The Akashic Noir Series moves fearlessly to the city hosting the European/Asian divide.

It doesn’t have to be the dark of a rainy night for it to be noir. It doesn’t have to be shadowy rooms of Venetian blinds. It doesn’t even have to be a femme fatale. Noir is somebody tripping over their own faults, somebody who has an Achilles heel, some kind of greed, or want or desire that leads them down a dark path, from which there is sometimes no return. No one is safe. There’s no place to hide in this collection of twelve stories from the dark side of the American Dream. Stories of noir from Coast to Coast. Contributors: Colleen Collins—Denver, Colorado Brendan DuBois—rural Massachusetts Alison Gaylin—Hudson Valley, New York Tom MacDonald—Nashua, New Hampshire Andrew McAleer—Boston, Massachusetts Michael Mallory—Springfield, Missouri Paul D. Marks—Venice Beach/Los Angeles, California Dennis Palumbo—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Stephen D. Rogers—Providence, Rhode Island John Shepphird—Los Alamos, New Mexico Jaden Terrell—Nashville, Tennessee Dave Zeltserman—small town Kansas Praise for the COAST TO COAST series: Murder from Sea to Shining Sea “A sterling collection of coast-to-coast crime stories dripping with local color—all of it blood red.” —Chuck Hogan, Hammett Prize winner and international bestselling author of The Strain “Envelope-pushers! A truly WOW collection by the best mystery writers out there—full of surprises only they can pull off.” —Thomas B. Sawyer, bestselling author of Cross Purposes and Head-Writer of Murder, She Wrote “An engaging collection from a stellar cast of award-winning mystery authors guaranteed to keep you awake all night.” —Hannah Dennison, author of the IMBA bestselling Vicky Hill Mysteries “This intriguing collection of stories from these masters of suspense will keep you guessing from cover to cover and coast to coast.” —Raffi Yessayan, author of 8 in the Box and 2 in the Hat Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea “A tantalizing array of stories guaranteed to please fans of PI fiction. High fives all around!” —MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini “Tough, taut and terrific. This cross-country collection of sleuthing stories—from the best writers in the private eye biz—is wonderfully written, always surprising, and completely entertaining.” —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Anthony, Agatha and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author “A bang-up read of PI fiction from a gallery of impressive authors. Compelling, fun, and full of clever surprises. A treat.” —Shamus Award-winning author John Shepphird Awards and Nominations Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea nominated for a 2018 Anthony Award for Best Anthology “Out of Business” by Eric Beetner, nominated for a 2018 Shamus Award “The #2 Pencil” by Matt Coyle, nominated for a 2018 Macavity Award and a 2018 Derringer Award “Gun Work” by John Floyd, selected for the Best American Mysteries of 2018 by Louise Penny and Otto Penzler “The Dead Detective” by Bob Levinson, nominated for a 2016 Shamus Award “King’s Quarter” by Andrew McAleer, nominated for a 2018 Derringer Award “Windward” by Paul D. Marks, winner of the 2018 Macavity Award for Best Short Story; nominated for a 2018 Shamus Award and 2018 Derringer Award, and selected for the Best American Mysteries of 2018 by Louise Penny and Otto Penzler “Kill My Wife, Please” by Robert J. Randisi, nominated for a 2018 Derringer Award “A Necessary Ingredient” by Art Taylor, nominated for a 2018 Macavity Award, a 2018 Malice Domestic Award, and a 2018 Anthony Award

On the heels of the stunning success of the award-winning Brooklyn Noir, here comes the second volume of this groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. The city of Chicago has spent much time and money over the last decade marketing itself as a tourist-friendly destination for the whole family. The stories in this anthology reclaim a Chicago where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival - a Chicago once depicted by James Farrell and Nelson Algren.

