Humorous Noir

It’s the summer of 2015, Brooklyn. The city is sweltering from another record-breaking heat wave, this one accompanied by biblical rains. Edith, a recently retired legal librarian, and her identical twin sister, Kat, a feckless romantic who’s mistaken her own eccentricity for originality, discover something ominous in their hall closet: it seems to be phosphorescent, it’s a mushroom . . . and it’s sprouting from their wall.

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.

Spring is in the air. Gus is feeling pretty good about the change in seasons until an unknown man decides he would rather change from being alive to being dead. He clearly drank something toxic, and it didn’t agree with him. The question is, did he really decide to do that, or did someone make that decision for him. Only that question is buried under a lot of other layers of questions. Why did the man visit Gus a few days before his death proclaiming the end times were near? Why didn’t he take enough poison to kill him near instantly instead of lingering around for days slowly dying? ...

Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you're Zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity in the mid-20th century, at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the population is shrinking every day.

In the court of the “King”, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part narco-lit romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.

The sequel to Bocas, Bronte follows George to Australia. PJ left a little surprise back home. And her name is Charlotte.

The Black Mass of Brother Springer tells the story of Sam Springer, a drifter novelist who meets Jack Dover, the retiring Abbot of the Church of God's Flock. Dover's final official act is to ordain Springer and send him off to serve as pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville, Florida. Springer soon becomes entangled in the city's growing civil rights movement...and with the church deacon's earthy young wife, Merita.

It’s just another morning on the fifth of July. The country is another year older; Gus is a touch hungover, the coffee in his office is stale, and all Gus wants to do is go home and start over again on July sixth. Unfortunately Father Xavier visits the sheriff’s office and he’s brought along a gift. He has a green jacket that should have been put in the church’s lost and found. The father suspects it belongs to a missing girl named Erica Torres which is odd given the jacket is marked as belonging to E. Rossi. Erica went to school one day and never came home. She was picked up by a ...

Boy Genius is a powerful identity satire, the picaresque odyssey of a child seeking to avenge the wrongs perpetrated on his parents. Park's genius, born into the turmoil of post-war Korea, is used as a puppet by the South Korean government - before being banished to America. From a remote New York city ghetto, the boy wages a clandestine guerilla war against all symbols of authority.

Looking into the "suicide" of his lover's ex-husband sounds like a hairball to a private investigator. But he never imagined it could get him killed! Alton Rhode travels to San Francisco to investigate an alleged suicide and winds up ensnared in a web of cryptocurrency-fueled murder and international intrigue! The private eye knows a lot about murder and almost nothing about bitcoins. But he soon gets educated about the latter with the help of an unorthodox but brilliant young woman. And his own expertise comes in very handy when he runs into a bunch of Russians and Chinese whose motives ...

Buffalo is melting. The sidewalks squirm. The cats have formed a militia. Max Noir—sarcastic detective, caffeine addict, and reluctant hero—just wanted his coffee. Instead, he finds himself ankle-deep in sentient goo, guilt-fueled hallucinations, and a grotesque game masterminded by a sourdough-born intelligence. As Buffalo oozes into madness, Max is forced to investigate a mystery that smells like burnt soup, features a psychic yeast tantrum, and may be targeting him personally. From a cheese-curd confession to a feline urine offensive, Max Noir is a genre-bending, noir-splattered ...

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 ...

After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her 80-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure. Taking off in Enzio’s ’62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door. Their neighbor, Lacey “Wolfie” Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her.

Shirley Lyle hooks for a living. She’s a big girl who keeps her profile low. But when a drug lord and his son toss her trailer, she adds a couple letters to her name. Now, she’s killed the drug lord’s son and two meth zombies. Fed up, ready to set fire to her past, her job - and her trailer - she’s dragged back into the role she’s forsworn by a man who presses her buttons with a hammer. Shirley realizes she’ll never be more than a 400-pound hooker. But when her partner-in-revolution, Ulyana the Ukrainian stripper, disappears, Shirley puts flame to fuse.

Jack Carlito is a writer, an artist, and a wannabe movie director looking for a deal. But time is running out and when he travels to Orlando for the annual Creative Screenwriting and Directing Convention, he knows this is his last best chance of making it happen. After checking in, he goes down to the hotel bar to grab some dinner, and then he sees her standing behind the bar, the real-life embodiment of the girl of his dreams. He leaves Orlando confident he has met the leading lady for the movie he is writing, and for his life. But when she vanishes, he is left without either, as he ...

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.

Past events cast shadows you can't outrun. Wayne and Phil knew that better than anyone, after what happened when they were children, bullied by Wayne’s murderous brother. When Tyrone returns after many years, bent on revenge, they are about to be drawn back into his dangerous world. Book One of the Phil Tyler Crime Thriller series.

Scarlet Accordions of Doom Step into the gritty world of Max Noir, a hard-boiled detective with a penchant for trouble and a cynical heart. When the enigmatic Lana Legs, her scarlet stilettos echoing through his smoke-filled office, presents a birth certificate with no parental names, Max is drawn into a labyrinth of secrets and danger. Lana's quest for her true identity plunges Max into a case that unravels hidden pasts and dangerous liaisons, from mob lawyer Daniel "DNA" Arundel's sinister warnings to the tragic love story of Boca Loca and Horatio Norris. Max navigates a city where ...

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...

Gorn Nagurski is a retired cop, he married into money, and he is pretty sure everybody is out to kill him. His position as a security consultant takes him to Kingston, Jamaica. Life is good. Until he discovers terrorists are skulking around his island. Gorn is not happy. He calls on a secret network of retired and active duty police, military, and intelligence officers to step in and help thwart a potential terrorist attack. The result is gunfights in the streets, shoot-outs in the Caribbean Sea, and a full scale war in California. Good times, except... everybody is trying to kill him.