mystery novel that Brown’s unreliable former lawyer has been writing, just as Beauchamp’s own wife, Margaret, has announced her candidacy for the Green Party.

Getting laid off and dumped on the same day will screw up anyone’s plans, so June’s taking a few months to recover at her parents’ house while she licks her wounds and finds another job. Of course, getting stranded and spending the night at her brother’s best friend’s house—in separate bedrooms, because Levi is nothing if not a gentleman—wasn’t in her plans either.