Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 141 items
Three British Mystery Novels
By Thomas Brown, David Stuart Davies, Nikki Dudley. 2018
Three authors, three mysteries. Lynnwood, by Thomas Brown, was a finalist in the People’s Book PrizeThe unthinkable is happening in…
Lynnwood ‒ a village with centuries of guilt on its conscience.Who wouldn’t want to live in an idyllic village in the English countryside like Lynnwood? With its charming pub, old dairy, friendly vicar, gurgling brooks, and old paths with memories of simpler times.A Taste for Blood, by David Stuart DaviesTwo plots running parallel... you won’t see what’s comingTwo laser-sharp detectives, two thought-provoking cases and two skilful plots.Featuring private investigator Johnny (One Eye) Hawke, and his one-time colleague in the police force Detective David Llewellyn. Llewellyn is investigating the chilling crimes of a top psychiatrist and his scheming patient who the doctor believes has knuckled under his authority. Hawke is on the case of a mysterious suicide in Edgware Road... soon discovered as not your average suicide.The guts and insight of the two investigators bring both cases to a head ‒ though you won’t even begin to see how until you have turned the last pages.Ellipsis, by Nikki Dudley”Right on time,” Daniel Mansen mouths to Alice as she pushes him to his death. Haunted by these words, Alice becomes obsessed with discovering how a man she didn’t know could predict her actions. On the day of the funeral, Daniel’s cousin, Thom, finds a piece of paper in Daniel’s room detailing the exact time and place of his death.As Thom and Alice both search for answers, they become knotted together in a story of obsession, hidden truths and the gaps in everyday life that can destroy or save a person.Ellipsis is a thriller stemming from what is left unsaid, what bounces around in the mind and evaporates when trying to remember. Can there be a conclusion when no-one seems to know the truth?Reviews of the three titles are available on individual title pagesThe Best American Short Stories 2012 (The Best American Series)
By Tom Perrotta. 2012
The Best American Series® First, Best, and Best-Selling The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s…
finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind. The Best American Short Stories 2012 includes Nathan Englander, Mary Gaitskill, Roxane Gay, Jennifer Haigh, Steven Millhauser, Alice Munro, Lawrence Osborne, Eric Puchner, George Saunders, Kate Walbert, and othersSmall Pleasures: A Novel
By Clare Chambers. 2021
In the best tradition of Tessa Hadley, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ann Patchett—an astonishing, keenly observed period piece about an ordinary…
British woman in the 1950s whose dutiful life takes a sudden turn into a pitched battle between propriety and unexpected passion."With wit and dry humor...quietly affecting in unexpected ways. Chambers' language is beautiful, achieving what only the most skilled writers can: big pleasure wrought from small details."--The New York TimesLONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION1957: Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper in the southeast suburbs of London. Clever but with limited career opportunities and on the brink of forty, Jean lives a dreary existence that includes caring for her demanding widowed mother, who rarely leaves the house. It’s a small life with little joy and no likelihood of escape.That all changes when a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean seizes onto the bizarre story and sets out to discover whether Gretchen is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys, including Gretchen’s gentle and thoughtful husband Howard, who mostly believes his wife, and their quirky and charming daughter Margaret, who becomes a sort of surrogate child for Jean. Gretchen, too, becomes a much-needed friend in an otherwise empty social life.Jean cannot bring herself to discard what seems like her one chance at happiness, even as the story that she is researching starts to send dark ripples across all their lives…with unimaginable consequences.Both a mystery and a love story, Small Pleasures is a literary tour-de-force in the style of The Remains of the Day, about conflict between personal fulfillment and duty; a novel that celebrates the beauty and potential for joy in all things plain and unfashionable.Best American Mystery And Suspense 2021: A Mystery Collection (The Best American Series)
By Steph Cha, Alafair Burke. 2021
Steph Cha, a rising star who brings a fresh perspective as series editor, takes the helm of the new The Best…
