“Dominant Hand” by Susan Hammerman
With what was supposed to be his good arm, Len positioned the red leather stool into the curve of the curved bar.
Category: Mondays Are Murder
Mondays Are Murder: Original Noir Fiction to Get Your Week off to a Dark Start
Launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir, our award-winning city-based Noir Series now has over 60 volumes in print, with many more to come. Each volume is overseen by an editor with intimate knowledge of the title city; each story is brand new from a local author, and each is set within a distinct neighborhood or location.
While we’ve been thrilled to publish the original works of over 800 authors in the series, we still long for more. And while we are constantly seeking homegrown editors with native knowledge of national and international cities not yet visited by the series, we’re eager to dig deeper.
Mondays Are Murder allows us to offer a glimpse of cities not yet seen, neighborhoods or hidden corners not yet explored in previous volumes, and, we hope, writers not yet exposed to our company. Contributions to the Akashic Noir Series are bound by mood: our authors are challenged to capture the sometimes intangible moods of “noir” and of “place”. The stories run the gamut from darkly-toned literary glimpses to straight-up crime fiction, while similarly capturing the unique aura of the story’s location.
Our web model for the series has one further dimension: A 750-word limit. Sound like murder? It is. But so are Mondays.
“El Cerrito” by Ron Riekki
“He shot her.”
“I see.”
“Yup.”
“Ten-Wide” by Mark Cotton
I watched that little trailer for three days and nights until I knew the old man’s routine. And, the whole time I couldn’t stop wondering how somebody like him ended up in a place like this.
“It’s a Dry Heat” by Charles West
Papa was confused when he woke up, and rightfully so.
“Cold Case Superstar” by Jean Wolfersteig
Steps creak and strange knocking sounds float to my apartment from the basement, and the cat refuses to go downstairs after dark. You can’t blame him, given what happened here.
“Murder by Glowworm” by JJ Munro
If you stand in the Newnes glowworm tunnel, you can almost hear the old steam locos roaring through.
“Over Before It Started” by Robert Mangeot
The coyote pups have got bold, come right beside the porch near sundown. Gives me someone to talk to, I suppose.
“The Last of the Great Harvard Men to Fall” by Timothy DeLizza
From the starting gun, the 400-meter dash looked all wrong.