Crime Noir

Thirteen bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors are contained in this first of volume of a must-listen collection.

This quartet of crime stories about deadly books, penned by award-winning contemporary mystery writers, includes The Little Men, What's in a Name?, The Book of the Lion, and From the Queen.

The loner, Erlendur, has recently joined the police force as a young officer. The beat on the streets in ReykjavIk is busy: traffic accidents, theft, domestic violence, contraband.... And an unexplained death. When a tramp he met regularly on the night shift is found drowned in a ditch, no one seems to care. But his fate haunts Erlendur and drags him inexorably into the strange and dark underworld of the city.

It is 1969 and Glasgow is in the grip of the worst winter in decades, yet it is something else that has Glaswegians on edge: a serial killer whose name alone is enough to make them tremble with fear. The Quaker has killed another victim, snatching a young woman from a nightclub and dumping her body like trash in the back of a cold-water tenement. He leaves no clues, and the investigation has led police down one blind alley after another.

Liv loves her son, Adrian. That's why she keeps a low profile in Sandefjord, Norway: just another tired single mother, trying to make ends meet. She has never told her son about the secrets she carries or the life she lived before he was born. She will do anything to keep him safe. Anastasia's life is transformed when she moves from Russia to Milan and starts modelling. Suddenly, she's rich. She's desired. But then she begins to see the dark side of her new life and she will do anything to escape.

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.

The Akashic Noir series’ forensic study of Southern California sharpens its focus on one of Los Angeles’ most recognized neighborhoods.

On a remote island off the coast of Maine lies a secluded estate. There, behind wrought iron gates and rock walls, sits Halcyon Hall. Today, it is an exclusive spa catering to wealthy elites and pampered celebrities. But once, it had another name - and a terrifying reputation.... Rosemary Tulle has come to Halcyon Hall desperate to find her younger sister. Seventeen-year-old Genevieve left a brief, troubling message on Rosemary's phone, begging to be picked up. But Rosemary is not on the visitor list, and no one will let her in....

Hollywood’s glamour hides a dark secret, and Eddie Ankin is the fall guy. When Hollywood’s “it” girl turns up dead, former Marine and seasoned stuntman Eddie Ankin is framed for the brutal murder. Determined to clear his name, Eddie dives into a twisted investigation—one that pits him against powerful enemies with deadly secrets. Detective Kim Mallory, a savvy LAPD investigator, suspects a pattern in the killings. Overlooked by her department, she teams up with Eddie in an uneasy alliance to catch a killer the city would rather ignore. Together, they’re drawn deep into ...

When an old acquaintance, finance magnate Eleanore Paget, hears August is back in town, she tries to hire him to investigate suspicious goings-on at her investment bank. August declines - detective work is no longer his beat. When Eleanore is found dead the next day of an apparent suicide, August doesn't buy it for a minute. His search for her killer will drag him into a rat's nest of Detroit's most dangerous criminals.

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.

From the author of The Find series comes PAINTER, the first book in the gripping new nordic noir series, The Stockholm Killings. In the frozen heart of a Stockholm winter, a new terror stalks the night. Families are being slaughtered, their bodies arranged in grotesque parodies of classical art—horrific masterpieces staged for Inspector Stefan Eklund to find. Haunted by his own past traumas, Eklund is thrust into leading a new elite unit, partnered with the sharp, ambitious Delara Holm and the unsettlingly brilliant forensic psychologist, Dr. Torre Nylander. Their only lead is a man found...

From Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author, comes the darkest, most hard-boiled work of his career... This hand-grenade of pure noir features two, never-before-published crime stories about Ray Boyd, an ex-con traveling the open road in a used, black-and-white, Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor. Ray is the anti-Reacher. He doesn't help people in trouble. He helps himself. Fair warning, these two violent, sexually explicit stories -- Ray Boyd isn't Stupid and Occasional Risk -- mark a sharp departure from the police procedurals and fast-moving thrillers that Goldberg is known ...

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.

The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York's coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick's client. Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities.

A macabre grave is found at the foot of the Italian Dolomites. The body is found to be Roberto Lorenzoni's, only son and heir of one Venice's oldest, most aristocratic families. Commissario Guido Brunetti must move in the highest circles of power and corruption to unravel the mystery behind the young man's disappearance and murder.

A mix of paranormal mystery, dark humor, and supernatural crime-solving, The Dead Detective box set follows Richelle Dadd, a cop who wakes up to find herself in the middle of a murder scene—her own. Book 1: The Dead Detective Detective Richelle Dadd has seen plenty of crime scenes, but she never expected to wake up in one. Now, as an undead investigator, she’s dealing with more than just a bitter divorce—she’s also on a mission to solve her own murder. But being reanimated comes with a catch: she’s been turned into a zombie assassin, forced to carry out dangerous assignments while...

Sara Keane's husband, Damien, has uprooted them from England and moved them to his native Northern Ireland for a "fresh start" in the wake of her nervous breakdown. But three sleepless nights into their new life, Sara understands it's not an entirely fresh start after all: Damien's new boss is his ex-con father, whose contracting business is run with violence and tinged by paramilitary association. Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless, friendless - all but a prisoner in her own house.

The Lost Country centers on Edgewater, who's recently been discharged from the navy, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish who takes him under his wing as they both search desperately for a forgotten past and a future that may never come. The Lost Country cements Gay as one of the strongest voices in Southern literature, alongside Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner.

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. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by "the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine" ( Booklist).