American Mystery and Suspense, with best-selling crime novelist Alafair Burke joining her as the first guest editor.&“Crime writers, forgive the pun, are killing it right now creatively,&” writes guest editor Alafair Burke in her introduction. &“It was difficult—painful even—to narrow this year&’s Best American Mystery and Suspense to only twenty stories.&” Spanning from a mediocre spa in Florida, to New York&’s gritty East Village, to death row in Alabama, this collection reveals boundless suspense in small, quiet moments, offering startling twists in the least likely of places. From a powerful response to hateful bullying, to a fight for health care, to a gripping desperation to vote, these stories are equal parts shocking, devastating, and enthralling, revealing the tension pulsing through our everyday lives and affirming that mystery and suspense writing is better than ever before.The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021includes JENNY BHATT• GAR ANTHONY HAYWOOD• GABINO IGLESIAS• AYA DE LEÓN• LAURA LIPPMAN DELIA C. PITTS• ALEX SEGURA• FAYE SNOWDEN• LISA UNGER and othersThe Best American Short Stories 2019 (The Best American Series)
By Anthony Doerr, Heidi Pitlor. 2019
#1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his&“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors&” (San…
Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. &“As soon as you complete a description of what a good story must be, a new example flutters through an open window, lands on your sleeve, and proves your description wrong,&” writes Anthony Doerr about the task of selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. The year&’s best stories are a diverse, addictive group exploring everything from America&’s rich rural culture to its online teen culture to the fragile nature of the therapist-client relationship. This astonishing collection brings together the realistic and dystopic, humor and terror. For Doerr, &“with every new artist, we simultaneously refine and expand our understanding of what the form can be.&” The Best American Short Stories 2019 includes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Jamel Brinkley, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ursula K. Le Guin, Manuel Muñoz, Sigrid Nunez, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Jim Shepherd, Weike Wang, and others.The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 (The Best American Series)
By Dave Eggers. 2012
The Best American Series®First, Best, and Best-SellingThe Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country&’s finest short…
fiction and nonfiction. Each volume&’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 includesKevin Brockmeier, Judy Budnitz, Junot Díaz, Louise Erdrich,Nora Krug, Julie Otsuka, Eric Puchner, George Saunders,Adrian Tomine, Jess Walter, and othersThe Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013 (The Best American Series)
By Dave Eggers. 2013
Dave Eggers and his students at the 826 Valencia and 826 Michigan writing labs compile fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comics, as…
well as category-defying gems that have become one of the hallmarks of this lively collection.The Best American Series® First, Best, and Best-Selling The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s…
finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 includes Daniel Alarcón, Clare Beams, Sloane Crosley, Anthony Doerr, Neil Gaiman, Mohammed Hanif, Mac McClelland, Michael Paterniti, Olivier Schrauwen, Gary Shteyngart, and othersAn electrifying tale of deceit and obsession from New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl Mary KubicaIn downtown…
Chicago, Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her roommate Quinn Collins to question how well she really knew her friend. Meanwhile, in a small town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where eighteen-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more sinister.As Quinn searches for answers about Esther, and Alex is drawn further under the stranger&’s spell, master of suspense Mary Kubica takes readers on a taut and twisted thrill ride that builds to a stunning conclusion and shows that no matter how fast and far we run, the past always catches up with us.Don't miss Mary Kubica's chilling upcoming novel, She's Not Sorry, where an ICU nurse accidentally uncovers a patient's frightening past...And look for the new editions of The Good Girl, Every Last Lie, Pretty Baby and The Other Mrs. featuring brand new covers!More edge-of-your-seat thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica: Th Good Girl Pretty Baby Every Last Lie When the Lights Go Out Local Woman Missing Just The Nicest Couple The Other Mrs. She&’s not SorryKowalski's in Love (The Thriller Shorts #1)
By James Rollins. 2006
An ex-sailor finds himself washed ashore on an island set for destruction in this action-packed suspense story by a #1…
New York Times–bestselling author.This Thriller Short is not a love story, at least not in the traditional sense. Fans of James Rollins’s Sigma Force series know Joe Kowalski, a naval seaman with the heart of a hero, but lacking the brainpower to go with it. Kowalski stays in trouble, and here readers will get to know a bit more about his backstory. One that illustrates something Kowalski seems to live by. Dumb luck is better than no luck at all.Originally published in THRILLER: Stories to Keep You Up All Night (2006), edited by #1 New York Times–bestselling author James Patterson.The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017 (Best American Ser.)
