“City of Dead Souls” by Agee Sasso
When I got to the top of the stairs, he pushed his hulking shoulders from the wall and pointed backward at the sign on my door. I made up the half step I’d lost at the sight.
“You him?” he said . . .
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.
“Paignton Rust” by Tom Leins
It’s happy hour at the Dirty Lemon, but I recognize the same lipstick smear on my glass from when I was in here this morning. It’s 9 pm, but the room is still hot and my half-drunk beer is already warm . . .
“Mathers Bridge” by John J. White
With the full moon there’d be a strong tide to pull the shrimp from the warm lagoons to their spawning ground in the Atlantic. It seemed like all of God’s creatures needed love and were willing to risk everything for it . . .
“My Name is Brendan” by Christian Aguiar
“My name is Brendan.”
He repeated the words as he walked down to the sidewalk . . .
“A Bad Day for Barbecue” by Jonathan Woods
Jiao Lee, the first female owner of Golden BBQ, stood in the restaurant’s doorway. She watched the morning traffic on Hollywood Road in the heart of Hong Kong Central . . .
“Dinner at Omar’s” by Robert Arellano
Ashland, deep summer. It’s the one month the sun sets over steep Lithia Park only one hour earlier than everywhere else in Oregon, but at the jagged edge of town the hulking green shadows still pile up like a forest clear-cut. It’s the lull after Big Al’s Tennis Tournament, and it’s still a long haul ‘til Labor Day . . .
“Burnt Ground” by Thomas Mitchell
—Why’d you come? she said.
—The boys were busy, I guess.
I looked around. Her Nana’s house was just how I remembered: another old villa that desperately needed a coat of paint. I tried not to look at her. I could remember how good Tala looked, dressed and undressed . . .
“Simple Deadly Cravings” by Kerime B. Toksu
Tiny red potatoes sizzled on the stove as Mel rolled kale with one hand, slicing it into ribbons with the other.
“Root vegetable chowder,” she told me as I unwound my heavy wool scarf. I must have given her a look because she added, “with maple syrup,” as though this would make it better . . .