South Central Noir (Akashic Noir)

South Central Noir (Akashic Noir) PDF Author: Gary Phillips
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1636140661
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The Akashic Noir Series’ forensic study of Southern California sharpens its focus on one of Los Angeles’s most recognized neighborhoods. “If you’re of a certain age, your perception of South Los Angeles might have been formed by riots and rappers. Or maybe you know it through television . . . But Gary Phillips, who grew up there, has a more historically complex point of view . . . For Phillips and the 13 other writers who contributed to his just-published anthology, those narrower, pop-infused renditions are just the tip of the iceberg . . . with the result that their work—and their city—is much richer for the exercise.” —Los Angeles Times "Let's make some space for crime fiction in miniature. Akashic Books offers its latest city-centric noir anthology with South Central Noir, which includes 14 top-notch stories about one of Los Angeles's most chronicled neighborhoods. The editor, Gary Phillips—whose most recent novel is One-Shot Harry—has assembled a formidable group of writers that includes Jervey Tervalon, Tananarive Due, Naomi Hirahara, Steph Cha and Penny Mickelbury." —New York Times Book Review From the Introduction by Gary Phillips "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 pages are a rich mix of tone—tales told of hope, survival, revenge, and triumph. Excursions beyond the headlines and the hype. The settings herein reflect South Central today or chronicle its colorful past, such as the days of the jazz joints along Central Avenue . . . From South Park to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the borderlands of Watts to the one-time Southern Pacific railroad tracks paralleling Slauson Avenue, take a tour of a section of Los Angeles that may be unfamiliar to you but you will get to know, at least a little, by the time you finish reading this entertaining and engaging anthology." Featuring brand-new stories by: Steph Cha, Nikolas Charles, Tananarive Due, Larry Fondation, Gar Anthony Haywood, Naomi Hirahara, Emory Holmes II, Roberto Lovato, Penny Mickelbury, Gary Phillips, Eric Stone, Jervey Tervalon, Jeri Westerson, and Désirée Zamorano.

South Central Noir (Akashic Noir)

South Central Noir (Akashic Noir) PDF Author: Gary Phillips
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1636140661
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book

Book Description
The Akashic Noir Series’ forensic study of Southern California sharpens its focus on one of Los Angeles’s most recognized neighborhoods. “If you’re of a certain age, your perception of South Los Angeles might have been formed by riots and rappers. Or maybe you know it through television . . . But Gary Phillips, who grew up there, has a more historically complex point of view . . . For Phillips and the 13 other writers who contributed to his just-published anthology, those narrower, pop-infused renditions are just the tip of the iceberg . . . with the result that their work—and their city—is much richer for the exercise.” —Los Angeles Times "Let's make some space for crime fiction in miniature. Akashic Books offers its latest city-centric noir anthology with South Central Noir, which includes 14 top-notch stories about one of Los Angeles's most chronicled neighborhoods. The editor, Gary Phillips—whose most recent novel is One-Shot Harry—has assembled a formidable group of writers that includes Jervey Tervalon, Tananarive Due, Naomi Hirahara, Steph Cha and Penny Mickelbury." —New York Times Book Review From the Introduction by Gary Phillips "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 pages are a rich mix of tone—tales told of hope, survival, revenge, and triumph. Excursions beyond the headlines and the hype. The settings herein reflect South Central today or chronicle its colorful past, such as the days of the jazz joints along Central Avenue . . . From South Park to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the borderlands of Watts to the one-time Southern Pacific railroad tracks paralleling Slauson Avenue, take a tour of a section of Los Angeles that may be unfamiliar to you but you will get to know, at least a little, by the time you finish reading this entertaining and engaging anthology." Featuring brand-new stories by: Steph Cha, Nikolas Charles, Tananarive Due, Larry Fondation, Gar Anthony Haywood, Naomi Hirahara, Emory Holmes II, Roberto Lovato, Penny Mickelbury, Gary Phillips, Eric Stone, Jervey Tervalon, Jeri Westerson, and Désirée Zamorano.

Orange County Noir

Orange County Noir PDF Author: Gary Phillips
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1936070030
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Orange County, California, brings to mind the endless summer of sand and surf, McMansion housing tracts, a conservative stronghold, and tony shopping centers. It's a place where pilates classes are run like boot camps, real estate values are discussed at your weekly colonic, and ice cream parlors on Main Street, USA, exist side-by-side with pho shops and taquerias. Orange County Noir pulls back the veil to reveal what lurks behind the curtain. Features brand-new stories by: Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Rob Roberge, Nathan Walpow, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Dan Duling, Mary Castillo, Lawrence Maddox, Dick Lochte, Robert Ward, Gary Phillips, Gordon McAlpine, Martin J. Smith, and Patricia McFall. Editor Gary Phillips is the author of many novels and short stories. He lives in Southern California.

