“Marktown” by Noah Dobin-Bernstein
These punks sure picked an appropriate place to play at the apocalypse . . .
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.
“The Fire Club” by Nathan Ward
It was at the town library that I heard about Officer Harrington’s quick thinking on the front steps of the MacCann house . . .
“The Silver City by the Golden Sands” by Jennifer Swain
There was a young couple eating on the floor of a dead shipmaster. . .
“The Hong Kong Deal” by June Lorraine Roberts
I braced myself on the backseat as my red taxi careened around the corner. . .
“Roppongi Noir” by Barry Bergmann
It was a typical August night in Tokyo when each breath felt like you were sucking cotton into your lungs. . .
“Hide Out” by Jeremy Ford
At eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night, a man and a woman checked into cabin number 17 at Venice Marina under the false names of David and Connie Monroe. . .
“An Afternoon in Lake Park” by Chris Chan
Old Mr. Willman’s head twitched, and with some difficulty he pointed an arthritic finger at the gigantic oak tree with the peeling bark. . .
“The Message” by Brenda McCray
They found Clarette on her porch that morning, a wax figure in her robe, barefoot and clutching a nearly spent half-pint of brandy. . .