Noir Fiction

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.

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.

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 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 ...

In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered, and the death of the unknown woman is covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two strange murders with an elusive connection to the fifth woman.

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

A Felix Nightwhisker Mystery – A charmingly gritty feline noir series packed with sharp claws, sharper wit, and shadowy secrets. Step into the whiskered world of Felix Nightwhisker, a hard-boiled feline detective with a knack for uncovering secrets others would rather keep buried. Set in the moody streets of Whisker City, where alley cats barter in whispers and the scent of treachery lingers behind every fish market and fencepost, Felix prowls the night to solve the cases no one else dares touch. Each mystery delivers a tightly-woven tale of suspense, unexpected humor, and unforgettable ...

Cleveland Noir joins Columbus Noir as the Akashic Noir series continues its tour of Ohio and navigates the dregs of the North Shore.

Jun Nakayama was a silent-film star in the early days of Hollywood. By 1964, he is living in complete obscurity, until a young writer, Nick Bellinger, tracks him down for an interview. When Bellinger reveals that he has written a screenplay with Nakayama in mind, Jun is intrigued by the possibility of returning to movies. But he begins to worry that someone might delve too deeply into the past and uncover the events that abruptly ended his career in 1922. Like the changing social and racial tides in California - and the unsolved murder of his favorite director.

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 ...

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 ...

These stories are inspired by real life experiences and include kinky sex, BDSM, bondage, discipline, dominance, submission and much much more! In Boss by Day, Sub by Night: Monica Ricci is a hard-working Italian businesswoman. To make her career a successful one, she’s had to hide away her submissive nature to be a dominant, ball-busting boss. When a new hire, Matthew, impresses her with his diligence and determination, she finds herself wondering if she can’t mix business with pleasure. To reward him for his hard work, she shows him a side of her that nobody else has ever seen, and ...

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).

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 ...

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?

Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King’s Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kinslow.

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...

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.

When poor little New Hampshire rich girl Mindy Hollis gets lost in Los Angeles, her big sister hires private detective Ed Traynor to find her. Traynor and Hollis's security chief, Jack McMahon, take off for Tinseltown to track down the aspiring actress - but they discover the only part she ever got was the one that killed her. Their hunt for her killers takes them from the bowels of Mexico City to the glitz of Los Angeles, north to the set of The Black Orchid in Vancouver, and then back again to Hollywood, where the angels are dying.