Crime Noir

Two men, each unaware of the other, share a common family secret: They were sold for adoption by their American father shortly after their births in the Philippines. Three alternating stories interweave the experiences of father Andrew Breszky and the two sons who try to connect and piece together the puzzle of their reckless, impulsive father. One lives in New York and the other grows up in the south of France, later traveling all over Asia as a documentary filmmaker. Both will discover that their relationships somehow echo that of the young man whose history eludes them.

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.

In 1930, young Archie Goodwin comes to New York City hoping for a bit of excitement. In his third week working as a night watchman, he stops two burglars in their tracks - with a pair of hot lead slugs. Dismissed from his job for being “trigger-happy”, he parlays his newfound notoriety into a job as a detective’s assistant, helping honest sleuth Del Bascom solve cases like the Morningside Piano Heist, the Rive Gauche Art Gallery Swindle, and the Sumner-Hayes Burglary. But it’s the kidnapping of Tommie Williamson that introduces Goodwin to the man who will change his life.

The year is 2008. Reza Malek’s life is modest but manageable - he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometimes lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men.

By all accounts, Carol and Roy Opgard are doing quite well for themselves. Or at least they are doing as well as can be expected in a small town like Os. Carl manages the area's swanky and successful spa, while Roy runs the local gas station and dreams of building it into an entire amusement park complete with a roller coaster. But then news breaks about a new highway that will bypass Os and leave the town cut off and isolated. Something has to be done about that, even if the methods need to be dirty. Fortunately, Roy and Carl have experience with dirty work.

Zack Walker a le cœur sur la main, une générosité quasi pathologique qui lui vaut d'être régulièrement dans le pétrin. Et son karma ne va pas s'améliorer : Trixie, sa charmante voisine, comptable le jour, dominatrice la nuit, a besoin d'aide pour empêcher le reporter Martin Benson de dévoiler la nature illégale de sa "profession". Zack, plus chevaleresque que jamais, est prêt à tout pour rendre service à son amie ; quitte à rogner sur la déontologie pour aller menacer son confrère...

Ex-Army criminal investigator Rachel Hatch is a drifter. No home. No commitments. Until her sister's drowning drags her back to the town she left 15 years ago. Convinced her sister's death was no accident, Hatch partners with the local sheriff, Dalton Savage, to uncover the truth. Every answer unlocks another question, and as the investigation begins to unravel, Hatch and Savage find their lives on the line. Hatch is forced to use her special set of skills - forged on the field of combat - to learn the truth about her sister and bring those responsible to justice.

Santana Sokolov might be the one person who ties together all the mysteries of Atlantica. Which will probably get her killed. The woman has a penchant for the ancient. When Santana is approached by two enemy factions looking for the same legendary item, she partners with old friend Dick Chambers to enter the wilderness and unlock the mystery.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends.

Following the success of Paris Noir, the Akashic Noir Series has expanded to include the famously diverse and sometimes controversial suburbs of this legendary city.

Bill Olsson, recently widowed, is desperate to provide for his daughter, Sally. Struggling to pay rent, he welcomes a lodger into their home: Karla, a law student and aspiring judge, who works as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Her clients are the Rytters, an incredibly wealthy couple who hide behind closed doors. The wife is ill and hasn’t left the house in months. The husband is controlling and obsessive. Is he just a worried husband, concerned for his wife’s health? Or is there something more sinister at play?

Cash and Sheriff Wheaton make for a strange partnership. He pulled her from her mother's wrecked car when she was three. He's kept an eye out for her ever since. It's a tough place to live - northern Minnesota along the Red River. Cash navigated through foster homes, and at 13 was working farms. She's tough as nails, five feet two inches, blue jeans, blue jean jacket, smokes Marlboros, drinks Bud Longnecks. Makes her living driving truck. Playing pool on the side.

In The Cold Six Thousand, James Ellroy's most ambitious and explosive novel yet, he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speedball through our most tumultuous time.

In recent decades, ostensibly to combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai’s underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspects. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch dispensed with dishing out this vigilante justice, has a difficult choice: Should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?

Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík. In early August, the girl disappears without a trace. Time passes, and the mystery becomes Iceland‘s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there? Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lára's case.

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.

Murder isn’t uncommon in a big city, but when young women start turning up dead next to mysterious symbols painted in their blood, the police turn to Alex Lockerby to find the killer. Unfortunately, the bloody symbols aren’t any form of magic Alex knows, leaving him precious little to work with and a nagging feeling that he’d better stop this madman before he finishes whatever spell he’s attempting.

Insomniaques, passez votre chemin. Dix ans que le privé Win Lockwood attend ce moment. Dix ans qu'il tente de retrouver la trace de deux enfants kidnappés. Et l'un d'eux est là, devant lui, dans cette ruelle malfamée de Londres. Win touche au but. Le happy end est proche. Mais le garçon lui échappe. Retour à la case départ. Le moment est venu pour Win d'appeler du renfort : son associé, son meilleur ami, le détective Myron Bolitar.

The island city-state of Singapore harbors unique customs and traditions largely unknown to the West. A booming economy and embrace of conformity overshadow its gambling dens, red-light districts, and a collective passion for ghostly and gory tales. Now, in Singapore Noir, some of its best contemporary authors delve into its seedy side.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. In Hong Kong Noir, 14 of the city’s finest authors explore the dark heart of the Pearl of the Orient in haunting stories of depravity and despair.