Phoenix Noir

Phoenix Noir PDF Author: Patrick Millikin
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1933354852
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
"Patrick Millikin...as if to prove his witty claim that 'sunshine is the new noir, ' offers one superb specimen, 'Whiteout on Van Buren, ' in which author] Don Winslow makes skillful use of a city street at high noon to provide the perfect metaphor for life and death."--New York Times Book Review Brand-new stories by: Diana Gabaldon, Lee Child, James Sallis, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jon Talton, Megan Abbott, Charles Kelly, Robert Anglen, Patrick Millikin, Laura Tohe, Kurt Reichenbaugh, Gary Phillips, David Corbett, Don Winslow, Dogo Barry Graham, and Stella Pope Duarte. Patrick Millikin is a bookseller at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale. As a freelance writer, his articles, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Firsts Magazine, Paradoxa, Yourflesh Quarterly, and other publications. Millikin currently lives in central Phoenix.

St. Louis Noir

St. Louis Noir PDF Author: Scott Phillips
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617754617
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
“St. Louis gets a turn to show its dark side . . . [A] spirited, black-hearted collection” including a story from New York Times–bestselling author John Lutz (Kirkus Reviews). A vibrant Midwest metropolis, St. Louis has a rich, multicultural history of art and literature—both high and low. That duality is embraced here in an anthology that spans the reaches of noir, from violent criminality to bad luck and bad attitudes. St. Louis Noir includes stories by bestselling authors John Lutz and Scott Phillips, a poetic interlude featuring Poet Laureate Michael Castro, and more tales from Calvin Wilson, LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn, Paul D. Marks, Colleen J. McElroy, Jason Makansi, S.L. Coney, Laura Benedict, Jedidiah Ayres, Umar Lee, Chris Barsanti, and L.J. Smith. “The stories here are uniformly strong. Regular readers of the Noir series know what to expect: tightly written, tightly plotted, mostly character-driven stories of murder and mayhem, death and despair, shadow and shock.” —Booklist “Thirteen tales of grim homicidal happenings (plus one poetic interlude) set in the streets of the St. Louis area.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Portland Noir

Portland Noir PDF Author: Kevin Sampsell
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1933354798
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In a city full of police controversies, hippie artist punk houses, and overzealous liberals, Portland, Oregon, is a place where even its fiction blurs with its bizarre realities. Brand-new stories by: Gigi Little, Justin Hocking, Christopher Bolton, Jess Walter, Monica Drake, Jamie S. Rich (illustrated by Joelle Jones), Dan DeWeese, Zoe Trope, Luciana Lopez, Karen Karbo, Bill Cameron, Ariel Gore, Floyd Skloot, Megan Kruse, Kimberly Warner-Cohen, and Jonathan Selwood. Editor Kevin Sampsell is a bookstore employee and writer. He is the author of a short story collection, Creamy Bullets (Chiasmus Press), and the upcoming memoir The Suitcase (HarperPerennial, summer 2009). He is also the editor of The Insomniac Reader (Manic D Press) and the publisher of the micropress Future Tense Books.

Seattle Noir

Seattle Noir PDF Author: Curt Colbert
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1933354801
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Brand new stories by: G. M. Ford, Skye Moody, R. Barri Flowers, Thomas P. Hopp, Patricia Harrington, Bharti Kirchner, Kathleen Alcal , Simon Wood, Brian Thornton, Lou Kemp, Curt Colbert, Robert Lopresti, Paul S. Piper, and Stephan Magcosta. 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. By the mid-50s, the town had added Boeing to its claim to fame, but was still a mostly blue-collar burg that was infamously described as "a cultural dustbin" by the Seattle Symphony's first conductor. Present-day Seattle has become a pricey, cosmopolitan center, home to Microsoft and Starbucks. The city is famous as the birthplace of grunge music, and possesses a flourishing art, theatre, and club scene that many would have thought improbable just a few decades ago. But some things never change--crime being one of them. 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). But most crooks are just ordinary people, not professional thieves or crime bosses--they might be your pleasant neighbor, your wife or lover, your grocer or hairdresser, your minister or banker or lifelong friend--yet even the most upright and honest of them sometimes fall to temptation. Within the stories of Seattle Noir, you will find: 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 delicatessen owner whose case is less than kosher; a famous midget actor whose movie roles begin to shrink when he starts growing taller; an ex-cop who learns too much; 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 . . . and a cast of characters that always want more, not less . . . unless . . . Curt Colbert is the author of the Jake Rossiter & Miss Jenkins mysteries, a series of hard-boiled, private detective novels set in 1940s Seattle. The first book, Rat City, was nominated for a Shamus Award in 2001. A Seattle native, Colbert still resides in his hometown.

Kansas City Noir

Kansas City Noir PDF Author: Steve Paul
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617751286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
A collection of sinister stories set in Kansas City features contributions from such noted mystery authors as Daniel Woodrell, Nancy Pickard, and J. Malcolm Garcia.

