Noir Anthology

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words "I would prefer not to".

From the pulpy pages of Black Mask Magazine in the 1920s and '30s, through the film noir era of the 1940s, to today, noir fiction has lured many a reader and movie-goer away from the light and into the dark underbelly of society. Names such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain; titles like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice...these have inhabited our collective consciousness for decades. Humanity, it seems, loves the dark. And within the dark, one figure stands out: that of the femme fatale.

He's touching the front of his coat, feeling the shape of the gun. Should have got rid of it. On any other night, any other job, he would. This isn't any other job. This, he intends, will be his last... It begins with two deaths: a money-man and a grass. Deaths that offer a unique opportunity to a man like Calum MacLean. A man who has finally had enough of killing. Meanwhile two of Glasgow's biggest criminal organisations are at quiet, deadly war with one another. And as Detective Michael Fisher knows, the biggest - and bloodiest - manoeuvres are yet to come...

A brilliant reporter, haunted by her husband's death....A disgraced cop, tangled in a web of lies....Two unlikely heroes, brought together by one unthinkable crime....

The social worker and the cop, an unlikely couple drawn together on a small, secluded Pacific Northwest island where nothing is as it seems. Protecting the innocent comes at a cost, and what seems to be a sleepy, quiet town is anything but. Includes The Trap, Above the Law, and The Stranger at the Door.

The O’Connells of Livingston, Montana, are not your typical family. Follow them on their journey to the dark and dangerous side of love in a series of romantic thrillers you won’t want to miss. Raised by a single mother after their father’s mysterious disappearance 18 years ago, the six grown siblings live in a small town with all kinds of hidden secrets, lies, and deception. This boxed set collection in The O’Connells series includes The Neighbor, The Third Call, and The Secret Husband.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Un goûteur professionnel écrit : un ancien client lui a imposé, sous la menace, un marché visant à tuer l'homme qui l'emploie. Pour éviter la mort, il ingérera un antidote avant le repas. Mais lorsque celui-ci a lieu, le goûteur professionnel apprend par son employeur que l'homme qui l'avait menacé est mort empoisonné.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Gilles et Claire se rendent en Auvergne, une première pour Gilles, anxieux de rencontrer ses beaux-parents. Ceux-ci sont adeptes de la nourriture très locale : ils produisent presque tout eux-mêmes et disposent d'un atelier dédié. Une nuit, Gilles a faim. En entendant des pas, il se cache dans une armoire et assiste à un spectacle étrange, puis dangereux.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Pascal travaille sur des fours industriels : il cuit des mugs avec des transparents pour les personnaliser. Quand la pièce n'est pas bien aérée, il a la bouche pâteuse et des vertiges et perd le sens du goût. Il cherche alors les causes de ces troubles.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Le goûteur officiel de " l'Unificateur des Nations ", qui règne sur la planète entière, vient de le voir s'effondrer, empoisonné. Personne d'autre n'est dans la pièce, il est le coupable idéal et est arrêté. Personne ne le croit innocent à l'exception d'un secrétaire d'Etat.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Sabine partage un grand repas, entourée de plusieurs connaissances. Les plats et les boissons s'enchaînent sans retenue, jusqu'à inspirer du mépris à Sabine, persuadée que l'assemblée qui se moque de sa pudeur en a après sa vertu. Sa tentative d'échapper à l'événement prend alors une tournure dramatique.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Raymond, après 20 ans de prison au Brésil, retrouve à Paris son ancien complice Cotentin. Ils préparent un plat brésilien, la feijoada, et discutent de leur passé criminel commun de braqueurs. Raymond, emprisonné car trahi par Abidjan, un autre de leurs anciens associés que Cotentin avait aidé, souhaite se venger.

Vous n'en ferez qu'une bouchée ! Joé est un colosse souffrant d'un retard mental. Le narrateur, son ami, l'inscrit dans à des combats et ensemble, ils vivent de l'argent des paris. Joé aime beaucoup Des souris et des hommes et ressemble au personnage Lennie, roman dont son ami lui cache qu'il finit mal. Lorsqu'un combat met en péril la vie de Joé, les deux amis choisissent de s'enfuir et de réaliser le rêve du colosse : voir la mer.

"Providence was founded in 1636 by a rogue named Roger Williams. Williams escaped here when Massachusetts was ready to deport him back to England. In the almost 400 years since, we've become infamous for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, including serving as home base for the Patriarca crime family for decades. My very own Uncle Eddie - I can hear Mama Rose screaming at me: 'He wasn't a blood relative! He was related through marriage!' - was gunned down in the Silver Lake section of town in 1964."

Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series. Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Willa Cather awards. The Los Angeles Times named Last Lullaby a Best Book of 2004, and it was also a USA Today Summer Pick and a finalist for a Southern California Booksellers Association 2004 award.

My favorite line in my favorite song about Dallas goes like this: Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes / A steel and concrete soul in a warm heart and love disguise... The narrator of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's perfect tune Dallas" is coming to town as a broke dreamer with the bright lights of the big city on his mind. He's just seen the Dallas cityscape through the window of his seat on a DC-9 at night. Is he just beginning his quest?

Brand-new stories by: G. M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcalá, Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta. Early Seattle was a hardscrabble seaport filled with merchant sailors, longshoremen, lumberjacks, rowdy saloons, and a rough-and-tumble police force not immune to corruption and graft.

From the introduction by Les Standiford: "The truth is that Miami, though naturally lovely, is a frontier town, perched on the border between the known and the rarely before experienced. The poet Richard Hugo once said that the natural place for the writer was on the edge, and 'edge' might well be the definitive word when it comes to this city... We are not only on the edge of the continent, we are to this country what New York was in Ellis Island's heyday, what the West Coast was in the middle of the 20th century.

Brand-new stories by: Thomas Adcock, Kevin Baker, Thomas Bentil, Lawrence Block, Jerome Charyn, Suzanne Chazin, Terrence Cheng, Ed Dee, Joanne Dobson, Robert Hughes, Marlon James, Sandra Kitt, Rita Laken, Miles Marshall Lewis, Pat Picciarelli, Abraham Rodriguez Jr., S.J. Rozan, Steven Torres, and Joe Wallace.

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.