By 826 National. 2017
&“Turning the pages of The Best American Nonrequired Reading to find Tweets or sheet music creates the kind of unexpected surprise that's…
often encountered in digital space, but seldom in print…The eclecticism of the sources can be an awakening for the reader who seeks the best writing in books and literary journals…[and] the variety of genres is an apt reflection of contemporary reading culture: not just paragraphs and chapters but expressions in so many different forms…The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017 lead[s] the reader to a variety of launching points for thinking more about who and where we are."—PopMatters —The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 (The Best American Series)
By Edan Lepucki, 826 National. 2019
An eclectic collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic work selected by high school students with the help of New…
York Times best-selling author Edan Lepucki. Over the past year, a group of high school students have held weekly discussions in the basement conference room of a publishing house in San Francisco. Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, and astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, and essays. With the help of guest editor Edan Lepucki, they selected the contents of this anthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 features comics about war and butts and stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, and more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, and others.Interlude at Duane's (The Thriller Shorts #1)
By F. Paul Wilson. 2006
Experience a heart-pumping and thrilling tale of suspense!Originally published in THRILLER (2006),edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author James…
Patterson.In this Thriller Short, New York Times bestselling author F. Paul Wilson places his urban mercenary, Repairman Jack, in an almost impossible situation. Repairman Jack just wants to be left alone, but that’s difficult to do when a robber is poking a .357 revolver in your face at the local drugstore. Things only get worse when three more stoned gunmen join the fray and threaten a crowd of customers. Not a big fan of heroics, Jack rises to the occasion. But being the hero is hard when you like to avoid closed-circuit cameras and the only weapons at your disposal come from the shopping aisles. With everyone locked inside the store, the situation demands quick reflexes and a ton of ingenuity. But if Jack doesn’t act quickly, his anonymity will end at the morgue.Don’t miss any of these exciting Thriller Shorts:James Penney’s New Identity by Lee ChildOperation Northwoods by James GrippandoEpitaph by J. A. KonrathThe Face in the Window by Heather GrahamKowalski’s in Love by James RollinsThe Hunt for Dmitri by Gayle LyndsDisfigured by Michael Palmer and Daniel PalmerThe Abelard Sanction by David MorrellFalling by Chris MooneySuccess of a Mission by Dennis LyndsThe Portal by John Lescroart and M. J. RoseThe Double Dealer by David LissDirty Weather by Gregg HurwitzSpirit Walker by David DunAt the Drop of a Hat by Denise HamiltonThe Other Side of the Mirror by Eric Van LustbaderMan Catch by Christopher RiceGoodnight, Sweet Mother by Alex KavaSacrificial Lion by Grant BlackwoodInterlude at Duane’s by F. Paul WilsonThe Powder Monkey by Ted BellSurviving Toronto by M. Diane VogtAssassins by Christopher ReichThe Athens Solution by Brad ThorDiplomatic Constraints by Raelynn HillhouseKill Zone by Robert LiparuloThe Devils’ Due by Steve BerryThe Tuesday Club by Katherine NevilleGone Fishing by Douglas Preston and Lincoln ChildPayback (The Ravens Trilogy #3)
By Jasmine Cresswell. 2007
For twenty-five years multimillionaire businessman Ron Raven played the loving husband and father--to two very different households. But when Ron…
disappears, his deception is revealed. Now it's time for...PAYBACK. The police assume bigamist and wealthy businessman Ron Raven paid the price of his crimes with his life--a conclusion his "second" family, the Fairfaxes, accepts. So when restaurateur Luke Savarini outrageously claims to have seen his former investor--in the flesh!--Kate Fairfax is furious.When her anger cools, evidence leaves Kate facing the possibility that her father is still alive. With Luke's help, Kate is willing to risk everything to find Ron Raven, if it means bringing him to justice, once and for all.The Double Dealer (The Thriller Shorts #1)
By David Liss. 2006
Experience a heart-pumping and thrilling tale of suspense!Originally published in THRILLER (2006),edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author James…
