Humorous Noir

A PRIVATE EYE IS WARNED OFF A CASE HE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT! Alton Rhode was sitting in his office minding his business when a gunman walked in and shot up the place. He told the private eye he would come back and kill him, if he pursued the Frank Pace case. Since Rhode didn't know anyone named Frank Pace, and in fact had no clients at the time, he wasn't really worried about what was an obvious case of mistaken Identity. But later, a nun walked in and said she was looking for her brother, Frank Pace. He was about to hire Rhode but had been murdered, and his body misplaced. Then, things really...

Meet Mason Ezekiel Barnes, former NFL tackle turned successful author. Mason is obsessed with winning a Pulitzer and is thwarted by his fellow author and nemesis, the twerpy little gnome Conrad Bancroft. Mason spends his days writing at a local cafe, Perk Noir, the one-of-a-kind jazz coffee shop. He's obsessed with the life of jazz great Earl "Lightning" Perkins, former owner of the Perk Noir. One day, unexpectedly in walks Shelly, a fan of Mason's books. Shelly has a mysterious pocket watch she recently inherited. She convinces Mason to assist her in unraveling its history.

Private Detective Kaiser Wrench is a dangerous tiger to have as a friend, but he will avenge your death. Follow Kaiser as he prowls the streets of New York in the first five volumes of this series: I, the Tribunal; My Claws Are Quick; Retribution Is Mine!; A Solitary Evening; and The Great Slay.

A darkly comic noir about a chicken living in a world of anthropomorphic eggs who's wanted for a murder he didn't commit. Life is tough for an embry. Considered a vestigial organ at best and a parasite at worst, chicken embryos are usually aborted by the egg folk early in life. Once in a while, one survives and slips through, hatching into an embry, an ostracized, lower caste anthropomorphic chicken. They have their own ghettos, and are barely tolerated by polite society.

Coalville is on fire—from below. The old mines are burning, and everyone has poison gas in their brain. Maybe that’s why the town is so corrupt. Now that he’s a Benedictine monk, Tommy Martini never wants to see the place again—hell-raisers there hold a grudge till they die, and he’s on their wish list. But a girl he once loved has gone missing, and his best friend from childhood has been murdered. Among the living is a shy girl from Tommy’s past, who wants to help. Together, they learn the secret of the elephant’s graveyard, and it’s not in Africa.

It's corrupt to the bone and under the ever watchful surveillance system known as the Eye. Money has been abandoned in favor of the credit system. All citizens are required to carry hand held devises containing their credit score and personal information. Dylan is recovering from the government attitude adjustment program known as the Punch since his credits reached zero. His adopted son Jimmy is missing presumed dead and his basement office is infested with contrarian rats.

Good fences might make for good neighbors, but they make for even better chances to skim money off the top of a wall building budget. When a new and improved border wall is planned for the southern border of Gus’s humble little county; the powers that be task Sheriff Gus with doing everything possible to get that wall money, but at the same time not build that wall. To complete his task, he’ll need to find a cheap source of cement, an economically friendly workforce, and volunteered land to build a test wall on. He needs that test wall to sweeten the pot and prove to the politicians up ...

Jerry has a traumatic past that leaves him subject to psychotic hallucinations and depressive episodes. When he stands accused of stealing a priceless Van Gogh painting, he goes underground, where he develops an unwilling relationship with a woman who believes that the voices she hears are from God.

Wisecracking private detective Sam Rockwell is running for his life, but that doesn't keep him from taking the case of a Return who's slipped past Heaven's radar and overstayed his time on Earth. Together with his fiance, Amelia, Sam brawls and dances his way through San Francisco to unravel a zany mystery where nothing is what it seems at first blush.

A sentient cloud whose arrogance leads to its own demise. A rich uncle who discovers a possible solution to climate change, but is not who he appears to be. A phantom killer who uses other people (and their cars) to commit murder. Balloons that predict the future. Paranormal investigators at the beach. Wolfmen who hunt bears for sport. A Cinderella story at a retirement home. Celebrities forced to make movies for eternity in a simulated world. A girlfriend who believes we reside in the mind of God.

Gus has traveled out of state and up to the city of Seattle to visit his daughter. She’s sharing an apartment with two criminology majors. Naturally their thoughts turn toward talking about crime and they ask Gus to talk about one of his cases. Since he doesn’t want to discuss anything too recent or else his daughter might know the people involved, he digs down deep into his memory banks for the perfect case from his first year as a sheriff. It also just so happens to be the first case he crossed path with Father Xavier. As he remembers it, Gus was called in to investigate an apparent ...

