Noir Fiction

Pittsburgh, 1995. The son of a black father he’s never known and a white mother he sometimes wishes he didn’t, 22-year-old Bobby Saraceno is passing for white. Raised by his bigoted maternal grandfather, Bobby has hidden his truth from everyone, even his best friend and fellow comic-book geek, Aaron, who has just returned home from prison a hardened racist.

Midcentury Los Angeles: A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America", a land of sunshine and orange groves, Midwestern values, and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men - one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief - each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations the Burroughs clan has made their home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton takes the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can.

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.

A Purple Place for Dying finds Travis McGee witness to a murder he can't prove and a kidnapping nobody wants to believe. McGee becomes a pawn between a wealthy Southwestern patriarch, the law, and a mysterious gang bent on insurance fraud. Just the kind of thing McGee revels in!

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?

A victim killed with a single, precise stab to the heart appears at first glance to be a robbery gone wrong. A caring, upstanding social worker lost to a senseless act of violence. But for Detective Kim Stone, something doesn't add up. When a local drug addict is found murdered with an identical wound, Kim knows instinctively that she is dealing with the same killer. But with nothing to link the two victims except the cold, calculated nature of their death, this could be her most difficult case yet.

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.

Au cœur d'une Afrique ancestrale, le vieux Tsongor, roi de Massaba, souverain d'un empire immense, s'apprête à marier sa fille. Mais au jour des fiançailles, un deuxième prétendant surgit. La guerre éclate : c'est Troie assiégée, c'est Thèbes livrée à la haine. Le roi s'éteint mais ne peut reposer en paix dans sa cité dévastée. À son plus jeune fils, Souba, échoit la mission de parcourir le continent pour y construire sept tombeaux à l'image de ce que fût le vénéré - et aussi le haïssable - roi Tsongor.

Dans un village côtier de Galice, en 1975, un enfant assiste à l'incendie criminel de sa maison et au meurtre de son père. En 2005, à Barcelone, l'adulte qu'il est devenu semble avoir enfreint toutes les règles éthiques et morales qui avaient présidé à son entrée dans la police. Il a battu (presque) à mort un entrepreneur sans histoire et reste obstinément muet sur les raisons de son acte. Atteint d'une maladie incurable, il revient sur les terres où il est né. Pour déterre le passé et venger sa triste enfance ? Ou pour affronter ses vieux démons et trouver le repos de l'âme ?

Brand-new stories by: Daniel Woodrell, Matthew Eck, Catherine Browder, Nancy Pickard, John Lutz, J. Malcolm Garcia, Kevin Prufer, Linda Rodriguez, Nadia Pflaum, Phong Nguyen, Andres Rodriguez, and others. Kansas City: where East and West collide, where naked ambition meets broken dreams, where blues and the night go together like rye whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. Yes, Kansas City is a surprising place of grit, gore, and betrayal, at least in the imaginations of our diverse lineup of contributors.

In his classic thriller The Bone Collector, Jeffery Deaver introduced readers to Lincoln Rhyme-the nation's most renowned investigator and forensic detective. Now, a new killer is on the loose: a criminal inspired by the Bone Collector. And Rhyme must untangle the twisted web of clues before the...

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.

Gus Murphy and his girlfriend, Magdalena, are put in harm's way when Gus is caught up in the distant aftershocks of heinous crimes committed decades ago in Vietnam and Russia. Gus' ex-priest pal, Bill Kilkenny, introduces him to a wealthy businessman anxious to have someone look more deeply into the brutal murder of his granddaughter. Though the police already have the girl's murderer in custody, they have been unable to provide a reason for the killing.

Seit Jahrzehnten hat Paul Schwartzmüller Rumänien, das Land seiner Kindheit, nicht mehr besucht. Nun macht sich der Investigativjournalist auf den Weg nach Siebenbürgen, um das Erbe seiner kürzlich verstorbenen Tante anzutreten. Doch als er in Siebenbürgen ankommt, schlägt ihm zunächst wenig Begeisterung entgegen. Nur Sorin, Pauls Freund aus Kindheitstagen, empfängt ihn herzlich. Als man auf dem sagenumwobenen Dracula-Schloss Bran einen Touristen tot auffindet, wird ausgerechnet Sorin zum Hauptverdächtigen – und Paul stellt selbst Ermittlungen an.

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.

Aux États-Unis, de nos jours. Zack Walker a une obsession : la sécurité. Marié et père de deux enfants, cet auteur de science-fiction a préféré quitter un environnement urbain qu'il estime trop dangereux, pour une vie de banlieue bien paisible. Paisible ? A voir. Car Zack, en bon parano, continue de voir le danger partout : ses ados s'obstinent à laisser la porte d'entrée ouverte aux cambrioleurs potentiels et surtout, sa femme Sara laisse son sac à main à disposition de tous.

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.

Ten years ago, I adopted Blue after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning, I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you to never buy a dog on impulse. Going to the pound because you need something in your life that's worth holding onto is rarely, if ever, mentioned. I asked the man at the pound to show me the biggest dogs they had. He showed me some Rottweiler-German Shepherd puppies that he said would grow to be quite large.

Mike Hammer is summoned to a meeting with Jamie Winters, a US senator from New York, and Jamie's lovely, very smart wife, Nicole, considered by many to be the power behind the throne. Winters is being blackmailed, and Hammer is given a list of suspects who may be behind the threats to the senator's career. But when the suspects begin to drop like flies, Hammer realizes there is more to this case than just a salacious tape.