Short Dark Stories for Short Dark Days: Akashic Books City Noir

"Within these pages you'll find stories of those walking the straight and narrow - until something untoward happens. Maybe it's someone taking a step out of line, getting caught up in circumstances spiraling out of their control. Maybe they're planning the grift, the grab . . . whatever it is to finally put them over. Other times the steps they take are to get themselves or people they care about out from under. You'll find the offerings in these...

From the introduction by Herv? Delouche: The term Greater Paris is in vogue today, for it has an administrative cachet and seems to denote a simple extension of the capital?as if a ravenous Paris need only extend her web. However, it was not our goal to embrace the tenets of the metro area?s comprehensive plan, aka the Grand Projet, envisioned as a future El Dorado by the planners and developers. Rather, our aim was to depict the Parisian suburbs...

"Belgrade, with all of its historical complexity, joins Zagreb and Prague in representing the Eastern European dimension of the Akashic Noir Series. 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."--Provided by publisher.

" The best noir writers make us feel the heat of the sun, the touch of a lover. Setting can be gritty but can also be sublime, no longer relegated to urban locales and seedy hotel rooms but also mansions and swimming pools. Hence, Palm Springs, which may seem like an odd setting for a collection of dark short stories--it's so sunny and bright here. The quality of light is unlike anywhere else, and with an average of three hundred sunny days a year,...

"Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. The best-selling original Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford and published in 2006, featured brand-new stories from some of the city's best living writers. Now, in Miami Noir: The Classics, Standiford has turned his eye toward the outstanding...

"A town named after a British philosopher doesn't exactly evoke visions of Goodis or Highsmith. Grifters? Dames? Cops? In Berkeley? On the surface the alleys don't seem that dark, until we look a little closer. Possibly the most iconic visual image of Berkeley does involve cops. It's the film with Mario Savio, atop a police car with a megaphone, declaring, There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart,...

Addis Ababa is a sprawling melting pot of cultures where rich and poor live side by side in relative harmony—until they don't.

Maaza Mengiste's story "Dust, Ash, Flight" has won the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Short Story, presented by the Mystery Writers of America

"Several of the 14 stories here, most of them striking and accomplished, involve post-revolution loss, guilt and revenge. Some

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This much-anticipated and long-overdue installment in Akashic's Noir Series reveals many sides of Atlanta only known to its residents.

"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

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