Noir City

Dark City expands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life.

Film noir was the dark side of the movies’ happily-ever-after mythology. Sinister and sexy, it forged a new icon: the tough, independent dame. Determined, desirable, dangerous when cornered, she could handle trouble—or deal out some of her own. If you thought these women were something special onscreen, wait until you meet the genuine articles. In Dark City Dames, acclaimed film historian Eddie Muller takes listeners into the world of six women who made a lasting impression in this cinematic terrain.

Midcentury Los Angeles: A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America", a land of sunshine and orange groves, Midwestern values, and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men - one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief - each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.

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.

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.

Gold Dagger Award winner Arnaldur Indridason’s novels featuring Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson became international sensations on their way to selling millions of copies worldwide. The debut of morose detective Sveinsson finds the inspector and his team delving into the murder of a retiree with horrifying secrets.

Comprising two distinct short novels - Monroe's Nightmare in Paradise and Bad Luck Shadow from critically acclaimed Victor McGlothin - Borrow Trouble is a hot double-feature that perfectly showcases each author's unique style.

When you’re in trouble, you call 911. When cops are in trouble, they call Nick Ryan. Every cop in the city knows his name, but no one says it out loud. In fact, they don’t talk about him at all. He doesn’t wear a uniform, but he is the most powerful cop in New York. Nick Ryan can find a criminal who’s vanished. Or he can make a key witness disappear. He has cars, safe houses, money, and weapons hidden all over the city.

All around Albuquerque, New Mexico, young women are going missing, seemingly vanished into thin air. With no link between the victims, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is quickly plunged into a horrifying case with no obvious clues. And when Jersey Andrews, the best friend of Alyssa's teenage daughter, Holly, joins the list of vanished girls, the case becomes personal. But this investigation will lead Alyssa and partner Cord into the most sinister depths of humanity; an evil place where life is expendable and where the depraved can fulfill their darkest desires - if they have the money.

Brand-new stories from David Housewright, Steve Thayer, Judith Guest, Mary Logue, Bruce Rubenstein, K.J. Erickson, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, Brad Zellar, Mary Sharratt, Pete Hautman, Larry Millett, Quinton Skinner, Gary Bush, and Chris Everheart.

Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and Marianne Smalls is involved in an illicit affair with the shady Jonas Schmitt. Both cases converge when Dora Urban, Rudolf's beautiful and mysterious half-sister, and Lamont Smalls, Marianne's suspicious husband, hire Jack Mitchell, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private investigator. Dora wants Jack to uncover what happened to her brother, while Lamont seeks proof of his wife's infidelity. But Dora is a vampire, in a city teeming with creatures of the night. As Jack dives deeper, he discovers that both cases are linked to vepratoga.

Jake Fox, a watchmaker turned vigilante, struggles to survive the means streets of a city occupied by a foreign power. Accused of a murder he didn’t commit. He must find the killer or suffer a fate worse than death. A noir, locked room mystery in an unique gaslamp fantasy setting, Memories in the City tells the story of one man as he struggles with ghosts from his past.

Humans have always been fascinated by darkness. Especially the darkness of a city at night, when the black sky is made ever more inky by the pools of illumination dropped under streetlights. Whether the mean streets be in an alternate past charmed with dark magic or the dirty alleyways of futuristic crowded space stations, the city—and its darkened streets—will always fascinate us. Here then, an anthology of all new stories of science fiction and fantasy with a hardboiled noir twist that acknowledge that the city is a living, breathing entity...and it isn’t always on our side.

On a chilly Monday morning in 1935, a young maid opened the garage door of a Southern California seaside villa onto a grim scene. Her employer, a popular motion picture comedienne, lay dead in the front seat of her expensive automobile. Within hours, the news of Thelma Todd’s death was making headlines throughout the nation. Was it murder, suicide, or accident? Cast against the background of Hollywood and Los Angeles, the film industry and the growing metropolis, her death baffled both the public and the investigating authorities. After numerous attempts to solve the mystery over the last...

Year 2142: Earth is 30 years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching deification. But now, Akira feels her safety is under threat, so after years without contact, she reaches out to her former head of security, who has since become a police detective.

It's not every afternoon that an enigmatic, comely blonde named Stilton (like the cheese) walks into the scruffy gin joint where Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin tends bar. It's love at first sight, but before Sammy can make his move, an air force general named Remy arrives with some urgent business. 'Cause when you need something done, Sammy is the guy to go to; he's got the connections on the street.

There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank's days of solving crimes are over...until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband.

When two men meet in the gym - the ex-boxer Billy Tully and the novice Ernie Munger - their brief sparring session sets into motion their hidden fates, initiating young Munger into the "company of men" and luring Tully back into training. Fat City tells of their anxieties and hopes, their loves and losses, and the stubborn determination of their manager, Ruben Luna, who knows that even the most promising kid is likely to fall prey to some weakness.

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.

It is an obsession that has haunted Nick Malick for seven years - to avenge the murder of his young son. In his gut Malick knows who did it. But the psychopath is in prison for another crime, scheduled to be released in a year. All Malick has to do is wait...and survive.