Patterson.In this Thriller Short, New York Times bestseller David Liss returns to eighteenth-century London with his flawed and fearless character Benjamin Weaver, who shines in a different light through this complicated tale. An old man named Fisher pays someone to write down his story, a story that relates his first brush with Benjamin Weaver. Weaver was committing a robbery when Fisher swooped in and stole the plunder. Both escape, and Fisher soon realizes that an angry Weaver has painted a target on his back. But as time passes, Fisher believes that Weaver has moved on, so he finds a new partner, and they both take up thievery. But, of course, Weaver hasn’t forgotten...Don’t miss any of these exciting Thriller Shorts:James Penney’s New Identity by Lee ChildOperation Northwoods by James GrippandoEpitaph by J. A. KonrathThe Face in the Window by Heather GrahamKowalski’s in Love by James RollinsThe Hunt for Dmitri by Gayle LyndsDisfigured by Michael Palmer and Daniel PalmerThe Abelard Sanction by David MorrellFalling by Chris MooneySuccess of a Mission by Dennis LyndsThe Portal by John Lescroart and M. J. RoseThe Double Dealer by David LissDirty Weather by Gregg HurwitzSpirit Walker by David DunAt the Drop of a Hat by Denise HamiltonThe Other Side of the Mirror by Eric Van LustbaderMan Catch by Christopher RiceGoodnight, Sweet Mother by Alex KavaSacrificial Lion by Grant BlackwoodInterlude at Duane’s by F. Paul WilsonThe Powder Monkey by Ted BellSurviving Toronto by M. Diane VogtAssassins by Christopher ReichThe Athens Solution by Brad ThorDiplomatic Constraints by Raelynn HillhouseKill Zone by Robert LiparuloThe Devils’ Due by Steve BerryThe Tuesday Club by Katherine NevilleGone Fishing by Douglas Preston and Lincoln ChildChicago Noir: The Classics (Akashic Noir #0)
By Harry Stephen Keeler, Sherwood Anderson, Max Allan Collins, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Fredric Brown, Patricia Highsmith, Barry Gifford, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Sara Paretsky, Percy Spurlark Parker, Sandra Cisneros, Hugh Holton, Stuart Dybek. 2014
"In this superior entry in Akashic's noir series, Meno offers nearly a century of Chicago crime fiction....Familiar bylines abound: Max…
Allan Collins, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Sherwood Anderson, Fredric Brown, Patricia Highsmith (with an excerpt from her novel The Price of Salt), Stewart M. Kaminsky, Sara Paretsky. Others may be less familiar to mystery specialists, but all turn in impressive performances."--Publishers Weekly, Starred review"Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, and Sandra Cisneros are not crime-fiction writers, and yet their Chicago certainly embodies the individual-crushing ethos endemic to noir. Meno also includes stories from writers who could easily have been overlooked (Percy Spurlark Parker, Hugh Holton) to ensure that diverse voices, and neighborhoods, are represented. Add in smart and essential choices from Fredric Brown, Sara Paretsky, and Stuart Kaminsky, and you have not an anthology not for crime-fiction purists, perhaps, but a thought-provoking document all the same."--Booklist"The fifteen short stories comprising Chicago Noir: The Classics, which are knowledgeably compiled and deftly edited by Joe Meno, are true gems of the noir literary tradition....Chicago Noir: The Classics is a consistently entertaining and will prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community library Mystery/Suspense collections."--Midwest Book Review"I've always enjoyed reading noir. Dark, ironic mysteries are a good read to me. Since this collection includes old classics as well as some new stories, I knew it would be good....I wasn't disappointed."--Journey of a Bookseller"Chicago Noir The Classics does everything anthologies and noir are supposed to, but this title achieves an unheralded goal that deserves notice....This is wonderful diversity, coming both unexpected and unhearalded. Anthologies are supposed to convey a sense of having covered the territory, Joe Meno has. Ethnically diverse city, ethnically diverse plots. Better, Chicago Noir The Classics showcases diversity as normal, everyday. This adds inescapable satisfaction to a sense of the editor's having covered the territory."--La Bloga"A worthy addition to the Akashic Books noir series."