“Onryō” by Kevin Jared Hosein
Ash Wednesday. The day after Carnival—the farewell to flesh, the not-so-greatest show on Earth . . .
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.
“On Clearwater Lake Road” by Jenny Burman
On Clearwater Lake Road, there’s a fork. To get to Gerson’s U-Pick-It, you turn right. But I got turned around in my head and drove left . . .
“Murder for Beginners” by Kathleen McElligott
The red brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago was exactly as I remembered: blue-and-white tile in the kitchen, white metal cabinets, gray-and-pink ceramic in the bathroom . . .
“A Drover’s Birthday” by Benjamin L. Clark
Cattle used to walk to market. After roundup, we’d trail them to a railhead, get them sold, loaded on trains, and shipped back east. Coming out on the train with the cattle was for young hands, the ones Boss could trust. So much has changed. We loaded onto diesel trucks this year and chauffeured cattle to market . . .
“One A.M., Grace Tuxedo Park” by Jim Naremore
The Del Coronado is a stupid name for a bar in Indianapolis. Especially in Grace Tuxedo Park. Especially in March . . .
“The Graveyard Shift” by Tom Leins
The grave is waist-deep when the cramps start . . .
“A Simple Mistake” by Chris Gough
He wasn’t sure of the name—Michelle, Danielle, one of those. They’d only meet eight hours earlier . . .
“Bar Guerrero” by Cecilia Fulton
I can’t get out of my seat belt fast enough. . . .