Classic reprints from: Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, Susan Isaacs, and others. Lawrence Block has won most of the major mystery awards and has been called the quintessential New York writer. His series characters--Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller--all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they would not really be happy anywhere else.

Dashiell Hammett and William Vollmann are just two treats in this stellar sequel to the smash-hit original volume of San Francisco Noir.

Pelecanos has established himself as D.C.'s reigning King of Noir, but here he pays tribute to the city's other great chroniclers of darkness, past and present, including Edward P. Jones, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Richard Wright, among others.

On the heels of the stunning success of bestseller Brooklyn Noir, this second volume digs deeper into the criminal history of New York's punchiest and most alluring borough. Brooklyn Noir 2 offers short stories by the classic authors who blazed the path for the success of the first volume. Each story is set in a distinct Brooklyn neighbourhood and mixes masters of genre with some of the best literary fiction writers to ever set foot in the borough.

Stories of crime and corruption set in this Caribbean country by Edwidge Danticat, Roxane Gay, Dany Laferrière, and more. These darkly suspenseful stories offer a deeper and more nuanced look at a nation that has been plagued by poverty, political upheaval, and natural disaster, yet endures even through the bleakest times. Filled with tough characters and twisting plots, they reveal the multitude of human stories that comprise the heart of Haiti. Classic stories by Danielle Legros Georges, Jacques Roumain, Ida Faubert, Jacques-Stephen Alexis, Jan J. Dominique, Paulette Poujol Oriol, Lyonel Trouillot, Emmelie Prophète, Ben Fountain, Dany Laferrière, Georges Anglade, Edwidge Danticat, Michèle Voltaire Marcelin, Èzili Dantò, Marie-Hélène Laforest, Nick Stone, Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell, Myriam J.A. Chancey, and Roxane Gay. “Skillfully uses a popular genre to help us better understand an often frustratingly complex and indecipherable society.” —The Miami Herald “Presents an excellent array of writers, primarily Haitian, whose graphic descriptions portray a country ravaged by corruption, crime, and mystery. . . . A must read for everyone.” —The Caribbean Writer

Boston Noir 2: The Classics is now a Boston Globe best seller! "The contributor list is delightfully quirky...The collection's unifying element is a deep understanding of Boston's Byzantine worlds of race and class--as seen terrifyingly in Andre Dubus's tale of milltown resentment and pampered preppies." --Boston Globe "14 superior selections in this 'classics' volume in Akashic's series of regional dark crime short stories, the works of established writers that have stood the test of time." --Publishers Weekly "This collection features crime stories that have already been published. But that's OK when you have the likes of Chuck Hogan, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert B. Parker, Linda Barnes, George V. Higgins, Dennis Lehane, and David Foster Wallace all under the same roof...Followers of Akashic's long-running Noir series--not to mention, of course, fans of Boston-set crime fiction--should eagerly devour this one." --Booklist "These stories take place in neighborhoods you know well, and that can drive a reader crazy as well as entice him or her, but the read is worth it." --Boston Column, Summer Reading pick “Boston Noir 2: The Classics is a thorough representation of what noir has been, is, and continues to become . . . The shadows over Boston are those of Bogart, leaning into the spotlight with that complexity of soul, that derisive navigation of morality and deviance. . . The shadows on this cover prepare the tone, that these thin darknesses can be willed into corruption with little effort, and the reader will learn the ease of giving into it.” --HTML Giant "There are few gifts I enjoy more than a box of chocolates. The very best surprise me, each candy layered with unexpected delights that leave me hungry for more. The same may be said of Boston Noir 2. It's a collection of dark short stories by names you know, set in places familiar to Bostonians. Edited by Dorchester's crime fiction king and Hollywood darling, Dennis Lehane...Boston Noir 2 overflows with stories from some of the best writers of our time...This is the perfect book to open after a long day...The danger, of course, is that at the end of each story, you'll go for just one more and stay up well past your bedtime. My advice? Indulge." --Patriot Ledger Classic reprints from: Classic short fiction reprints from: George Harrar, George V. Higgins, Dennis Lehane, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert B. Parker, Hannah Tinti, Abraham Verghese, David Foster Wallace, and others. Dennis Lehane is the author of the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery series (A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; and Moonlight Mile), as well as Coronado (five stories and a play) and the award-winning novels Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone, Baby, Gone have been made into award-winning films. In 2009 he edited the best-selling anthology Boston Noir for Akashic Books. Mary Cotton is the pseudonymous author of nine novels for young adults, six of them New York Times bestsellers. She is also a fiction editor for the literary magazine Post Road, and is co-editor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. She is co-owner of Newtonville Books in Boston, Massachusetts. Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel We're So Famous, editor of Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, and Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and co-editor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. He is a founding editor of Post Road and has taught creative writing at University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Emerson College. He is co-owner of Newtonville Books in Boston, Massachusetts.

