Noir Fiction

Within the Great Sphere, Captain Aventurine Bana finds herself the centerpoint in a vast conspiracy. A struggling transporter on the edges of society, ‘Gem’ Bana is given a fantastic opportunity: take the estranged son of a powerful businessman around the Sphere, and receive a beautiful new ship in exchange. Quickly caught in a tangle of intrigue, danger, and the looming threat of some outside puppeteer, Bana must navigate the Great Sphere with dry wit, abject terror, and a cool head. Dodging bounties, assassins, and the reach of a Sphere-wide corporation, all she wanted was a good book...

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.

From USA Today bestselling author, Uvi Poznansky, comes a gripping techno-thriller, part of a multi-author series tied together by an interlocking cast of characters, all centered around the fantastic new promise of high technology and the endless possibilities for crime that technology offers, in a world where getting away with murder can be not only plausible, but easy…if you just know how. Haunted by finding the body of a beautiful dancer, Michael recreates the murder in virtual reality. Can he solve the mystery, before the man who killed Lace turns on the woman he loves? Suffering ...

Sam Monroe thought his steamy love affair with Manhattan socialite Laura Nielson was dead and buried, but when she didn’t show up after unexpectedly calling him late at night and asking to meet, he decides to investigate. He finds her naked on her penthouse balcony, strangled, his dog tags wrapped around her neck. With a bull’s-eye on his back as the prime suspect, Sam begins a search for the killer that reveals Laura’s involvement with several men, some with ties to a well-known crime family.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends.

After narrowly escaping with his life at the hands of a murderous Hollywood pimp, detective Happy Doll, bullet-ridden but healing, has landed on a remote Mexican beach. In a humble shack and with his dog for company, Doll settles into a peaceful idyll of Buddhist study. But then trouble, as it always does, comes to paradise. Doll is the witness to a murder for which he is framed, and now, with an expired passport and the Mexican authorities on his tail, he must sneak across the border back to L.A. by any means necessary, with the goal of bringing the true murderer to justice.

They thought they were safe. They were wrong. The murder of a young prostitute and a baby found abandoned on the same winter night signals the start of a disturbing investigation for Detective Kim Stone - one which brings her face to face with someone from her own horrific childhood. As more sex workers are murdered in quick succession, each death more violent than the last, Kim and her team realize that the initial killing was no one-off frenzied attack, but a twisted serial killer preying on the vulnerable.

Starting a new life in Snowdonia was always DI Ruth Hunter's dream. Until a twisted killer turned it into her worst nightmare. Detective Inspector Ruth Hunter lives with the pain of her partner’s mysterious and unsolved disappearance. About to hit 50, the veteran police officer trades in the crime-ridden streets of London for a more peaceful life in rural North Wales. But Ruth has barely settled into her new position in North Wales Police, when the body of a brutally murdered woman is discovered...with strange symbols carved into her skin.

Ten years have passed since Joe Coughlin's enemies killed his wife and destroyed his empire, and much has changed. Prohibition is dead, the world is at war again, and Joe's son, Tomas, is growing up. Now the former crime kingpin works as a consigliore to the Bartolo crime family, traveling between Tampa and Cuba, his wife's homeland.

In The Lady in the Lake, hard-boiled crime-fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives - one a rich man's and one a poor man's - who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo, and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Private Investigator James Benoit Heatley, "Heat" to those few he calls friends, has a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges. Heat's reputation for doing what he believes is just is well deserved, even if his brand of justice happens to be illegal. His reputation for not taking women as clients is equally well deserved. Some say there is a woman to blame and they would be right to do so. It is with great reluctance that Heat takes the case of a wife desperate to find her kidnapped husband, a case that forces Heat to confront his bitter past. Murder, kidnapping, and broken hearts...

In an unnamed city slick with rain, Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at an imperious detective agency. His job: writing reports on cases solved by the palindromic Detective Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing and his supervisor is murdered, Unwin is promoted to detective, a rank for which he is woefully unprepared. His only guidance comes from his sleepy new assistant and the pithy yet profound Manual of Detection.

It is an obsession that has haunted Nick Malick for seven years - to avenge the murder of his young son. In his gut Malick knows who did it. But the psychopath is in prison for another crime, scheduled to be released in a year. All Malick has to do is wait...and survive.

June Kato's burgeoning career as LA's top neurosurgeon gets turned upside down when she finds a dead body in her garden. Calling the cops brings trouble and it isn't long before she ends up on their suspect list. When a second murder victim is discovered too close to home, June is on the run--not just from the culprit but to put an end to the madness before anyone else is slaughtered. Will June become the next victim as she goes on a thrill ride through the streets of LA, until she comes face to face with the murderer?

A homecoming should be a happy event. Not an opportunity for betrayal. For Inspector Thomas Sullivan, a man who trusts few people, returning home only to find those he calls friends have kept dark secrets from him, accused him of multiple murders, and are plotting against him is an act of betrayal. Worst of all, one of those people is his partner and girlfriend, Sarah. Sully's universe has been turned upside down in this tale of betrayal, murder, and political intrigue in Capital City on the frozen world of Beta Prime. On the run, alone, and with a price on his head, can Sully survive long ...

Years after he's last heard from his former partner, a small-time con artist is offered the opportunity for the biggest score of his career. The target? One of the most dangerous drug-and-gun-runners in the desert southwest. The wreckage of Jake and Rose's long-ago business partnership - not to mention their romantic one - is cause for concern to Jake, but who in his right mind would turn down the opportunity to split an easy hundred grand? Especially when only a few days' work is required? It's a simple decision, but almost immediately, things begin to go sideways. Soon the score that ...

For Paris Minton, a knock on his door is often the first sign of trouble. With family like Useless, who needs enemies? Yet trouble always finds an open window, and when Useless' mother, Three Hearts, shows up to look for her son, Paris has no choice but to track down his wayward cousin.

The Assistant Registrar Emily Price, from the London Archives commits a crime of passion. Or is it? A man falls from the balcony. Was he pushed? And what is Emily Price hiding? Chief Police Inspector Ralph McGinniss from Scotland Yard investigates. He calls in his newly appointed assistant for help. Claire Lane is a Professor of Mathematics at London’s prestigious St Anne's University. Her speciality-scientific study of probability. In other words, the likelihood that an event will reoccur. She takes on the challenge until she discovers there is more to this story. A birth certificate ...

Thousands of girls go missing every year in Las Vegas. Taken. Bought and sold. Or worse. These lost girls summon FBI Profiler Violet Darger to Sin City. There are fresh dead to sort through - two bodies burned beyond recognition in the trunk of a sedan - and there’s reason to believe there are missing girls waiting to be saved. Rumors swirl that a legendary killer is responsible for these crimes: an escaped prisoner with a personal grudge against Darger. One who disappeared for 20 years. If Darger finds the killer in time, the girls will live. If not...

Los Angeles is burning. During one of the hottest summers the city has ever seen, someone is murdering mages with fires that burn when they shouldn't, that don't stop when they should. Necromancer Eric Carter is being framed for the killings and hunted by his own people. To Carter, everything points to the god Quetzalcoatl coming after him, after he defied the mad wind god in the Aztec land of the dead. But too many things aren't adding up, and Carter knows there's more going on.