Capturing the faces of the century's most notorious criminals and their shocking handiwork, "New York Noir" showcases 40 years of crime with over 130 stunning photos from the archives of New York's "Daily News."

Film noir has always been associated with urban landscapes, and no two cities have been represented more prominently in these films than New York and Los Angeles. In noir and neo-noir films since the 1940s, both cities are ominous locales where ruthless ambition, destructive impulses, and dashed hopes are played out against backdrops indifferent to human dramas. In Urban Noir: New York and Los Angeles in Shadow and Light, James J. Ward and Cynthia J. Miller have brought together essays by an international group of scholars that examine the dark appeal of these two cities. The essays in this volume explore aspects of the noir and neo-noir cityscape that have been relatively unexamined, including the role of sound and movement through space, the distinctive character of certain neighborhoods and locales, and the importance of individual moments in time. Among the films discussed in this book are classic noirs Double Indemnity (1944), He Walked by Night (1948), and Criss Cross (1949), as well as neo-noirs such as Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Klute (1971), Taxi Driver (1976), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Cruising (1980), Alphabet City (1984), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Drive (2011), Rampart (2011), and Nightcrawler (2014). Uniting these essays is a thematic orientation toward darkness, whether interpreted in atmospheric and architectural terms, in social and psychological terms, or in terms of disruptive change, economic dislocation, and real or perceived existential threats. Offering multiple new perspectives on a wide range of films, Urban Noir will be of interest to scholars of film, media, politics, sociology, history, and popular culture.

Discover the darker side of the Garden State with this anthology of gritty mystery stories. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each volume is compromised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographical area of the book. In New Jersey Noir, a star-studded cast of authors sifts through the hidden dirt of the Garden State. Featuring brand-new stories (and a few poems) by Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Pinsky, Edmund White & Michael Carroll, Richard Burgin, Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Muldoon, Sheila Kohler, C.K. Williams, Gerald Stern, Lou Manfredo, S.A. Solomon, Bradford Morrow, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffrey Ford, S.J. Rozan, Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini, Hirsh Sawhney, and Robert Arellano. Praise for New Jersey Noir “Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book . . . Highlights include Lou Manfredo’s “Soul Anatomy,” in which a politically connected rookie cop is involved in a fatal shooting in Camden; S.J. Rozan’s “New Day Newark,” in which an elderly woman takes a stand against two drug-dealing gangs; and Jonathan Santlofer’s “Lola,” in which a struggling Hoboken artist finds his muse . . . . Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry.” —Publishers Weekly “It was inevitable that this fine noir series would reach New Jersey. It took longer than some readers might have wanted, but, oh boy, was it worth the wait . . . More than most of the entries in the series, this volume is about mood and atmosphere more than it is about plot and character . . . It should go without saying that regular readers of the noir series will seek this one out, but beyond that, the book also serves as a very good introduction to what is a popular but often misunderstood term and style of writing.” —Booklist, Starred Review “A lovingly collected assortment of tales and poems that range from the disturbing to the darkly humorous.” —Shelf Awareness

This original anthology of noir fiction set across the Big Easy includes new stories by Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, Maureen Tan, and more. New Orleans has always the home of the lovable rogue, the poison magnolia, the bent politico, and the heartless con artist. And in post-Katrina times, it’s the same old story—only with a new breed of carpetbagger thrown in. In other words, it’s fertile ground for noir fiction. This sparkling collection of tales, set both before and after the storm, explores the city’s gutted neighborhoods, its outwardly gleaming “sliver by the river,” its still-raunchy French Quarter, and other hoods so far from the Quarter they might as well be on another continent. It also looks back into the city’s darkly colorful, nineteenth century past. New Orleans Noir includes brand-new stories by Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, Patty Friedmann, Barbara Hambly, Tim McLoughlin, Olympia Vernon, David Fulmer, Jervey Tervalon, James Nolan, Kalamu ya Salaam, Maureen Tan, Thomas Adcock, Jeri Cain Rossi, Christine Wiltz, Greg Herren, Julie Smith, Eric Overmyer, and Ted O’Brien. A portion of the profits from New Orleans Noir will be donated to Katrina KARES, a hurricane relief program sponsored by the New Orleans Institute that awards grants to writers affected by the hurricane.

