Noir Fiction

From the outside, Essie’s life looks idyllic: a loving husband, a beautiful house in a good neighborhood, and a nearby mother who dotes on her grandchildren. But few of Essie’s friends know her secret shame: that in a moment of maternal despair, she once walked away from her newborn, asleep in her carriage in a park. Disaster was avoided, and Essie got better, but she still fears what lurks inside her, even as her daughter gets older and she has a second baby.

Ex-police officer Sebastian Clifford is quickly finding that life as a private investigator is never quiet. His doors have only been open a few weeks when DCI Whitney Walker approaches him to investigate the brutal attack that left her older brother, Rob, with irreversible brain damage. For nearly twenty-five years, Rob had no memory of that night, but lately things are coming back to him. Whitney's worried that her brother might–once again–be in danger.

In this all-consuming, suspenseful story, a stay-at-home father with something to prove finds a wealthy Wall Street investor's body washed up on the shore—and decides to take the investigation into his own hands…

Early one morning Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient.

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.

Gardez votre sang-froid, la nuit sera longue. Il y a quinze ans, la vie de Nap Dumas a basculé : dernière année de lycée, son frère jumeau et la petite amie de celui-ci ont été retrouvés morts sur la voie ferrée. Double suicide d'amoureux ? Nap n'y a jamais cru. Désormais flic, Nap voit ressurgir le passé : Rex, leur ami d'enfance, vient d'être sauvagement assassiné. Sur les lieux du crime, les empreintes d'une femme que Nap pensait disparue : Maura, son amour de jeunesse, dont il était sans nouvelles depuis quinze ans. Le choc est total pour le policier. Celle qu'il aimait serait-elle une dangereuse psychopathe ?

I'm an omega left behind. I’m damaged, forced to hide my nature, with a scent that can turn alphas violent. I was told there would be no normal, no friends, or dream pack waiting in the distance. But I have one last chance at love. Tomorrow, at the academy ball, my scent blockers will fade. My mates—the ones I was told I would never have—will see me.

Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer", Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries set in Nazi-era Berlin that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces listeners to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture.

Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three LAPD detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.

Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s.

New York, 2061: The place called the Pleasure Academy is a living nightmare where abducted girls are trapped, trained for a life of abject service while their souls are slowly but surely destroyed. Dorian, a thirteen-year-old runaway who’d been imprisoned there, might never have made it out if not for her fellow inmate Mina, who’d hatched the escape plan. Mina was the more daring of the two—but they’d been equally desperate.

When poor little New Hampshire rich girl Mindy Hollis gets lost in Los Angeles, her big sister hires private detective Ed Traynor to find her. Traynor and Hollis's security chief, Jack McMahon, take off for Tinseltown to track down the aspiring actress - but they discover the only part she ever got was the one that killed her. Their hunt for her killers takes them from the bowels of Mexico City to the glitz of Los Angeles, north to the set of The Black Orchid in Vancouver, and then back again to Hollywood, where the angels are dying.

Comprising two distinct short novels - Monroe's Nightmare in Paradise and Bad Luck Shadow from critically acclaimed Victor McGlothin - Borrow Trouble is a hot double-feature that perfectly showcases each author's unique style.

Plongez au cœur du royaume d’Emberfall, domaine figé dans un éternel automne et hanté par un monstre sanguinaire... Fraîchement débarquée de Washington, la jeune Harper semble être la seule à pouvoir briser la malédiction qui pèse sur son souverain, le ténébreux prince Rhen.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends.

A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune - the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation.

Some cases never leave you. For John Rebus, 40 years may have passed, but the death of beautiful, promiscuous Maria Turquand still preys on his mind. She was murdered in her hotel room on the night a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there, and Maria's killer has never been found. Meanwhile, the dark heart of Edinburgh remains up for grabs.

All around Albuquerque, New Mexico, young women are going missing, seemingly vanished into thin air. With no link between the victims, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is quickly plunged into a horrifying case with no obvious clues. And when Jersey Andrews, the best friend of Alyssa's teenage daughter, Holly, joins the list of vanished girls, the case becomes personal. But this investigation will lead Alyssa and partner Cord into the most sinister depths of humanity; an evil place where life is expendable and where the depraved can fulfill their darkest desires - if they have the money.

Son avenir était tout tracé, sa vie était cadrée et millimétrée mais il n’a suffi que d’un instant pour que tout s’évapore... Qui pourra sauver Jaeger et surtout, qui laissera-t-il lui tendre la main ?

Brand-new stories from David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, 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.