Akron Public Library

"When Billy Summers was twelve years old, He shot and killed his mother's boyfriend after he kicked Billy's sister to death. At 17, he enlisted in the army. At 18, he was a sniper in Iraq and involved in the deadly battle to recapture Fallujah. For nearly twenty years, he's worked as a paid assassin. He's a good guy in a bad job, and he wants out. He takes on a very complicated, very lucrative job that he hopes will be his last. He's got a perfect...

Oakland, California, 1983: a Vietnam veteran-turned-police officer strives to be both a good cop and a good man. Oakland in 1983 is a city churning with violent crime and racial conflict. Officer Hanson, a Vietnam veteran, has abandoned academia for the life-and-death clarity of police work, a way to live with the demons he brought home from the war. But Hanson knows that justice requires more than simply enforcing the penal code. He believes in...

Madcap, zany noir set on the mean streets of post-World War II San Francisco. Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin is the bartender in a scruffy gin joint, with street connections that make him the go-to guy for just about everything. When one of his schemes goes south and his lady vanishes, Sammy follows a tortuous trail from Chinatown to Telegraph Hill to a hidden forest enclave in a desperate search to find his girl. Meanwhile, a suspicious flying object has...

Ben Dibbuk has a good job, an accomplished wife, a bright college-age daughter, and a patient young mistress. Even as he goes through the motions of everyday life, however, inside he feels nothing. The explanation for this emotional void lies in the years he spent as a blacked-out drunk before pulling his life together--years in which he knows he committed acts he doesn't remember. Then a woman from his past turns up at a gala for his wife's new gig...

"Los Angeles in the late 1940s is a [...] of promise and prosperity, but not for the former fighter pilot Dix Steele. To his mind nothing has come close to matching 'that feeling of power and exhilaration and freedom that came with loneness in the sky.' He prowls the foggy city night--bus stops and stretches of darkened beaches and movie houses just emptying out--seeking solitary young women. His funds are running out and his frustrations are growing....

A volume of twenty-three original crime tales by women authors features themes of lust and greed.

"To figure out who killed their husband, a first and second wife must work together ... or die trying. After the sudden death of her ex-husband Brian, Lauren helps Brian's much-younger widow, Jessica, arrange the funeral and settle his affairs. Although they were once adversaries in the battle for Brian's heart, Lauren agrees to pitch in for the sake of their troubled sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily. But Lauren gets much more than she bargained for...

"Return to McFalls County and Bull Mountain in Hard Cash Valley, where Brian Panowich weaves another masterful tale of Southern Noir. Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life in one of the most chaotic and crime-ridden regions of the south. When he gets called in to consult on a brutal murder in a Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, he and his...

"Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that's hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil's nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are...

Pericles "Perry" Christo is a PI with a past--a former cop, who lost his badge and his family when a corruption scandal left him broke and disgraced. When wealthy Upper East Side matron Julia Drusilla summons him one cold February night, he grabs what seems to be a straightforward (and lucrative) case. The socialite is looking for her beautiful, aimless daughter, Angelina, who is about to become a very wealthy young woman. But as Christo digs deeper,...