Noir Fiction

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 - 30 years after its original publication - Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder. One of the 20th century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator.

Jonathan Roper is a key player in the elite Special Investigations Unit. His autism, and a relentless drive, have given him an extraordinary range of skills which make him a formidable detective. His reputation has grown to the point where he has been invited to join the digital fight against terror - but that's not working out as it means losing contact with his boss, Chief Inspector Brian Hooley. The pair formed a powerful bond while bringing down a gang of ruthless mercenaries running riot in London, and now events are throwing them back together.

From the creator, writer, and executive producer of the HBO series True Detective and soon to be a major motion picture comes a dark and visceral novel set along the wastelands of Galveston. On the same day Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he learns that his employer has put a hit out on him. After narrowly escaping an attempt on his life, Cady goes on the run with a young prostitute named Rocky and her three-year-old sister, from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas. But though they run, they cannot hide in this explosive, atmospheric, impossible-to-pause thrill ride.

In Ostia, a depressed coastal settlement 20 miles from the powerful and corrupt city of Rome, a mighty local crime family, the Mafia, corrupt politicians, and new rabid criminal elements battle each other for a billion-dollar payoff. During the final days of Silvio Berlusconi's reign, a massive development proposal that will turn Ostia into a gambling paradise, a Las Vegas on the Mediterranean, is winding its way through the Italian legislature thanks to the sponsorship of politicians in the pay of crime syndicates with vested interests.

Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they aren’t getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take it over. Are they convinced she can’t handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick, who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar.

Un tueur à gage tombe amoureux de sa cible... Logen, ville de la déchéance humaine. Ville dans laquelle les sirènes de police ont remplacé les chants des oiseaux, où les gangs s'affrontent sans relâche au milieu d'une population pauvre et sans défense, ou presque. Soit t'y nais et tu te bats, soit t'y crèves. La drogue, les armes sont mon quotidien. Tout est une question de calculs, de fric, de choix. Un contrat signé : tuer l'autre pour de l'argent. Facile, tellement fait et refait que ça sera rapide. Mais cette fois-ci, la nana à liquider me plaît. Son nom ? Amyliana.

It was just another Tuesday morning when she walked into the office - young, as I suspected they all might be, another dark brunette with some assistance and enough eye black to match up to Cleopatra. And who am I? I'm Ray, the world's last robot, famed and feared in equal measure, which suits me just fine - after all, the last place you'd expect to find Hollywood's best hit man is in the plain light of day.

"Il m'aura fallu courir le monde et tomber d'un toit pour saisir que je disposais là, sous mes yeux, dans un pays si proche dont j'ignorais les replis, d'un réseau de chemins campagnards ouverts sur le mystère, baignés de pur silence, miraculeusement vides. La vie me laissait une chance, il était donc grand temps de traverser la France à pied sur mes chemins noirs. Là, personne ne vous indique ni comment vous tenir, ni quoi penser, ni même la direction à prendre." (Sylvain Tesson)

This drive through the dark streets of the Motor City “is one of the best in Akashic Books’ noir series. You cannot go wrong with this anthology.”—Reviewing the Evidence From cri….

Alicia Bjelke has always been the "other sister," the foil to her beautiful sister Stella—people turn their backs when they see Alicia's disfigured face. So she created a life in the background, becoming a coding genius and founding a groundbreaking dating app company. With Stella as the face of the company, Alicia has found success. Until one day, when Stella is found dead and Alicia’s life takes the wrong turn. Soon, she realizes that she is the next target.

George Stroud is a hard-drinking, tough-talking, none-too-scrupulous writer for a New York media conglomerate in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment.

La série culte ! Violette, Klaus et Prunille devraient se plaire dans leur nouveau collège. Mais ce collège-ci est assez spécial, et la vérité est que les orphelins s'apprêtent à y vivre un bien sinistre épisode. À titre d'exemple, dans ces treize chapitres, les trois enfants vont devoir faire face à une tribu de crabes malveillants, à un règlement stupide, à de longs récitals de violon, à de redoutables tests de contrôle et au système métrique... Dès 11 ans.

All that’s left of her is a depression in the dirt and a pool of blood. Robert Maxim is ruthless, powerful, and determined to find her. April Madden is a preacher’s wife, and Sydney’s mother. She’s willing to risk everything...her sobriety, her marriage, even her faith, to hunt for her daughter. But they can’t find Sydney Rye if she doesn’t want to be found. ISIS has a new enemy, a ghost haunting their territory, infecting their flock with radical ideals. They will do anything to capture her. Their reign depends on this new prophet’s destruction.

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.

Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila's Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources, and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf. In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands.

The adoring wife of a senatorial candidate has a smile as sweet as candy and dots her "i's" with little hearts. A blond beauty, she is the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she has a little problem with sex and drugs--a problem someone has managed to put on videotape. The big boys figure a little blackmail will put her husband out of the race. Until Spenser hops on the candidate's bandwagon.

When Sam Spade gets drawn into the Maltese Falcon case, we know what to expect: straight talk, hard questions, no favors, and no way for anyone to get underneath the protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bitch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer's wife, Iva; that his tomboyish secretary, Effie Perine, is the only innocent in his life. What we don't know is how Spade became who he is. Spade & Archer completes the picture.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire, vowing to let no one stand in their way, especially those newly rallying around Teddy Roosevelt's nascent environmental movement.

As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the sea. The trouble is: that’s where he’s been hiding the bodies. It’s too dangerous to go near the place, so there’s no way of knowing how many people he’s murdered. Or how many more he’ll kill before he’s caught. As more horrors are discovered, ex-detective Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

Austin joins Dallas and Houston in Akashic's deep dive into the Lone Star State's darkest dimensions. Featuring brand-new stories by: Gabino Iglesias, Ace Atkins, Amanda Moore, Jeff Abbott, Scott Montgomery, Richard Z. Santos, Alexandra Burt, Lee Thomas, Miriam Kuznets, Jacob Grovey, Chaitali Sen, Molly Odintz, Amy Gentry, and Andrew Hilbert.