--Book ChaseAlthough Los Angeles may be considered the most quintessentially "noir" American city, this volume reveals that pound-for-pound, Chicago has historically been able to stand up to any other metropolis in the noir arena.Classic reprints from: Harry Stephen Keeler, Sherwood Anderson, Max Allan Collins, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Fredric Brown, Patricia Highsmith, Barry Gifford, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Sara Paretsky, Percy Spurlark Parker, Sandra Cisneros, Hugh Holton, and Stuart Dybek.From the introduction by Joe Meno:"More corrupt than New York, less glamorous than LA, Chicago has more murders per capita than any other city its size. With its sleek skyscrapers bisecting the fading sky like an unspoken threat, Chicago is the closest metropolis to the mythical city of shadows as first described in the work of Chandler, Hammett, and Cain. Only in Chicago do instituted color lines offer generation after generation of poverty and violence, only in Chicago do the majority of governors do prison time, only in Chicago do the dead actually vote twice."Chicago--more than the metropolis that gave the world Al Capone, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, the death of John Dillinger, the crimes of Leopold and Loeb, the horrors of John Wayne Gacy, the unprecedented institutional corruption of so many recent public officials, more than the birthplace of Raymond Chandler--is a city of darkness. This darkness is not an act of over-imagination. It's the unadulterated truth. It's a pointed though necessary reminder of the grave tragedies of the past and the failed possibilities of the present. Fifty years in the future, I hope these stories are read only as fiction, as somewhat distant fantasy. Here's hoping for some light."Atlanta Noir (Akashic Noir #0)
By Daniel Black, Tananarive Due, Jim Grimsley, Anthony Grooms, Jennifer Harlow, John Holman, Dallas Hudgens, Kenji Jasper, Sheri Joseph, Brandon Massey, Alesia Parker, David James Poissant, Gillian Royes. 2017
Georgia Center for the Book has chosen Atlanta Noir as one of 2018's Books All Georgians Should Read!Kenji Jasper's "A…
Moment of Clarity at the Waffle House" nominated for a 2018 Edgar Award for Best Short Story!"Atlanta has its share, maybe more than its share, of prosperity. But wealth is no safeguard against peril...Creepy as well as dark, grim in outlook...Hints of the supernatural may make these tales...appealing to lovers of ghost stories."--Kirkus Reviews"These stories, most of them by relative unknowns, offer plenty of human interest...All the tales have a Southern feel."--Publishers Weekly"Jones, author of Leaving Atlanta, returns to the South via Akashic's ever-growing city anthology series. The collection features stories from an impressive roster of talent including Jim Grimsley, Sheri Joseph, Gillian Royes, Anthony Grooms and David James Poissant. The 14 selections each take place in different Atlanta neighborhood."--Atlanta-Journal Constitution"Now comes Atlanta Noir, an anthology that masterfully blends a chorus of voices, both familiar and new, from every corner of Atlanta...The magic of Atlanta Noir is readily apparent, starting with the introduction Jones pens. It doesn’t rest solely upon the breadth of writers but on how their words, stories and references are so Atlanta--so very particular, so very familiar and so very readily, for those who know the city, nostalgic. And for those who don’t? The sense of place it captures inspires a desire to get to know Atlanta and its stories."--ArtsATLAkashic 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. This much-anticipated and long-overdue installment in Akashic's Noir Series reveals many sides of Atlanta known only to its residents.Brand-new stories by: Tananarive Due, Kenji Jasper, Tayari Jones, Dallas Hudgens, Jim Grimsley, Brandon Massey, Jennifer Harlow, Sheri Joseph, Alesia Parker, Gillian Royes, Anthony Grooms, John Holman, Daniel Black, and David James Poissant.From the introduction by Tayari Jones:Atlanta itself is a crime scene. After all, Georgia was founded as a de facto penal colony and in 1864, Sherman burned the city to the ground. We might argue about whether the arson was the crime or the response to the crime, but this is indisputable: Atlanta is a city sewn from the ashes and everything that grows here is at once fertilized and corrupted by the past...These stories do not necessarily conform to the traditional expectations of noir...However, they all share the quality of exposing the rot underneath the scent of magnolia and pine. Noir, in my opinion, is more a question of tone than content. The moral universe of the story is as significant as the physical space. Noir is a realm where the good guys seldom win; perhaps they hardly exist at all. Few bad deeds go unrewarded, and good intentions are not the road to hell, but are hell itself...Welcome to Atlanta Noir. Come sit on the veranda, or the terrace of a high-rise condo. Pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, and fortify it with a slug of bourbon. Put your feet up. Enjoy these stories, and watch your back.Tampa Bay Noir (Akashic Noir #0)
By Colette Bancroft. 2020
Tampa Bay joins Miami in representing the (alleged) Sunshine State in the Noir Series arena. "At last, the popular Akashic…
