Noir Fiction

Gus Murphy and his girlfriend, Magdalena, are put in harm's way when Gus is caught up in the distant aftershocks of heinous crimes committed decades ago in Vietnam and Russia. Gus' ex-priest pal, Bill Kilkenny, introduces him to a wealthy businessman anxious to have someone look more deeply into the brutal murder of his granddaughter. Though the police already have the girl's murderer in custody, they have been unable to provide a reason for the killing.

A favor for a friend puts Anita Blake in the center of a full-blown scandal that threatens master vampire Jean-Claude's reign - and makes her a pawn in an ancient vampire queen's new rise to power.

Henry is a brilliant engineer who, after untold hours spent in his home lab, has achieved the breakthrough of his career—he’s created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He calls the half-formed robot William. No one knows about William. Henry’s agoraphobia keeps him inside the house, and his fixation on his project keeps him up in the attic, away from everyone, including his pregnant wife, Lily.

When a farmer and his son go missing whilst chasing rustlers, DCI Evan Warlow and his team are called in to investigate. Everything points to a botched raid by heartless thieves, but with no bodies, and little or no clues, the team quickly start chasing their tails. The close-knit community reels from the shock, but not everyone the team comes across is being entirely honest, and it quickly transpires that, under their prim and proper facades, some have secrets they are desperate to keep.

Joyce Carol Oates, a queenpin of the noir genre, has brought her keen and discerning eye to the curation of an outstanding anthology of brand-new top-shelf short stories (and poems by Margaret Atwood!). While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy listeners who are sick of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. This stylistically diverse collection will make you squirm in your seat, stay up at night, laugh out loud, and inevitably wish for more.

Imaginez... Vous êtes une ado de quatorze ans. Vous avez fait le mur pour la première fois. Vous rentrez en cachette la nuit. Au matin, la maison est vide. Toute votre famille a disparu sans laisser de traces. Apparitions suspectes, coups de fils anonymes, messages accusateurs : vingt-cinq ans plus tard, le passé ressurgit.

San Francisco, 1947. Bartender Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin and the rest of the Cookie’s Coffee Irregulars—a ragtag bunch of working mugs last seen in Noir—are on the hustle: they’re trying to open a driving school; shanghai an abusive Swedish stevedore; get Mable, the local madam, and her girls to a Christmas party at the State Hospital without alerting the overzealous head of the S.F.P.D. vice squad.

AVERTISSEMENT : Âmes sensibles, passez votre chemin ! Vous allez plonger dans un abîme de noirceur et d'horreur, au plus profond de la perversité humaine. Ce livre audio est destiné à un public très averti et à des adultes consentants. Vous aurez été prévenus... Luigi Rémaux et Martial Zantiva sont deux jeunes hommes qui arrondissent leurs fins de mois en commettant des cambriolages dans leur région.

Ex-police officer Sebastian Clifford is quickly finding that life as a private investigator is never quiet. His doors have only been open a few weeks when DCI Whitney Walker approaches him to investigate the brutal attack that left her older brother, Rob, with irreversible brain damage. For nearly twenty-five years, Rob had no memory of that night, but lately things are coming back to him. Whitney's worried that her brother might–once again–be in danger.

Que s'est-il passé cette nuit-là ? Paul Copeland a mis vingt ans pour accepter l'idée que sa sœur, comme trois autres adolescents cette nuit-là, est morte assassinée dans le camp de vacances du lac Charmaine. Même si deux corps seulement ont été retrouvés dans les bois, les chances de revoir Camille vivante se sont évanouies avec le temps.

First there was The Last Quarry, then there was The First Quarry - now look who's caught in the middle.

The enigmatic hit man Quarry - star of seven celebrated novels and an award-winning feature film (The Last Lullaby) - is back in this violent, steamy tale of warring crime families. When two godfathers set out to bump each other off, guess who winds up with both contracts….

Alex Bledsoe’s fantasy novels have drawn rave reviews for their ingenious blend of classic fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. Now Bledsoe returns with an all-new tale of intrigue and murder.

Ten years ago, I adopted Blue after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning, I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you to never buy a dog on impulse. Going to the pound because you need something in your life that's worth holding onto is rarely, if ever, mentioned. I asked the man at the pound to show me the biggest dogs they had. He showed me some Rottweiler-German Shepherd puppies that he said would grow to be quite large.

Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him, that was the day he returned stateside from Nam to find his young wife cheating. He'd killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. And when he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer, that transition was easy, too. He survived in this jungle as he had in that other one - by expecting trouble. What he didn't expect was ever running into his ex again....

Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.

Des bébés qui disparaissent, des écureuils pendus, un fétichiste du chiffre vingt-trois : méfiez-vous de Promise Falls ; derrière son apparente tranquillité, cette petite bourgade américaine cache la plus longue liste de faits divers jamais recensés... Dans un univers digne des premiers épisodes de "Twin Peaks", Barclay tisse une trilogie déroutante et pleine d'humour.

Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer", Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries set in Nazi-era Berlin that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces listeners to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture.

When you listen to this audiobook, you will make many assumptions. You will assume you are listening to a story about a jealous ex-wife. You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement - a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love. You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle. Assume nothing. Twisted and deliciously chilling, The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

Early one morning Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient.

Les souvenirs, c'est comme les cadavres : tôt ou tard, ils refont surface. Qui est cet homme assis sur la plage en pleine tempête, sur le lieu d'un crime commis vingt ans plus tôt ? Il n'a pas de nom, pas de manteau, et a perdu la mémoire. Alice prend l'inconnu sous son aile et décide de l'héberger, sans savoir qu'il va bouleverser sa vie à jamais. Au même moment, dans la banlieue de Londres, Lily attend en vain le retour de l'homme qu'elle vient d'épouser et dont la police tarde à signaler la disparition. Parviendra-t-elle à retrouver celui pour qui elle a tout abandonné ?