San Francisco Noir

San Francisco Noir PDF Author: Peter Maravelis
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 9781888451917
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Brand new stories by: Domenic Stansberry, Barry Gifford, Eddie Muller, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, David Corbett, Alejandro Murguia, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, Jon Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nesbit, and David Henry Sterry. San Francisco Noir lashes out with hard-biting, all-original tales exploring the shadowy nether regions of scenic "Baghdad by the Bay." Virtuosos of the genre meet up with the best of S.F.'s literary fiction community to chart a unique psycho-geography for a dark landscape. From inner city boroughs to the outlands, each contributor offers an original story based in a distinct neighborhood. At times brutal, darkly humorous, and revelatory--the stories speak of a hidden San Francisco, a town where the fog is but a prelude to darker realities lingering beneath. "The protagonists of noir fiction have their own agendas, but for readers much of the pleasure is unraveling the mystery and deciphering the clues that constitute a city, and if there is a love story in noir writing it's the passion of writers, readers, and protagonists for the gritty geographical details. As the bodies drop in the strong stories here, steep, fog-wrapped, fratricidal San Francisco comes alive: here are old neighborhoods, bars, bookstores, the famous and then forgotten landlord arson at 16th and Valencia, buried streams, streetcars, parks, a lost city and the new city haunting almost every page of this gorgeous anthology of San Francisco noir." -Rebecca Solnit "I was wondering about the city's shadowside that the guides didn't show. These top writers are of the 'As bad as it gets' brand, and then worse. If you like puke, fear & loathing caused by stray bullets, happenstance getting the hero who is an anti-hero really, a male corpse rotting in the bathtub while the woman poops in the garden, the Reverend Christmas shot in the ear by the PO-lice, then this is your good read for a murky, maybe even gritty, weekend." -Janwillem van de Wetering "San Francisco has long been a city of back alleys and black figures; this is its romantic map." -Michael Ray, Editor, Zoetrope All-Story

Berkeley Noir

Berkeley Noir PDF Author: Jim Nisbet
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617758132
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Sixteen storytellers shed light on the darkness that lurks in the California city in this fun collection of crime tales. 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. With stories by: Barry Gifford, Jim Nisbet, Lexi Pandell, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Mara Faye Lethem, Thomas Burchfield, Shanthi Sekaran, Nick Mamatas, Kimn Neilson, Jason S. Ridler, Susan Dunlap, J.M. Curet, Summer Brenner, Michael David Lukas, Aya de León, and Owen Hill. Praise for Berkeley Noir “Each story evokes the dark side of a Berkeley neighborhood and pays tribute both to the city's history as a haven for outcasts and as a literary metropolis. If you race through it, consider picking up San Francisco Noir and Oakland Noir.” —Diablo Magazine, a Top Ticket choice “In “Lucky Day,” Thomas Burchfield reveals the evil that can come when a well-meaning aide breaks his boss’s cardinal rule never to allow patrons into the library early. A worried mom from Holloway wangles her son a prized place in the Berkeley school district in Aya de León’s “Frederick Douglass Elementary.” . . . . J.M. Curet’s “Wifebeater Tank Top,” the tale with the firmest criminal pedigree, is the most violent, but its poetic language and come-from-nowhere ending make it the best.” —Kirkus Reviews “The 16 stories set in Berkeley, Calif., in this above average Akashic noir anthology offer little actual noir but a heaping helping of crime, with almost every entry featuring at least a murder or kidnapping . . . . Readers will be glad that many of these tales are fun in a way that traditional noir isn’t.” —Publishers Weekly

Santa Cruz Noir

Santa Cruz Noir PDF Author: Tommy Moore
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617756474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
“A new collection of short fiction stories explores a seedier side of this beach town filled with murder and mystery.”—KAZU FM In Akashic Books’ award-winning series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Following in the footsteps of Los Angeles Noir, San Francisco Noir, San Diego Noir, Orange County Noir, and Oakland Noir, “we get a series of crime stories rich with surf culture in a town loaded with itinerant spirits, typifying Santa Cruz as a place to be lost, or get lost, or lose yourself. That ethos permeates the stories in the collection, granting them an intriguing grittiness that might otherwise be missing. Concluding with a serious gutpunch of a story, Santa Cruz Noir is a worthy addition to the series” (San Francisco Book Review). This anthology features Elizabeth McKenzie’s “The Big Creep,” a Shamus Award finalist, and Lou Mathews’s “Crab Dinners” and Dillon Kaiser’s “It Follows as it Leads,” which have been included in the Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2018 list in The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. It also includes brand-new stories by Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine. “A thrilling, whip-smart book that will dazzle local lovers of crime fiction.”—Good Times Santa Cruz “There are intricate plots, sketchier plots, dubious motives, inscrutable motives, downright creepiness, edgy stuff, and wonderful humor. Something for everyone’s taste in noir.”—Escape into Life