“After the Robbery” by Aaron Fox-Lerner
Robbing the liquor store went well. Took less than a minute. Alex didn’t even need to shoot his gun at all . . .
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.
“Fade Out” by Paul D. Marks
Fade in:
Flat on my back in the middle of one of the most famous intersections in the world, Hollywood and Vine. Cars slalom around me. Finally, it becomes clear, like a fade-in from a bad movie: what it all means. The pictures run through my mind at twenty-four frames per second . . .
“In the Covered Bridge” by Hallie Price
My life seemed great in college . . .
“Heavy Debt” by Craig Faustus Buck
Jack MacHugo took a swig of Hammerhead Amber and said, “You’ll pay me and you’ll fucking like it, even if you have to sell off your precious . . .” He choked as his beer went down the wrong pipe, but Stan Mulalap knew J-Mack was about to say piss hole, the term he always used for the island’s ancient doughnut-shaped stone money. The worthless sot always repeats himself, thought Mulalap. Like a parrot with Alzheimer’s . . .
“Desperate (1975)” by Morgan M. Page
“Baby, don’t go,” he says as she gets out of the bed—that same bed they’ve shared a dozen times or more. She slips on the tight mauve dress and slides her feet into her leather pumps. He’s pleading with her not to go, not to leave him here. But she doesn’t listen . . .
“The Vacation” by Dorothy Stone
She knew she was not his first. The concrete room contained evidence of several that had been here before her: photos, locks of hair, single earrings, fingernails . . .
“Nobility” by Michael Grant Zimmer
As usual, I detected the Keeper before he unlocked the gate; a waft of plum brandy and rotting gums announced him through the solid oak . . .
“Maribelle’s Petard” by Carol Mitchell
“Anna.”
Maribelle froze. Maybe she had imagined the word. Maybe it had come in on the ocean breeze that drifted through the curtains covering their open balcony doors . . .