Mark Stevens

It’s been 15 years since Akashic Books gave us Los Angeles Noir, a collection of crime stories set around the vast basin from Mulholland Drive to Los Feliz, from Pacific Palisades to Belmo

Lynette’s alarm goes off at 3:15 a.m. She is 30 years old. She wears ten-year-old sweats and wool socks to bed. Her room’s warmth depends on a portable heater; it doesn’t work very well.

“Bullets, car wrecks, chases, mayhem. There is lots of blood. Blacktop Wasteland is grim and gritty.”

Buckle up.

“Even in the darkest sections, Ted O’Connell’s debut novel is upbeat, witty, and full of ideas about art, reality, truth, identity, fate, language, the rise of China on the world stage, Naz

“In three striking pieces, A Season Past gives us three different men who ventured into that world of inhumanity and shows us their hard journeys home.”

“Heaven, My Home is a well-wrought novel in the hands of a master storyteller.”

Agnette Friis knows atmosphere.

“Malerman’s world-building is rich, and Inspection’s quick chapters and brisk style make for a relentless, twisty read.”

As David Byrne asserted in the classic Talking Heads song “Cities,” in which he crooned a series of quirky observations about various towns in hopes of finding a place to live, “there’s good points

Everything You Want Me to Be starts in March 2008 with young runaway Hattie studying the departures board at the Minneapolis airport.

"What’s hard to believe is that The Homeplace is the work of a previously unpublished writer . . . "

“these 13 stories will ‘take you for a ride.’”

Akashic Books deserves kudos for their fine service to noir.

“Missing, Presumed is a wonderful, memorable read . . .”

“rich, well-told, and memorable.”

Robin Yocum’s A Brilliant Death and William Kent Krueger’s Ordinary Grace tread on similar turf—the 1960s, middle America, the meaning of family and coming of age.