Noir Fiction

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his 16-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no".

Professor Claire Lane’s students are always close to her heart. When one disappears into fells and becks of the Lake District in Northwest England, she is not convinced the woman has gone to meditate on Scafell Pike. A talented and gifted writer, Bo Huan, a Chinese National follows her dream. Claire in desperation seeks help from her fiancé Lord Ralph McGinniss, known for his uncomplicated investigations as a Senior Detective at Scotland Yard. The Lake District is meant for walking and enjoying nature, not murder and international spying. Ralph and Claire join forces to solve a delicate ...

Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked all the rules out – and wrote seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate. But that was 30 years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days. Until Julia Hart, a brilliant, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: An author hiding from his past and an editor keen to understand it.

When wildlife photographer Ray Ingalls is murdered in the new owl-protection zone in rural White Rock, New Hampshire, Chief Sam Mason's number-one suspect is his archenemy Lucas Thorne. .... Until a mysterious stranger reveals that the victim was up to a lot more than just taking photographs of endangered owls. Suddenly it appears that a lot more people had motive to want Ray dead. Sam, Sergeant Jody Harris, and their K-9 Lucy now have a fresh batch of suspects, all of whom have secrets they don't want exposed. But when Sam's hopes of putting Thorne away for good dwindle, help comes in the form of an unlikely ally.

"Every Dying Hour hits every mark..." In the future, there is no need for sleep. Zentransa, a revolutionary pill, gives its users the ability to live a true 24 hour day...fully awake. Only a few can get the Z pill, however, and society revolves around those that do. Not everyone is happy about it. One Front for the People are terrorists hell-bent on rebalancing the world's economic and social scales by eliminating the pill that they consider to be a plague. Martin Aubrey is a former cop living with regret. His mistake in a firefight took the life of another officer. Now, he longs to wear ...

Tomás Cruz swore he would never be like his father, an abusive cocaine junkie whose gangland exploits are notorious throughout the underbelly of northern Argentina. When Samuel Cruz is sentenced to thirteen years in prison, he leaves a laundry list of unfinished cartel business. Seba, Tomás’s revered older brother, has no choice but to abandon his straight life and take over his father’s underworld debt. Now fifteen years has passed, Seba has been arrested, and the ruthless cartel boss is holding his wife and daughter as collateral—just in time for the holidays.

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.

Daniel Loveless and Charlotte McManus—aka Charlie—have been best friends since forever. Together, they’ve made it through everything from middle school dances to Daniel finding out he had a daughter, and they’re still thick as thieves. Faking an engagement, though? That’s… a lot.

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." ~ John Milton, Paradise Lost. Seattle, mid-1990s: She was meant to walk the earth unseen. Some call it covert, and most people weren't supposed to notice her. But Emi Rye came to Seattle to solve a murder that didn't actually happen. At least, according to Seattle PD. They claim her best friend came here to marry a man she met on the Internet. But instead of jumping into wedded bliss, Julia took a dive off the bridge. The cops put it down as the lovesick suicide of a delusional stalker. Emi doesn't...

On the day Stockholm police officer Hanna Ahlander’s personal and professional lives crash, she takes refuge at her sister’s lodge in the Swedish ski resort paradise of Åre. But it’s a brief comfort. The entire village is shaken by the sudden vanishing of a local teenage girl. Hanna can’t help but investigate, and while searching for the missing person, she lands a job with the local police department. There she joins forces with Detective Inspector Daniel Lindskog, who has been tasked with finding the girl. Their only lead: a scarf in the snow.

Two years have passed since the events of the bestselling Christine Falls, and much has changed for Quirke, the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. His beloved Sarah is dead, the Judge lies in a convent hospital paralyzed by a devastating stroke, and Phoebe, Quirke's long-denied daughter, has grown increasingly withdrawn and isolated. With much to regret from his last inquisitive foray, Quirke ought to know better than to let his curiosity get the best of him.

When Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives in deeper herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined.

Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in the fates of the other passengers and drawn into a web of espionage, murder and lies.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying? Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny—in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce—and immediately stopped speaking.

A victim killed with a single, precise stab to the heart appears at first glance to be a robbery gone wrong. A caring, upstanding social worker lost to a senseless act of violence. But for Detective Kim Stone, something doesn't add up. When a local drug addict is found murdered with an identical wound, Kim knows instinctively that she is dealing with the same killer. But with nothing to link the two victims except the cold, calculated nature of their death, this could be her most difficult case yet.

Lieutenant Ethan Hendricks’ greatest nightmare just also happened to be his grandfather’s newest business venture. Logan Hendricks is thrilled about his brand new detective agency’s first case, but things weren’t turning out the way they were supposed to, including the attempted murder of one of his brand new employees. But he figures their next case, which involves finding a missing sister, should go a lot smoother. How dangerous could it be? Ethan Hendricks wasn’t quite as confident about his grandfather’s new hobby, or that the supposedly straight-forward case of a missing ...

It is deep winter, and the darkness is unending. A private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished, and Charlie Parker is assigned to track him down. Parker's employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary investigator - he is obsessively tracking a series of homicides and disappearances, each linked to reports of hauntings.

Few know the city of Los Angeles the way number one best-selling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure LA noir - and vintage Kellerman.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

It’s a slow, steamy summer in New Orleans’ French Quarter, but Franki Amato is busy planning her bridal shower—that is, until a hit-and-run outside a coffee shop gets her PI senses percolating. The victim is linked to crimes at a fancy society wedding in a haunted hotel where Franki’s fiancé’s family is staying. As for the java joint, it’s straight out of a hardboiled detective movie, and there’s something hinky about its walnut liqueur coffee.