Noir City

Among the most self-assured and sharply crafted debuts in recent years, Calumet City detonates a Molotov cocktail of character-driven suspense and ghetto-Chicago intrigue. A powerful fiction debut that captures the precise emotional landscape of one cop's hard-bitten life in the trenches. This first-time author joins that rare breed whose fiction is suffused with profound authenticity.

When a child vanishes, a city's darkest secrets rise to the surface – and in the shadows of Catalonia, justice comes at a price. Detective Elisenda Domènech is no stranger to grief. Haunted by personal loss and worn down by infighting within the force, she's already on the edge. Then a young boy disappears – the son of a powerful local politician, just days before an election. As pressure mounts to find the child, a wave of violent break-ins is terrorising the city, and Elisenda's key informant has disappeared.

In the wake of a tragedy, 13-year-old Graham moves with his family to Beirut, Lebanon, a city on the edge of the sea and cataclysmic violence. Inquisitive and restless by nature, Graham suspects his State Department father is a CIA operative, and that their family’s fragile domesticity is merely a front for American efforts along the nearby Israeli border. Over the course of one year, 1974, Graham’s life will utterly change. Two men are murdered, his parent’s marriage disintegrates, and Graham, along with his two ex-pat friends, run afoul of forces they cannot understand.

A man hangs himself in a neighborhood chapel. Bodies of young girls are being found in canals and rivers across the city with high levels of Mandrax in their bloodstream. McCoy is asked to watch over a colleague's niece, who has left home young and is running with a bad crowd in Glasgow. DS Wattie is attempting to become a sergeant. Drugs in Glasgow have gotten darker and more dangerous. Glasgow, its music, and its inhabitants all have rough edges in this hard city fought over by gangs, organized crime, the forces of law and order, and ordinary people trying to get by.

This first book in a new series is set in and around the Portland, Maine, waterfront. It introduces Brandon Blake, a loner who lives on his old wooden cruiser. Raised by his alcoholic grandmother after his mother was lost at sea, Blake learned to depend on himself. During an assignment for a law-enforcement class, Blake gets involved in a fight and is marked for payback by a soon-to-be-released convict. Meanwhile, questions surface about his mother's disappearance.

When Misty Dawn, a former Hollywood Psychic to the Stars, moves into an old craftsman house, she encounters the former owner, the recently deceased Hollywood set designer, Wilson Thorne. Wilson is unaware of his circumstances, and when Misty explains the particulars of his limbo state, and how he might help himself if he helps her, he’s not at all happy. That is until young actress Zoey Chamberlain comes to Misty’s door for help. Zoey has recently purchased The Pink Mansion, a historic Hollywood Hills home, and believes it’s haunted. But when Misty arrives to search the house, it’s ...

Imagine, the very fact you are alive is a crime punishable by death. What would you do if you were born and raised in a secret lab? How would you react if you learned your identical sister was going to be killed for her body parts? These are all facts young Sarah must deal with. Tall, slender, and with her long, dark hair, Sarah is a striking young woman. Intelligent, caring, and physically fit, she is a natural athlete. Her identical sisters, Ellie and Maria, are equally unique. Ellie is a math prodigy and Maria is one of the most gifted dancers in their region of the galaxy. For this trio...

It doesn’t take long for Ray Spalding to realise that prison is nothing like an Elvis Presley movie. The warden has no intention of throwing a party and the only bands Ray encounters are gangs of hard men. When an old adversary seeks him out, Ray decides his only chance for survival is escape. Ray’s son, Jesse, is discovering that being on the run in the middle of winter is no fun. With his stamina stretched to the limits, he’s ready to surrender himself to social services. At least that way he can see his girlfriend again. Danny Boy is the man in the middle. He thinks he can break ...

Summer, 1962. A scorching heat wave is suffocating LA. PI Jim Keegan is offered a small fortune to find a beautiful woman from a set of photographs. He refuses; the job seems suspicious. But the next day the same woman, Eve, turns up, unbidden, on his doorstep. Eve fears for her safety. She is being watched. Before Keegan knows it, someone has been killed with Keegan’s own gun, and he gets sucked into a world of suspicion and betrayal where he’s never quite sure where the truth lies....

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books has published over 60 volumes in its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Featuring Noir Series stories from: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, and more.

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence.

Noir contains three classic thrillers by Richard Matheson, the grand master of suspense. Originally published in the 1950s, at the very beginning of Matheson’s distinguished career, these page-turning classics are finally on audio for your listening pleasure. Now listeners everywhere can savor three unforgettable tales of crime, corruption, and cold-blooded murder.

Johnny "Whoops" Watson and Billy Bates - young guitarists and singers - and their band, Conflict, are playing clubs in Los Angeles, where the days of rock's zenith have faded, but the hopes and dreams of aspiring musicians haven't. Conflict is struggling, and chaos ensues when someone close to the band is killed. Johnny and Billy are swept up in the mystery, ill-prepared as they are to confront it.

It's early 1944 and Richmond, Virginia is a devil's paradise. Ration scams and police corruption are rampant while the inflated black market commands top dollar. Detective Sergeant Bennie Sherwood, fresh off a soul-scarring tour of duty with the Marines, couldn't care less. His old man was recently murdered under suspect circumstances, and he's on a hunt for the truth. But then an old friend is killed during a botched black market raid and Bennie is thrust onto a hellride through Richmond's underworld.

The Shades of Gray series follows the adventures of Kat and Kim. Start by reading the first book of this serial series and be introduced to this world of danger and mystery and then read the next book for free also. Noir was a mega-city plagued by a sun blocking mass called Dry Clouds that had mysteriously appeared three decades earlier. The Dry Clouds covered half the planet and forced those living under them to exist in endless night. On this world, corporations were in charge and breaking your contract with them could mean the termination of your life. Kimberly Griffin, a Life Closer (...

In Victorian London, Margaret Brink, in search of a better life, arrives by train from the countryside. While at the outset she gains employment, after some misfortune, she soon falls by the wayside. Told in the form of a letter, an inquiry from a relative of Margaret's is answered by a minister who did what he could for her. The Troubles of Margaret Brink is a short, but evocative tale from Award Winning author, Robert E. Kearns

Seventeen-year-old Tyler lives in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. Coerced into robbing rich people’s homes by his bullying older siblings, he’s also trying to care for his little sister and his drug-addict mum. On a job, his brother Barry stabs a homeowner and leaves her for dead, but that’s just the beginning of their nightmare, because the woman is the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord, Deke Holt.

From the warped mind who brought you Zombies Don’t Surf and the rest of the Guardians of the Apocalypse saga comes a twisted tale of blood and death and magic in a mythical place called The City. Think The Dresden Files meets Sin City, while hanging out with The Warriors in 1947, then crank it up to 11 and hang on for the ride.

The year is 1794. A young nobleman, Eric Three Roses, languishes in hospital. Some think he would be just at home in the madhouse across the road. Ridden with guilt, he spends his nights writing down memories of his lost love who died on their wedding night. Her mother also mourns her, and when no one listens to her suspicions, she begs the aid of the only person who will listen: Jean Mickel Cardell, the one-armed watchman.

Kane Kulpa learned which laws could be bent and which broken after a short stint in prison courtesy of Detective Vincent Bayonne. Bound by time, integrity, and the reality of life in Central City, Bayonne and Kane made peace with the past. Now, gang tension spirals from corrupt to deadly, and a series of murders stresses Kane and Bayonne’s uneasy alliance. Kane balances on a razor’s edge to protect his bar, power, life, and family, and Bayonne hustles to keep another lonely man from being strangled.