Noir Fiction

Out in the far reaches of Los Angeles County, where the glamor of Hollywood fades into the long empty of the desert, two unlicensed private detectives are about to face a case that is larger and more complicated than any they’ve faced before. A ghost-hunting influencer disappears in the middle of a live stream. A beekeeper is murdered after telling his friends that he has come across a dangerous secret.

Hoping to put behind him tragedy in his professional life and to resolve the turmoil in his personal life, Reykjavik police officer Guðgeir Fransson has moved as far away from home as he can, marking time in a dead-end job in a small town in eastern Iceland.

On the lost colony planet of Croatoan, the job of the police force is to keep the peace, even if it means turning a blind eye to all varieties of crimes. DCI Lutero Cade knows how to play the game – but when it comes to murder, he is more than willing to rock the boat. Now, with a serial killer on the loose, Cade knows he’s about to do a whole lot of boat rocking.

Eddie Ankin is back in a white-knuckle thriller that thrusts you into the dark corners of Hollywood—and doesn’t let you breathe until the final page.” After a shootout in Beverly Hills nearly claims the life of an Academy Award–winning actress, ex-Marine and Hollywood stuntman Eddie Ankin is thrust into a dangerous mystery that stretches from the Sunset Strip to Lompoc Federal Penitentiary. As he struggles to protect a woman whose star power can’t shield her from a lethal predator, Eddie soon discovers the threats aren’t just on the streets—they’re embedded in a system that ...

From the Author: Don’t read this if you can’t handle finishing a book in one sitting, horrific crime scenes, or questions that mess with your morals. BUT The Izard County Incubus is a rural mystery thriller packed with fast-paced action, brutally vivid crime scenes, and psychological mayhem dripping with vigilante justice. Beta Readers Say: “It’s not as weird as you think!” and “How do you come up with this stuff?” Synopsis: Detective Dakota Diaz and Hilrey Higgins are back to investigate a twisted crime wave in the Arkansas Ozarks. A family is butchered, and one girl survives...

Ray Lilly is living on borrowed time. He's the driver for Annalise Powliss, a high-ranking member of the Twenty Palace Society, a group of sorcerers devoted to hunting down and executing rogue magicians. But because Ray betrayed her once, Annalise is looking for an excuse to kill him - or let someone else do the job. Unfortunately for both of them, Annalise's next mission goes wrong, leaving her critically injured. With the little magic he controls, Ray must complete her assignment alone.

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.

Lou Rosen and Molly Hatch are unlicensed private detectives, scraping by on whatever cases they can get from their little office on the fringes of LA County. Reeling from a devastating betrayal and a major earthquake, this season finds Lou and Molly trying to rebuild their lives and evaluate their futures. But those futures might not be as long as they hope.

When Detective Maya Thorne is summoned back to Warragulla—the rural Australian hometown she swore never to revisit—she expects a routine investigation. Skeletal remains have been discovered in a drought-exposed creek bed at Billabong Station, likely from the bushfires that ravaged the region three years ago. But as the parched earth gives up its secrets, Maya finds herself excavating more than just bones. The remains belong to Cameron Lockhart, a local landowner who disappeared during the fires, and someone put a bullet in his head before burying him where the flames would erase the ...

William’s father is a beloved opera singer in Stockholm, charismatic and unpredictable. Raised in the shadow of his father’s addictions—women, drink, and cruelty—he knows the man’s dark side. William believes he’s found the light when he falls in love with a fellow university student, a young woman named Ebba. But his father’s hold on his life is not so easily broken. Even in death.

When a skeleton is discovered half-buried in a construction site outside of ReykjavIk, Inspector Erlendur finds himself knee-deep in both a crime scene and an archeological dig. Bone by bone, the body is unearthed, and the brutalizing history of a family who lived near the building site comes to light along with it. Was the skeleton a man or a woman, a victim or a killer, and is this a simple case of murder or a long-concealed act of justice?

Mirror, mirror on the wall … Jealousy doesn’t exist in Darby Forester’s vocabulary. Until Caroline, an equally stunning woman, crashes Darby’s perfect fortieth birthday party and reduces her seemingly perfect husband into a horny adolescent in front of the well-wishers. THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET WORSE. Shortly after the last guest leaves, Caroline calls Wyatt. Someone is trying to break into her house—where she’s alone and terrified. Wyatt rides off to the rescue. Darby feels the first brush of fear. Her father was a serial adulterer, abusing her and her sickly mother. Infidelity ...

From the Author: This mystery demands your focus to crack the killer’s code, its graphic crime scenes aren’t for the squeamish, and you might burn through it in a single night. BUT That’s what makes it unputdownable: you’ll be glued to a puzzle that’s yours to solve, haunted by characters who feel like real people, and wrestling with a question that hits hard—would you take justice into your own hands? Readers call it: "A Top notch detective mystery, vibes of Dexter intertwine with a solid, and truly gruesome, vigilante serial killer at large." (5 Stars), and even the lowest ...

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

They call him el Carnicero—the Butcher. He is the most powerful drug lord on the planet, and when the city of New York incurs his wrath, he utters a single word: “¡Venganza!” With military precision, he strafes Central Park with 4,000 pounds of cocaine, killing hundreds of innocent people enjoying a summer afternoon.

She married for money. She plotted for more. But the insurance policy had other ideas... Chantel Fletcher’s specialty is husbands. Her problem is cash. When her third husband turns out to be worth $2.5 million dead, she makes the leap from trophy wife to cold-blooded conspirator. With a mountain of debt and a dangerous past catching up to her, Chantel enlists her teenage daughter and a dim-witted ex-con to help pull the trigger on the perfect murder. But this is St. Isidore—a town that chews up second chances and spits out twisted endings. And when the cops come knocking, Chantel ...

The only author to win the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel two years in a row, Arnaldur Indridason has sold more than five million copies of his novels in more than 25 countries. A detective whose inner turmoil threatens to consume him, Erlendur Sveinsson is charged with investigating the death of an Asian boy—and confronting forces colder than Iceland’s frigid clime.

Bo Luxton has it all - a loving family, a beautiful home in the Lake District and a clutch of best-selling books to her name. Enter Alice Dark, an aspiring writer who is drifting through life, with a series of dead-end jobs and a freeloading boyfriend. When they meet at a writers' retreat, the chemistry is instant, and a sinister relationship develops.... Or does it?

Wes Cooper was dead. Then he wasn't-though he's not exactly alive, either. As an immortal not-ghost, he can transition between this world and the otherplane, which makes him the perfect thief for hire. For 70 years he's made a "living" returning items to their rightful owners, seeing his fair share of the bizarre in the process. But he's never witnessed murder. Until now.

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).