Noir Fiction

In a red brick house on a tree-lined street, DC homicide detective Alex Blum stares at the bullet-pocked body of Chris Doyle. As he roots around for evidence, he finds an old polaroid: the decedent, arm in arm with Arthur Holland, Blum's informant from years ago when he worked at the Narcotics branch. But Arthur has been missing for days. Blum’s only source: Arthur’s girl, Celeste—beautiful, seductive, and tragic—whom he can’t get out of his head. Blum is drawn to her and feels compelled to save her from Arthur’s underworld.

Max Fisher used to run a computer company; Angela Petrakos was his assistant and mistress. But that was last year. Now Max is reinventing himself as a hip-hop crack dealer, and Angela is back in Ireland hooking up with a would-be record setter - in the field of serial killing. Will their paths cross again?

Tippy the triceratops was once a little girl's imaginary friend, a dinosaur detective who could help her make sense of the world. But when her father died, Tippy fell into the Stillreal, the underbelly of the Imagination, where discarded ideas go when they're too real to disappear. Now, he passes time doing detective work for other unwanted ideas - until Tippy runs into The Man in the Coat, a nightmare monster who can do the impossible: kill an idea permanently. Now Tippy must overcome his own trauma and solve the case, before there's nothing left but imaginary corpses.

It is early 1942. You are in San Francisco, and you need a private eye. Sam Spade is rumored to be in Istanbul. The Continental Op has been drafted and is a sergeant in the Aleutians. Philip Marlowe is up at Little Fawn Lake investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Derace Kingsley. Lew Archer is in the army. Who's left? Nobody but C. Card. You haven't heard of C. Card? That's all right. Nobody has.

Icelandic sisters Áróra and Ísafold live in different countries and aren‘t on speaking terms, but when their mother loses contact with Ísafold, Áróra reluctantly returns to Iceland to find her sister. But she soon realises that her sister isn’t avoiding her...she has disappeared. As she confronts Ísafold’s abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend Björn, and begins to probe her sister’s reclusive neighbours, Áróra is led into an ever-darker web of intrigue and manipulation.

The LaCroixs are four beautiful Haitian American women bound by money and blood. On the surface, the LaCroix Group is a venture capitalist company, but underneath, it’s so much more. The four sisters run long cons, targeting wealthy, prominent business figures. They have a system: Find the perfect mark, create the problem, then present the solution. For a cost....

They thought they were safe. They were wrong. The murder of a young prostitute and a baby found abandoned on the same winter night signals the start of a disturbing investigation for Detective Kim Stone - one which brings her face to face with someone from her own horrific childhood. As more sex workers are murdered in quick succession, each death more violent than the last, Kim and her team realize that the initial killing was no one-off frenzied attack, but a twisted serial killer preying on the vulnerable.

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.

Ever since his brother electrocuted him as a boy, Baer Creighton feels an electric tingle when people lie to him. He lives in the woods, stills unrivaled moonshine, and limits human contact to regular buyers, his niece Mae, and her three kids. It’s a good life, sharing humor and philosophy with his sole companion Fred, a back-sassin' pit bull getting on in years, until Fred goes missing then arrives dumped in a ditch, a victim of a local dog-fighting ring. Armed with a Smith & Wesson, audacity, and a moonshiner's know-how, Baer hunts the dog thief.

Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors - accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik - with a past that he’s unable to leave behind.

When Detective Kim Stone is called to a local business, what she sees leaves her speechless. The photo on the driving license bears little resemblance to the man laid out before her, and she knows she’s up against the most twisted killer she has ever encountered. But as she breaks the devastating news to the victim’s wife, Diane Phipps, Kim can’t help feeling that something isn’t quite right about the woman’s reaction.

A troubled war hero. A criminal mastermind. And the meeting of two fatal enemies....

There are probably worse things than being stuck in a remote cabin with the rugged-yet-grumpy forest ranger who saved my life in a blizzard. Getting mauled by a bear, for example, though I might prefer that to eating breakfast with Gideon Bell, the guy who nearly ruined my life when we were kids. It was twenty years ago. We haven’t spoken since. Our families still hate each other, and our lives are completely different. I’m not sure we’ve got anything in common besides childhood memories.

Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger.

Leonid McGill-the protagonist introduced in The Long Fall, the book that returned Walter Mosley to bestseller lists nationwide - is still fighting to stick to his reformed ways while the world around him pulls him in every other direction. He has split up with his girlfriend, Aura, because his new self won't let him leave his wife - but then Aura's new boyfriend starts angling to get Leonid kicked out of his prime, top-of-the­skyscraper office space.

They call it Company Town - a city-size oil rig off the coast of the Canadian Maritimes, now owned by one very wealthy, powerful, byzantine family: Lynch Ltd. Hwa is of the few people in her community (which constitutes the whole rig) to forgo bioengineered enhancements. As such, she's the last truly organic person left on the rig - making her doubly an outsider as well as a neglected daughter and bodyguard extraordinaire.

A completely revised edition of the first Henry Rios mystery, The Little Death, Lay Your Sleeping Head introduces Michael Nava’s singular protagonist, gay Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. Rios, beset by personal and professional problems, begins a passionate affair with the black sheep heir to a great California fortune who tells Rios an improbable tale of murder and sexual predation in his wealthy family. When the young man is found dead of an apparent drug overdose, Rios begins an investigation that ultimately reveals much more than murder.

Have yourself a scary little Christmas. In the heart of the holiday season, priceless paintings have vanished from a Park Avenue murder scene. Now, dashing French detective Luc Moncrief must become a quick study in the art of the steal - before a cold-blooded killer paints the town red. Merry Christmas, Detective.

David Trevellyan, a Royal Navy intelligence operative, takes a late-night walk to his New York City hotel. A huddled shape in an alley catches his eye - a homeless man has been shot to death. Trevellyan steps forward and a cop car arrives. A split second too late, Trevellyan realizes he's been set up. Obliged to clear his name, and with no idea who's a friend and who's a foe, he penetrates deep into a huge international conspiracy.

Reeling from the death of his great love, Karin, Varg Veum's life has descended into a self-destructive spiral of alcohol, lust, grief and blackouts. When traces of child pornography are found on his computer, he's accused of being part of a paedophile ring and thrown into a prison cell. There, he struggles to sift through his past to work out who is responsible for planting the material...and who is seeking the ultimate revenge.