Elizabeth McKenzie’s “The Big Creep” has been named a finalist for the 2019 Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Short Story presented by the Private Eye Writers of America!

Lou Mathews’s “Crab Dinners” and Dillon Kaiser’s “It Follows as it Leads” have been included in the Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2018 list in The Best American Mystery Stories 2019!

“Santa Cruz Noir is teeming with other local details that will make readers do similar double takes. It’s divided into three sections, the first of which is called ‘Murder Capital of the World,’ as if to put any question of when Santa Cruz’s notorious serial killer lore is going to come up immediately to rest.”
—Good Times Santa Cruz, From a Feature on Susie Bright

“In June, Akashic has three of the more exciting recent installments to its wildly popular Noir city series: Santa Cruz, Lagos, and Sao Paolo. The Lagos volume is a standout, with Chris Abani serving as editor and tapping into the city’s vibrant literary scene, but Santa Cruz and Sao Paolo both have plenty to be excited about, especially if you’re a fan of seaside noir or Brazilian fiction. These are three vibrant, international cities with distinct cultures and social issues best explored through noir.”
—CrimeReads, Included in Summer’s Most Anticipated Crime, Mystery, and Thrillers

“Concluding with a serious gutpunch of a story, Santa Cruz Noir is a worthy addition to the series, one that proves no locale is too outre for the Akashic Noir treatment.”
—San Francisco Book Review

“Santa Cruz is a place of natural beauty, ocean breezes and family-friendly tourist attractions. But a new collection of short fiction stories explores a seedier side of this beach town filled with murder and mystery.”
—KAZU FM

“There’s also plenty of human-on-human crime. There are intricate plots, sketchier plots, dubious motives, inscrutable motives, downright creepiness, edgy stuff, and wonderful humor. Something for everyone’s taste in noir.”
—Escape Into Life

“Santa Cruz Noir delivers on noir sensibilities with an extra twist: it’s that California mythology . . . It is this noir ethos that defines Santa Cruz Noir. After arriving at California’s golden shores, life surely will be better. There is no place further to go.”
—Book Riot

“Akashic’s well-traveled, always-riveting Noir series has been to some serendipitous locales over the years, cities perfectly suited to crime fiction, some boasting a long noir tradition of their very own. But for me, just in terms of sheer allure and possibility, the new Santa Cruz collection is right up there at the top. A washed out seaside pleasure palace, nestled up against the hills and the surf, home to all manner of shady types and societal misfits, proximate to great wealth but possessed of an undeniable scruffiness, and above all, beautiful, with that low California sun so conducive to good noir.”
—CrimeReads, One of 10 Crime Books to Read this June

“It’s a thrilling, whip-smart book that will dazzle local lovers of crime fiction.”
—Good Times Santa Cruz, Editor’s Note

“Santa Cruz Noir, an electric, wide-ranging collection of short stories edited by local legend Susie Bright, is a book about the paradox of Santa Cruz, the zen and the gunshots, the perfect waves and their broken riders, the million-dollar houses and the flooded homeless encampments. The book is structured from north to south, beginning with tales of bodies not entirely buried on lonely northern beaches and ending in unforgiving agricultural fields to the south. The stories are also grouped into thematic sections, starting with ‘Murder Capital of the World’—bloody fever dreams of bad drugs and hitchhiking gone terribly wrong. Fair warning: These stories are as grisly as a good episode of Game of Thrones and just as addictive.”
—Bookshop Santa Cruz

“Bright joins the ranks of Akashic editors to rip the lid off the California coastal town that’s never seemed less laid-back.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Another stellar installment in the marvelous Akashic Noir series of anthologies that take readers around the world . . . In these stories, you will find struggle and cruelty, madness and kindness, and everything human. I recommend it highly.”
—Tonstant Weader Reviews