Malice and mayhem simmer beneath the surface of one of America's favorite vacation areas. “Youthful alienation and despair dominate the 13 stories in Akashic’s noir volume devoted to Cape Cod. [It] will satisfy those with a hankering for a taste of the dark side.” —Publishers Weekly “David L. Ulin has put together a malicious collection of short stories that will stay with you long after you return home safe.” —The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Brand-new stories by: William Hastings, Elyssa East, Dana Cameron, Paul Tremblay, Adam Mansbach, Seth Greenland, Lizzie Skurnick, David L. Ulin, Kaylie Jones, Fred G. Leebron, Ben Greenman, Dave Zeltserman, and Jedediah Berry. From the introduction by David L. Ulin: “Here, we see the inverse of the Cape Cod stereotype, with its sailboats and its presidents. Here, we see the flip side of the Kennedys, of all those preppies in docksiders eating steamers, of the whale watchers and bicycles and kites. Here, we see the Cape beneath the surface, the Cape after the summer people have gone home. It doesn’t make the other Cape any less real, but it does suggest a symbiosis, in which our sense of the place can’t help but become more complicated, less about vacation living than something more nuanced and profound . . . "For me, Cape Cod is a repository of memory: forty summers in the same house will do that to you. But it is also a landscape of hidden tensions, which rise up when we least anticipate. In part, this has to do with social aspiration, which is one of the things that brought my family, like many others, to the Cape. In part, it has to do with social division, which has been a factor since at least the end of the nineteenth century, when then summer trade began. There are lines here, lines that get crossed and lines that never get crossed, the kinds of lines that form the web of noir. Call it what you want—summer and smoke is how I think of it—but that’s the Cape Cod at the center of this book.“

“Featuring short, edgy fiction on the Emerald City’s seamy underbelly . . . seedy characters, private detectives and the like from all over urban Seattle.” —Kitsap Daily News 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. Now it’s home to big businesses and a flourishing art, theatre, and club scene. Seattle’s evolution to high-finance and high-tech has simply provided even greater opportunity and reward to those who might be ethically, morally, or economically challenged (crooks, in other words). Seattle Noir features 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. You’ll find tales of a wealthy couple whose marriage is filled with not-so-quiet desperation; a credit card scam that goes over-limit; femmes fatales and hommes fatales; a group of mystery writers whose fiction causes friction; a Native American shaman caught in a web of secrets and tribal allegiances; sex, lies, and slippery slopes . . . “Stories that reflect Seattle’s ethnic diversity as well as tales from its rough past to its glory days of Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.” —Publishers Weekly “A new collection of stories all set in Seattle, with characters that break the mold. In many of the Seattle Noir stories, it’s the heroes, not the subsidiary characters, that are African-American, Native-American, Hispanic-American.” —The Seattle Times

Southern California is not all sun, sand, and surf in this gripping collection of noir tales from T. Jefferson Parker, Don Winslow, Maria Lima, and others. San Diego is home to miles of beaches, Balboa Park, a world-famous zoo, and some of the country’s most expensive home and resort real estate. Yet the city also houses a few items that aren’t actively promoted by the visitor’s bureau: a number of the country’s most corrupt politicians, border-related crimes, terrorists, and the occasional earthquakes. A noir feast! In the fifty-plus years since Raymond Chandler set Playback in Esmeralda, his name for La Jolla, the population has grown by more than a million, and crime has proliferated as well. San Diego of the past and the present offers the book’s contributors a rich selection of settings, from the cross on Mount Soledad to the piers of Ocean Beach, and perpetrators and victims from the residents of its wealthiest enclaves to the inhabitants of its segregated barrios. San Diego Noir includes stories by T. Jefferson Parker, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Martha C. Lawrence, Diane Clark & Astrid Bear, Debra Ginsberg, Morgan Hunt, Ken Kuhlken, Taffy Cannon, Don Winslow, Cameron Pierce Hughes, Lisa Brackmann, Gabriel R. Barillas, Gar Anthony Haywood, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Maria Lima. “When it’s done right, noir is a darkly delicious thrill: smart, sharp-tongued, surprising. The knife goes in at the end with a twist. San Diego Noir, a new 15-story collection by some of the region’s best writers, has all that going for it, and the steady supply of hometown references makes it even more fun.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Traverses Texas, finding evidence of the hard boiled, sultry, and disreputable throughout the state . . . Think of the book as a sort of criminal travelogue.” —Booklist If everything is bigger in Texas, then that includes the boldness of the criminals who call the state home. From large urban centers to the Cajun Gulf coast, there is big money to be made running guns, drugs, and catering to the greedy and disillusioned. Each distinctive region can claim its own special brand of outlaw. In Lone Star Noir, you’ll find stories by James Crumley, Joe R. Lansdale, Claudia Smith, Ito Romo, Luis Alberto Urrea, David Corbett, George Wier, Sarah Cortez, Jesse Sublett, Dean James, Tim Tingle, Milton T. Burton, Lisa Sandlin, Jessica Powers, and Bobby Byrd. “This isn’t J.R. Ewing’s Lone Star State. This is the Texas of chicken shit bingo, Enron scamsters, and a feeling that what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico . . . So what defines Texas noir? Who knows, but you better pray that blood doesn’t stain your belt buckle.” —The Austin Chronicle