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.

Paul Edgecombe, ancien gardien-chef d'un pénitencier dans les années 1930, entreprend d'écrire ses mémoires. Il revient sur l'affaire John Caffey - ce grand Noir au regard absent, condamné à mort pour le viol et le meurtre de deux fillettes - qui défraya la chronique en 1932. "La Ligne verte" décrit un univers étouffant et brutal, où la défiance est la règle. Personne ne sort indemne de ce bâtiment coupé du monde, où cohabitent une étrange souris apprivoisée par un Cajun pyromane, le sadique Percy Wetmore, et Caffey, prisonnier sans problème.

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 ?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Justice with a vengeance. Who controls Sydney Rye? Because that person controls a dangerous weapon - a killer and a symbol - proof of a prophet's divinity and the catalyst for an international vigilante network. Sydney Rye is just one woman, but to millions she is much more. Whoever controls Sydney controls the masses, can incite violence, turn wife against husband, daughter against father...release the wolf in us all. Who controls her, and what do they want?

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.

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.

Sin City. An artificial oasis of pleasure, spectacle, and entertainment, the gambling capital of America has reinvented itself so many times that it's doubtful that anyone knows for sure what's real and what isn't in the miles of neon and scorching heat. Las Vegas is considered the ultimate player's destination, no matter what your game. Las Vegas is the true city that never sleeps, where fortunes are made and lost every day, and where snake-eyes aren't found just on a pair of dice.

FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years, the one that tells her the Poet has surfaced. She has never forgotten the serial killer who wove lines of poetry in his hideous crimes - and apparently he has not forgotten her. Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call, too - from the widow of an old friend. Her husband's death seems natural, but his ties to the hunt for the Poet make Bosch dig deep.