Boston Noir & Boston Noir 2: The Complete Set combines all twenty-five stories from best seller Boston Noir. "Dennis Lehane advises us not to judge the genre by its Hollywood images of sharp men in fedoras lighting cigarettes for femmes fatales standing in the dark alleys. [Lehane] writes persuasively of the gentrification that has left people feeling crushed." --New York Times, on Boston Noir "The contributor list is delightfully quirky...The collection's unifying element is a deep understanding of Boston's Byzantine worlds of race and class--as seen terrifyingly in Andre Dubus's tale of Milltown resentment and pampered preppies." --Boston Globe, on Boston Noir 2: The Classics Boston Noir & Boston Noir 2: The Complete Set combines all twenty-five stories from best seller Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane, and its sequel, Boston Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lehane, Mary Cotton & Jaime Clarke; featuring Lehane's own "Animal Rescue," the basis for the motion picture The Drop, and twenty-four classic noir stories set throughout Boston.

This anthology spans more than a century of noir fiction set in the heart of the Big Apple—“17 sure winners” from Edith Wharton, Donald Westlake, and more (Publishers Weekly, starred review). The island of Manhattan has been a breeding ground of crime, longing, and discontent since its earliest days as a city—and a natural setting for noir fiction since the genre was invented. And from Harlem to Greenwich Village to Wall Street, it has also been home to many a great writer. After the success of the first Manhattan Noir, dedicated to all-new stories, Lawrence Block combed through the borough’s long literary history to deliver this stellar collection of classics, even stretching the bounds of noir to include poems by Edgar Allen Poe and others. Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics features entries by Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs.

Brand-new stories by: Denis Hamill, Malachy McCourt, Maggie Estep, Megan Abbott, Robert Knightly, Liz Mart nez, Jill Eisenstadt, Mary Byrne, Tori Carrington, Shailly P. Agnihotri, K.j.a. Wishnia, Victoria Eng, Alan Gordon, Beverly Farley, Joe Guglielmelli, and Glenville Lovell. Includes the story "Bucker's Error," winner of the 2009 Edgar Award (Robert L. Fish Memorial Award) Robert Knightly is a trial lawyer in the Criminal Defense Division of the Queens Legal Aid Society. In another life, he was a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department. President of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America, he was born and raised in New York City and lives in Queens.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. This volume presents the first nonfiction collection in the series, curated by acclaimed novelists Tim McLoughlin and Thomas Adcock. Brand-new stories by: Robert Leuci, Dennis Hawkins, Tim McLoughlin, Thomas Adcock, Errol Louis, Denise Buffa, Patricia Mulcahy, C.J. Sullivan, Reed Farrel Coleman, Aileen Gallagher, Christopher Musella, Kim Sykes, Robert Knightly, Jess Korman, Constance Casey, and Rosemarie Yu. "There is a difference, as editor, between cheering the literary accomplishment of a fiction writer who has delivered a brilliant story about a serial killer or hit man, and reading the true account, however beautifully written, of a young woman raped, murdered, and forgotten. So this book, though it has its light moments (and thank God for those), is for me the darkest of the Brooklyn Noir series. These pieces remind us that crime is personal. It happens to us and to our neighbors. Sometimes it happens because we do nothing to prevent it. Life does not always offer the moral arc we so desperately crave in fiction. If it did, we'd have no need for myths and fables, religion or miracles . . . "Read this book. Enjoy it. Be horrified by it. Carry it with you always. And the next time you're watching a particularly bizarre and salacious news item on the television set in your neighborhood pub, and the guy on the next stool says, "You can't make this shit up," smack him with it." --Tim McLoughlin, from the introduction