Noir Mystery Thriller

When Darl Moody went hunting after a monster buck he's chased for years, he never expected he'd accidentally shoot a man digging ginseng. Worse yet, he's killed a Brewer, a family notorious for vengeance and violence. With nowhere to turn, Darl calls on the help of the only man he knows will answer, his best friend, Calvin Hooper. But when Dwayne Brewer comes looking for his missing brother and stumbles onto a blood trail leading straight back to Darl and Calvin, a nightmare of revenge rips apart their world.

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

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.

Written years before Jordan Harper’s breakout success, Everybody Knows, this stirring and brutal bildungsroman tells the story of young Luke Crosswhite, who after years apart from his criminal family returns to their flock deep in the California desert. Luke’s father is serving time for a brutal murder that Luke himself witnessed; now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family’s various criminal enterprises.

Hot on the heels of Best Cases of the Continental Op comes Honest Gain: Dicey Cases of the Continental Op, another original compilation from Skyboat Media. The Continental Op is back on the case, tracking down thieves and murderers from the steep streets of San Francisco to the rough and tumble Wild West in Arizona. These six stories featuring the Continental Op show that this private eye is not afraid to get his hands dirty in order to get the job done right, or get himself hurt in the process.

Nightmare Alley is American author William Lindsay Gresham’s first and best-known work. The novel - most admired by noir fiction fans - was published in 1946, adapted into a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power and subsequently printed as a graphic novel by Spain Rodriquez. During the 1940s Gresham worked as an editor for a genuine crime pulp magazine in New York, during which period he wrote this book; characters range from hustlers to Machiavellian femme fatales in a dark world of show business.

Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend, Christmas Black, left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. But Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy is immersed in a sea of problems.

Before he was an assassin, David Rivers was a patriot. One year after the 9/11 attacks, he serves as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan. His patrol enters the Shigal Valley, a desolate place with a fearsome reputation for enemy fighters - a reputation that David is about to experience firsthand. As the first shots ring out over the valley, David must decide between military orders and gut instinct...and in the process, discover a hidden truth about himself.

His name is Dex. He's huge, terrifying, and has an edge to him that I shouldn't find intriguing, but I do. He's also the enforcer to a rival family, and my current prison guard. Dex wants me. I can see it in his eyes. Feel it in his innocent touch. He could break me with ease. But he hasn't. Instead, he's threatened to cut off any hand that dares to try. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he cares about me. But blood means everything in this world, and we're on opposite sides of a war. After all, I'm the Romano mafia princess. He's nothing but an Allegretti.

The perfect baby is only an appointment away… It’s the year 2053, when wealthy couples visit designer-baby companies to create the perfect child. Ex-cop Finnegan Cooper is hired to investigate the unexplained failure of one couple’s embryos at Melgen, the world’s premier designer-baby consultancy. When his client dies the next day in a suspicious car accident, Finn fears the client’s widow will be the next target. Determined to save her, Finn plunges into the shadowy world of genetic engineering, digging into an activist group opposed to genetic modification, an aggressive rival ...

A body is spotted bobbing in the tide close to the shore at Canvey Island Marina. But this doesn't look like a typical drowning... When Inspector Hogarth and DS Palmer are called to the scene, they discover that the body is wearing ‘concrete boots.' Jim Maddox was a local estate agent who earned good money by helping the town’s less reputable characters. Questions soon mount. Was Maddox murdered in a gangland execution? Or is Hogarth looking at signs of something else?As Hogarth investigates, the body count rises, and his world falls apart. And all the while, the Shadows are closing in....

After a messy divorce, attractive young mother Sonia is struggling to provide for herself and keep custody of her son. With her back to the wall, she resorts to smuggling cocaine into Iceland and finds herself caught up in a ruthless criminal world. As she desperately looks for a way out of trouble, she must pit her wits against her nemesis, Bragi, a customs officer whose years of experience frustrate her new and evermore daring strategies.

Selena, My Savior, which can be called an irreverent cross between The Maltese Falcon and Spinal Tap, features eccentric characters, razor sharp dialog, subversively dark humor, and grotesque predicaments that satirize everything from rock stars to occult societies, politicians, film producers, and even serial killer culture itself. The reluctant star of the human comedy – idealistic, gorgeous, and repressed Patricia Rodgers (a desperately poor writer on what she calls “Unpopular Culture”) – is forced by events to become madder, badder and, for a terrifying and soul-crushingly ...

When Sam Spade gets drawn into the Maltese Falcon case, we know what to expect: straight talk, hard questions, no favors, and no way for anyone to get underneath the protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bitch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer's wife, Iva; that his tomboyish secretary, Effie Perine, is the only innocent in his life. What we don't know is how Spade became who he is. Spade & Archer completes the picture.

Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila's Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources, and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf. In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands.

LOS ANGELES, 1932: Lulu Wong, star of the silver screen and the pride of Chinatown, has a face known to practically everyone, especially the Chow sisters—May, Gemma, and Peony—Lulu’s former classmates and neighbors. So the girls instantly know it’s Lulu when they discover a body one morning in an out-of-the-way stable, far from the Beverly Hills home where she lived after her fame skyrocketed. The sisters suspect Lulu’s death is the result of foul play, but the police don’t seem motivated to investigate.

Cassandra Tipp is dead...or is she? After all, the notorious recluse and eccentric best-selling novelist has always been prone to flights of fancy - everyone in town remembers the shocking events leading up to Cassie's infamous trial (she may have been acquitted, but the insanity defense only stretches so far). Cassandra Tipp has left behind no body - just her massive fortune and one final manuscript. Then again, there are enough bodies in her past.

Rick Barron, a former Beverly Hills cop, has risen to head of production of Centurion Pictures, and he's at the top of his game. But tensions are high in Hollywood, and when Rick's friend Sidney Brooks, a successful screenwriter, receives a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, Rick isn't surprised. The witch hunt is spreading, and those under investigation are Rick's closest friends - even his wife, the glamorous starlet Glenna Gleason.

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations the Burroughs clan has made their home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton takes the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can.

She owns the coffee shop. He’s undercover. They’re both keeping deadly secrets. Mary Eileen Sullivan serves espresso with a smile and murder with chilling precision. Her past is soaked in betrayal—an ex-husband she hated, a lover she couldn’t trust—and now she’s cleaning up the mess, one body at a time. Then he walks in. The man with the easy charm, the quiet eyes—and the badge he’s hiding under his coat. He’s here to catch a killer. He never expected to fall for her. But in St. Isidore, secrets don’t stay buried for long. Two local reporters, Joy and Amanda, are digging...