Noir series has adopted the Tampa Bay area...The notion of elevating place to the status of a character in a story, a frAddis Ababa Noir (Akashic Noir #0)
By Maaza Mengiste. 2020
Addis Ababa is a sprawling melting pot of cultures where rich and poor live side by side in relative harmony--until…
they don't. Brand-new stories by: Maaza Mengiste, Adam Reta, Mahtem Shiferraw, Linda Yohannes, Sulaiman Addonia, Meron Hadero, Mikael Awake, Lelissa Girma, Rebecca Fisseha, Solomon Hailemariam, Girma T. Fantaye, Teferi Nigussie Tafa, Hannah Giorgis, and Bewketu Seyoum. From the introduction by Maaza Mengiste: What marks life in Addis Ababa are the starkly different realities coexisting in one place. It's a growing city taking shape beneath the fraught weight of history, myth, and memory. It is a heady mix. It can also be disorienting, and it is in this space that the stories of Addis Ababa Noir reside... These are not gentle stories. They cross into forbidden territories and traverse the damaged terrain of the human heart. The characters in these pages are complicated, worthy of our judgment as much as they somehow manage to elude it. The writers have each discovered their own ways to get us to lean in while forcing us to grit our teeth as we draw closer... Despite the varied and distinct voices in these pages, no single book can contain all of the wonderful, intriguing, vexing complexities of Addis Ababa. But what you will read are stories by some of Ethiopia's most talented writers living in the country and abroad. Each of them considers the many ways that myth and truth and a country's dark edges come together to create something wholly original--and unsettling. 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.Houston Noir (Akashic Noir #0)
By Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Wanjikũ Wa Ngũgĩ, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts. 2019
"Brooklyn Noir came first in 2004, and now, 15 years later, Houston Noir--14 stories of intrigue, betrayal and death set…
from Tanglewood to Third Ward penned by current or former Houston authors--goes on sale."--Houston Chronicle"Akashic Books's long-running Noir Series tasks writers with imagining the dark sides of their communities, spinning gritty, shocking tales atop the local landscape. Recently the publisher tapped writer and former Houston poet laureate Gwendolyn Zepeda to serve as editor on a collection of stories about her native Bayou City. The end result is Houston Noir, out this month, whose 14 entries explore the murder, betrayal, and brujería lurking everywhere from River Oaks to the Ship Channel to a trailer park off FM 1960."--Houstonia Magazine"Houston is a city on the rise when it comes to crime fiction--something about all those lonely highways, gravity-defying overpasses, and drastic urban sprawl (and of course, the crime rate) make Houston a perfect setting for noir. This port city of close to five million residents is ready for a new reputation as a world capital of literature, and we're here to support Akashic's new collection of noir tales from Texas's most complex city."--CrimeReads, included in The Best New Crime Fiction of May 2019"With sprawl and serial killers, Houston Noir packs a mean punch...Houston Noir is a welcome addition to the city's slowly filling bookcase."--Texas Observer"Editor Gwendolyn Zepeda has cannily divided the collection into four separate areas of the city, which only serves to multiply a reader's certainty: Like the sodden sheet covering a much-lacerated corpse, all of Houston is pretty much dripping with crime. Best to experience it, we suggest, only between the covers of this new paperback."--Austin ChronicleAkashic 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.Brand-new stories by: Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.From the introduction by Gwendolyn Zepeda:In a 2004 essay, Hunter S. Thompson described Houston as a "cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West--which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch." For what it's worth, that quote is now posted on a banner somewhere downtown and regularly, gleefully repeated by our local feature writers.Houston is a port city on top of a swamp and, yes, it has no zoning laws. And that means it's culturally diverse, internally incongruous, and ever-changing. At any intersection here, I might look out my car window and see a horse idly munching St. Augustine grass. And, within spitting distance of that horse, I might see a "spa" that's an obvious brothel, a house turned drug den, or a swiftly rising bayou that might overtake a car if the rain doesn't let up...Overall, this collection represents the very worst our city has to offer, for residents and visitors alike. But it also presents some of our best voices, veteran and emerging, to any reader lucky enough to pick up this book.