Presents a collection of short stories featuring noir and crime fiction about Staten Island, New York, by such authors as Todd Craig, Linda Nieves-Powell, S. J. Rozan, and Patricia Smith.

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.

“Fluent, mordant, authentic, propulsive…wonderfully lit from within” (Lee Child, The New York Times Book Review), this critically acclaimed, stunningly mature literary debut is the darkly comic story of a car thief on the run in the gritty and arid landscape of the 1970s Texas panhandle. In this “stellar debut,” (Publishers Weekly) car thief Troy Falconer returns home after years of wandering to reunite with his younger brother, Harlan. The two set out in search of Harlan’s wife, Bettie, who’s left him cold and run away with the little money he had. When stealing a station wagon for their journey, Troy and Harlan find they’ve accidentally kidnapped a Mennonite girl, Martha Zacharias, sleeping in the back of the car. But Martha turns out to be a stubborn survivor who refuses to be sent home, so together, these unlikely road companions haphazardly attempt to escape across the Mexican border, pursued by the police and Martha’s vengeful father. But this is only one layer of Troy’s story. Through interjecting entries from his journal that span decades of an unraveling life, we learn that Troy has become so estranged from society that he’s shunned the very idea of personal property. Instead of claiming possessions, he works motels, stealing the suitcases and cars of men roughly his size, living with their things until those things feel too much like his own, at which point he finds another motel and vanishes again into another man’s identity. Richly nuanced and complex, “like a nesting doll, [Presidio] continually uncovers stories within stories” (Ian Stansel, author of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo). With a page-turning plot, prose as gritty and austere as the novel’s Texas panhandle setting, and a determined yet doomed cast of characters ranging from con artists to religious outcasts, this “rich and rare book” (Annie Proulx, author of Barkskins) packs a kick like a shot of whiskey. Perfect for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, and Larry McMurtry, who said that Kennedy “captures the funny yet tragic relentlessness of survival in an unforgiving place. Let’s hope he keeps his novelistic cool and brings us much, much more.”

The expansion of the Black American middle class and the unprecedented increase in the number of Black immigrants since the 1960s have transformed the cultural landscape of New York. In The New Noir, Orly Clerge explores the richly complex worlds of an extraordinary generation of Black middle class adults who have migrated from different corners of the African diaspora to suburbia. The Black middle class today consists of diverse groups whose ongoing cultural, political, and material ties to the American South and Global South shape their cultural interactions at work, in their suburban neighborhoods, and at their kitchen tables. Clerge compellingly analyzes the making of a new multinational Black middle class and how they create a spectrum of Black identities that help them carve out places of their own in a changing 21st-century global city. Paying particular attention to the largest Black ethnic groups in the country, Black Americans, Jamaicans, and Haitians, Clerge’s ethnography draws on over 80 interviews with residents to examine the overlooked places where New York’s middle class resides in Queens and Long Island. This book reveals that region and nationality shape how the Black middle class negotiates the everyday politics of race and class.

Film noir is more than a cinematic genre. It is an essential aspect of American culture. Along with the cowboy of the Wild West, the denizen of the film noir city is at the very center of our mythological iconography. Described as the style of an anxious victor, film noir began during the post-war period, a strange time of hope and optimism mixed with fear and even paranoia. The shadow of this rich and powerful cinematic style can now be seen in virtually every artistic medium. The spectacular success of recent neo-film noirs is only the tip of an iceberg. In the dead-on, nocturnal jazz of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, the chilled urban landscapes of Edward Hopper, and postwar literary fiction from Nelson Algren and William S. Burroughs to pulp masters like Horace McCoy, we find an unsettling recognition of the dark hollowness beneath the surface of the American Dream. Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance. Somewhere in the Night can be appreciated as a lucid introduction to a fundamental style of American culture, and also as a guide to film noir's heyday. Ultimately, though, as the work of a bold talent adeptly manipulating poetic cadence and metaphor, it is itself a superb aesthetic artifact.