Quand Samantha accepte l’invitation à une soirée organisée par quatre filles un peu sinistres, elle plonge sans le savoir dans un monde inquiétant, entre le conte de fées et l’histoire d’horreur.

San Francisco 1947: Es kommt nicht jeden Tag vor, dass eine rätselhafte, anmutige Blondine namens Stilton (ja, wie der Käse) in den verlotterten Laden kommt, in dem Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin Gin ausschenkt. Es ist Liebe auf den ersten Blick. Aber bevor Sammy den ersten Schritt machen kann, betritt ein Air Force General mit einem eiligen Auftrag für ihn den Saloon. Doch Sammy hat eigentlich besseres zu tun: Er arbeitet an einer eigenen Geschäftsidee. Als aber an der Pazifikküste ein unbekanntes Flugobjekt gesichtet wird und Stilton plötzlich spurlos verschwindet, muss er sich seinen dunkelsten Geheimnissen stellen, um seinen Käse zu retten.

Summer 1989: Gunther Fahnstiel, once a tough cop who wasn't averse to taking a little side money from a certain madam, has just escaped the dementia ward of his Wichita nursing home. He's not exactly sure where he wants to go, but wherever it is, it has to do with the bag full of cash belonging to the man he accidentally backed over with his RV in 1979. During his search, Gunther begins to relive the violent fallout of that madam's sex lottery 40 years ago. As Gunther's memories unravel, his past and present will collide in a devastating reckoning.

Washed up pitching prospect, Rock Cobbler, now a hotshot detective with the Santa Lacrimosa PD likes working alone as much as he likes bourbon. That is to say, a lot.

Mi chiamo Grace Bernard e, con ogni probabilità, il mio nome non vi dice proprio niente. Nessuno mi conosce perché languisco dietro le sbarre per l’unico crimine che non ho commesso. Eppure, se devo dire la verità nient’altro che la verità, ho ucciso diverse persone, alcune in modo brutale, altre con maggior delicatezza – vale la pena specificarlo, perché fa un’enorme differenza agli occhi giudicanti della gente. Quando ripenso a ciò che ho fatto, avverto persino una punta di tristezza, giusto una fitta trascurabile, al pensiero che nessuno verrà mai a conoscenza del mio strabiliante piano.

Eli’s asked to perform his magic act at a swanky charity gala, the Zombie Ball - a former zombie pub crawl which has grown into an annual high-class social event. What begins as a typical stage show for Eli turns deadly when two of the evening’s sponsors are found murdered under truly unusual circumstances. Compounding this drama is the presence of Eli’s ex-wife and her new husband, Homicide Detective Fred Hutton. Under pressure to solve the crime before the 800 guests depart, Eli and his detective nemesis go head-to-head.

Stanley Hopkins cannot resist the invitation from a honey-voiced US attorney asking him to track down the source of photographs of a young dance major abducted five years earlier from her apartment in Clarkeston, Georgia. A journalist has stumbled across newly posted pictures of Diana Cavendish on the Internet, apparently taken just days before she disappeared with her boyfriend.

Read about the mother of all alien bases! The big one, the mega-base, the center of the Alien Occupation Government: the headquarters, the brain, the nerve center, the absolute pinpoint big base, is right here on Earth, just outside Della, Alaska. Forget Roswell. Forget Machu Picchu. Forget Stonehenge and Tikal and all those alleged alien bases -- abandoned, every one of them. This is the big one, right here on Planet Earth, right now, the source of all the world's troubles, the whole solar system's troubles. Right here. Finally, the unflinching truth about aliens on Earth is exposed in ...

The landscape of contemporary Paris, replete with the best restaurants, the trendiest bars and clubs, is usually filled with the wealthy, the famous, and le rake or le rou, the charming, educated sophisticate with little or no conscience. Into this cushy world bursts Dr. Crandall Taylor - or rather the actor who plays him, the star of a dated American soap opera that is now one of the hottest prime-time shows in France. And this newfound fame, as enriching as it is unexpected, is not wasted on Crandall, eager to put his dark and often violent American past behind him and enjoy all the fruits and the women that Paris and fame have to offer him.