Noir Mystery Thriller Suspense

Raymond Chandler's The Curtain is a quintessential piece of noir fiction, showcasing the masterful storytelling that defines his legacy. This gripping short story plunges readers into a world of deceit, betrayal, and moral ambiguity, set against the seedy underbelly of 1930s Los Angeles. The tale follows a sharp-witted private detective who takes on a case involving a seemingly straightforward domestic dispute. However, as he digs deeper, he discovers layers of lies, hidden motives, and a trail of danger that leads to a shocking revelation.

Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara hit it off in prison, where they were both doing time for grand theft auto. Now that they're out, they're joining forces for one big score. The plan is to kidnap the wife of a wealthy Detroit developer and hold her for ransom. But they didn't figure the lowlife husband wouldn't want his lady back. So it's time for Plan B and the opportunity to make a real killing - with the unlikely help of a beautiful, ticked-off housewife who's hungry for a large helping of sweet revenge.

Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career—he’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily.

Akashic Books’ acclaimed series of original noir anthologies has set a high standard for portraying cities and their neighborhoods in all their dark and violent splendor. Now, Mexico City Noir surpasses that standard with phantasmagorical tales of double-dealing, corruption, violence and self-delusion.... This collection is such a varied literary feast.

On a sweltering summer afternoon, newspaper tycoon Richard Jewell—known to his many enemies as Diamond Dick—is discovered with his head blown off by a shotgun blast. But is it suicide or murder? For help with the investigation, Detective Inspector Hackett calls in his old friend Quirke, who has unusual access to Dublin's elite. Jewell's coolly elegant French wife, Françoise, seems less than shocked by her husband's death. But Dannie, Jewell's high-strung sister, is devastated, and Quirke is surprised to learn that in her grief she has turned to an unexpected friend.

Brand-new stories by: Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.

Jake Leonard has more than his share of trouble. He’s close to 40 now and still suffers from bipolar disorder and the painful memories of the psychotic episodes that derailed his life and sent him behind bars. He lives in the rural South, where he spends his days breaking horses and his nights training dogs in solitude. His 19-year-old girlfriend Nikki is the daughter of the sheriff, and she’s just getting worse with drugs, alcohol, and satanic metal.

When crime-fighting attorney Albert Patterson is gunned down in a Phenix City, Alabama, alley in the spring of 1954, the entire town seems to pause for just a moment—and when it starts up again, there is something different about it. A small group of men meet and decide they have had enough, but what that means and where it will take them is something they could not have foreseen.

Everyone knows Lily Atwood—and that may be her biggest problem. The beloved television reporter has it all—fame, fortune, Emmys, an adorable seven-year-old daughter, and the hashtag her loving fans created: #PerfectLily. To keep it, all she has to do is protect one life-changing secret.

It’s Midsummer’s Eve, the celebration of the longest day of the year, and on Sandhamn it’s the longest party of the year. But the fun comes to a dead halt when a young reveler is murdered, a teenage girl is found drugged and dazed on the beach, and other young women vanish. So far, what links the victims is a mystery. For Nora Linde and her new boyfriend, Jonas Sköld, the crimes are personal: one of the missing girls is Wilma, Jonas’s daughter. And her disappearance could test Nora and Jonas’s relationship in ways they never expected.

Grace had never been more terrified...the pain was relentless. Nothing in her life prepared her for this. She desperately needed somewhere safe...someplace she could hide. Someone she could trust with her life. It was dark...and getting darker. Ronan Hendricks didn’t recognize her voice. Not family...not friends. Probably not an enemy. But he didn’t need the years he’d spent as a detective to recognize what he did hear... Fear. In a desperate moment of hope, a single number saved her life. Then a complete stranger opened his home offering safety yet Grace knew danger surrounded them.....

Drugs, smuggling, big money and political intrigue in Iceland rally with love, passion, murder and betrayal until the winner takes all...in the masterful, explosive conclusion to the award-winning Reykjavík Noir trilogy. The prison doors slam shut behind Agla when her sentence ends, but her lover Sonja is not there to meet her. As a group of foreign businessmen tries to draw Agla into an ingenious fraud that stretches from Iceland around the world, Agla and her former nemesis María find the stakes being raised at a terrifying speed.

An intense psychological thriller for fans of I Am Watching You, The Luckiest Girl Alive, and All the Missing Girls. Two missing girls. Thirteen years apart. Olivia Shaw has been missing since last Tuesday. She was last seen outside the entrance of her elementary school in Hunts Point wearing a white spring jacket, blue jeans, and pink boots. I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to 13 years ago.

Desperate to complete the last chapter of his law thesis on workplace dynamics for women to secure his tenure, Professor Stanley Hopkins stumbles on an old close college friend, Donald Johansson, who has plenty of female employees. The problem is that Donald is a porn video king. Taking his wife to California’s seedy city of Burbank to help with taping interviews, Stanley realizes he is in way over his head the moment a leading porn star is brutally killed in Donald’s office during a party.

Come sit on the veranda and pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, fortified with a slug of bourbon. Put your feet up and enjoy these stories set in Atlanta, a city sewn from the ashes, where everything that grows is both fertilized and corrupted by the past.

Bombay's communal riots of 1992 - in which Hindus were alleged to be the primary perpetrators - were followed by retaliatory bomb blasts in 1993, masterminded by the Muslim-dominated underworld. Over a thousand citizens lost their lives in these internecine bouts of violence and thousands more became refugees in their own city. In a matter of months, Bombay ceased to be the cosmopolitan, wholesome, and middle-class bastion it had been for decades.

There is only one rule for Eva Santella: Kill or be killed. Former assassin and mafia boss Eva Lucia Santella has lost everything she’s ever cared about, but is still attempting to carve out a new life for herself back in Italy as a modern day Robin Hood, devoted to taking down those who prey on the innocent. Eva Santella is training an army of female assassins to help her do it. When one of her top lieutenants comes under attack, Eva vows revenge. But when her niece Gia Santella—unexpectedly shows up in Italy, Eva finds that she has more to lose than she ever dreamed possible. She’d ...

Brand-new stories by: Daniel Woodrell, Matthew Eck, Catherine Browder, Nancy Pickard, John Lutz, J. Malcolm Garcia, Kevin Prufer, Linda Rodriguez, Nadia Pflaum, Phong Nguyen, Andres Rodriguez, and others. Kansas City: where East and West collide, where naked ambition meets broken dreams, where blues and the night go together like rye whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. Yes, Kansas City is a surprising place of grit, gore, and betrayal, at least in the imaginations of our diverse lineup of contributors.

It’s been a year since Poppy’s husband, Jack, was brutally murdered during his morning run through Manhattan’s Riverside Park. In the immediate aftermath, Poppy spiraled into an oblivion of grief, disappearing for several days only to turn up ragged and confused wearing a tight red dress she didn’t recognize. What happened to Poppy during those lost days? And more importantly, what happened to Jack? The case was never solved, and Poppy has finally begun to move on. But those lost days have never stopped haunting her.

A psychopathic hacker and a technophobic FBI agent must team up to solve a high-profile murder committed with an autonomous car in this provocative tech-noir thriller. On a coastal highway in California, a self-driving SUV crashes and kills its lone occupant: the CEO of Asimov Automotive, one of the most prominent driverless vehicle manufacturers in the world. Suspecting foul play, the board of directors brings in whitehat hacker Isabella Cray to assist the investigation. Cray is a high-functioning psychopath, using her calm, detached nature to solve problems while restraining her darkest ...