"This entry, with its high-quality stories from such genre masters as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, outshines the typical all-original anthology."— Publishers WeeklyIn Akashic Books's acclaimed series of original noir anthologies, each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. This collection of classic stories—the sequel to the award-winning, bestselling Los Angeles Noir—...

Fast One (1933) by Paul Cain is a hardboiled crime novel that stands as one of the starkest and most relentless works of the noir genre. Set in the seedy underworld of Depression-era Los Angeles, the novel follows Gerry Kells — a cold, calculating gambler and fixer — as he becomes entangled in a brutal power struggle between corrupt politicians, gangsters, and rival crime syndicates. Told in a clipped, ultra-minimalist style, Fast One strips the crime novel down to its bare essentials: vio...

The book is history of Paul Cain's early life and his calling as an evangelist, followed by an account the first two years of his amazing supernatural ministry.He was born in 1929 in Garland, Texas to a mother who had been terminally ill with cancer and tuberculosis. Miraculously both Cain and his mother survived the birth and his mother was totally healed as a result of an angelic visitation and to the fervent prayers of the family. It was during this visitation that Cain was give...

A society matron’s life is threatened after she engineers the theft of her own priceless jewelry to pay off a gambling debt. Only a debonair connoisseur of crime can save her and recover her gems—for a price.

Tough gumshoes, rotten yeggs, and dangerous damesIn the 1930s and ’40s, Black Mask was the single most important magazine for the modern mystery field. In its pages writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Earl Stanley Gardner reshaped the established view of mystery fiction, creating the “hard-boiled” private eye. Now comes this series in which the toughest of tough detectives are resurrected from its pages in sonic dramatization from the award-winning Holl...

A starlet’s plot to blackmail a film-studio executive results in her murder. Only the “trouble chaser” can clear her volatile lover and solve the crime.

Tough gumshoes, rotten yeggs, and dangerous damesIn the 1930s and '40s, Black Mask was the single most important magazine for the modern mystery field. In its pages writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Earl Stanley Gardner reshaped the established view of mystery fiction, creating the "hard-boiled" private eye. Now comes this series in which the toughest of tough detectives are resurrected from its pages in sonic dramatization from the award-winning Holl...

Los Angeles Noir brings you tales of crime and passion and betrayal from some of the most innovative and celebrated writers working today.—A Los Angeles Times best seller, Book Sense Notable Pick, and SCIBA Book Award WinnerAkashic 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.

Discover dark mysteries nestled in every borough of the Big Apple in this collection of five noir short story anthologies.New York City Noir: The Five Borough Set collects the five NYC borough installments in our award-winning Akashic Noir Series into a single e-book edition: Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin, Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block, Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan, Queens Noir, edited by Robert K...

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him.And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough ...

The desert air is hot with sex and betrayal, death and madness and only Detective Lew Archer can make sense of a killer who makes murder a work of art.Finding a purloined portrait of a leggy blonde was supposed to be an easy paycheck for Archer, but that was before the bodies began piling up. Suddenly, Archer find himself smack in the middle of a decades-long mystery of a brilliant artist who walked into the desert and simply disappeared. He left behind a bevy of muses, molls, doll...

The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before.Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M. Now one of Sampson's friends may have arr...