Book picks similar to
Vancouver Noir by Sam WiebeYasuko Thanh
short-stories
crime
canadian
mystery
Don't Read This Book
Chuck WendigRyan Macklin - 2012
Here, then, is a book from that place.Within these recovered pages are the tales of the Awake, insomniacs who've walked those perilous streets, bringing a bit of the power of dream with them to fight back the night - always at a terrible cost. For many, it will not end well. For a few, they might just become heroes - or at least find their way back home. For you, a choice. Turn away. Don't read this book. And maybe you'll continue to rest easy. Or open the cover and enter a world unlike any you've ever dared to imagine! Don't Read This Book introduces 13 forbidden tales from the Mad City and the world of the Don't Rest Your Head RPG.
Watch the Girls
Jennifer Wolfe - 2018
I'm used to being stared at. Observed. Followed.Fame and obsession collide in this darkly twisted novel from an incredible new voice in suspense.SOMEONE IS WATCHINGWashed up teen star Liv Hendricks quit acting after her beloved younger sister inexplicably disappeared following a Hollywood party gone wrong. Liv barely escaped with her life, and her sister was never heard from again. But all this time, someone's been waiting patiently to finish what was started...FOUR MISSING GIRLSNow fifteen years later, broke and desperate, Liv is forced to return to the spotlight. She crowdfunds a webseries in which she'll pose as a real-life private detective--a nod to the show she starred on as a teen. When a mysterious donor challenges her to investigate a series of disappearances outside a town made famous by the horror movies filmed there, Liv has no choice but to accept.FOLLOW THE WHITE WOLFLiv is given a cryptic first clue: Follow the white wolf. And now a darker game is about to begin. Through social media, someone is leaving breadcrumbs to follow. As Liv makes increasingly disturbing discoveries, her show explodes in popularity. A rapt internet audience is eager to watch it all--perhaps even at the cost of Liv's own life...Filled with provocative twists and turns as the line between plot and reality blurs in this inventive tour-de-force from breakout writer Jennifer Wolfe.
Boy Wonders: A Memoir
Cathal Kelly - 2018
How did that day you've forgotten look? What did it feel like? Were you lonely? Did you have the sense you were progressing anywhere? Probably not. Yet string a few thousand of them together and that's a life. --From Boy WondersCathal Kelly grew up in the seventies and eighties, decades when dressing like Michael Jackson seemed like a good idea and The Beachcombers--an adventure show about logging--seemed to make sense. But apart from fashion missteps and baffling TV plotlines, Kelly's youth was a time of wonder, obsession and discovery. Navigating an often fraught family life, Kelly sought refuge in books, music, movies, games and at least one backyard hole. However, looking back he sees that his passion for George Orwell, Star Wars or The Smiths was never just about the book, movie or band. Rather, it was about the promise each new experience offered him in making sense of the world, and how he might find a home within it.By turns funny, elegiac and insightful, Boy Wonders is an unvarnished celebration of growing up and stumbling toward identity. It's about the good and the bad of those brief years when we find purpose without end, obsession without limit and joy in the strangest of places.
Six Stories
Matt Wesolowski - 2016
Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an Outward Bound center. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who embarked on that fateful trip, and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby. 2017. Enter elusive investigative journalist Scott King, whose podcast examinations of complicated cases have rivaled the success of Serial, with his concealed identity making him a cult internet figure. In a series of six interviews, King attempts to work out how the dynamics of a group of idle teenagers conspired with the sinister legends surrounding the fell to result in Jeffries’ mysterious death. As every interview unveils a new revelation, you’ll be forced to work out for yourself how Tom Jeffries died, and who is telling the truth.
Terrifying Tales
Edgar Allan Poe - 2014
Here, in one volume, are his masterpieces of mystery, terror, humor, and adventure, including stories such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Pit and the Pendulum, to name just a few, that defined American romanticism and secured Poe as one of the most enduring literary voices of the nineteenth century.
Debris
Kevin Hardcastle - 2015
Written in a lean and muscular style and brimming with both violence and compassion, these stories unflinchingly explore the lives of those — MMA fighters, the institutionalized, small-town criminals — who exist on the fringes of society, unveiling the blood and guts and beauty of life in our flyover regions.
By Gaslight
Steven Price - 2016
London, 1885. In a city of fog and darkness, the notorious thief Edward Shade exists only as a ghost, a fabled con, a thief of other men's futures -- a man of smoke. William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of a brutal detective, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead. His father died without ever tracing Shade; William, still reeling from his loss, is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows. Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London in search of her; what he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried. What follows is a fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and seance halls. Above all, it is the story of the most unlikely of bonds: between William Pinkerton, the greatest detective of his age, and Adam Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade. Epic in scope, brilliantly conceived, and stunningly written, Steven Price's By Gaslight is a riveting, atmospheric portrait of two men on the brink. Moving from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, the novel is a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.
The Dinner Guest
B.P. Walter - 2021
One would never leave.Matthew: the perfect husband.Titus: the perfect son.Charlie: the perfect illusion.Rachel: the perfect stranger.Charlie didn’t want her at the book club. Matthew wouldn’t listen.And that’s how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.Agatha Christie meets Donna Tartt in this nerve-shredding domestic noir thriller that weaves a sprawling web of secrets around an opulent West London world and the dinner that ends in death.
Ten Year Stretch: Celebrating a Decade of Crime Fiction at Crimefest
Martin Edwards - 2018
High-quality entries from the likes of Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, and Ian Rankin, as well as from lesser-known authors such as Bill Beverly, elevate this above similar volumes."--Publishers WeeklyThe twenty brand new crime stories in this book have been specially commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of CrimeFest, described by the Guardian as "one of the 50 best festivals in the world." Contributors come from around the world and include the legendary Maj Sj�wall who, together with partner Per Wahl��, was the originator of Nordic noir. The editors are Martin Edwards and Adrian Muller. Martin Edwards is responsible for many award-winning anthologies and Adrian Muller is one of the co-founders of CrimeFest.Contributors to Ten Year Stretch are: Bill Beverly, Simon Brett, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Jeffery Deaver, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Peter Guttridge, Sophie Hannah, John Harvey, Mick Herron, Donna Moore, Caro Ramsay, Ian Rankin, James Sallis, Zo� Sharp, Yrsa Sigur�ard�ttir, Maj Sj�wall, Michael Stanley and Andrew Taylor.
Possession
Katie Lowe - 2021
The present hunts her.Conviction @ConvictionPod · 1mThe investigating officer: “I’ve seen a lot of homicides in the years since, but...that’s the one that keeps me up at night.”The husband’s best man: “They had everybody fooled. Or at least, she did. But I always knew something was off.”Hannah, the wife: “I told you. I don’t remember anything. I don’t know.”That’s all to come, this season, on Conviction. Get ready for our most twisted season yet.~~~Ten years ago, Hannah’s husband was brutally murdered in their home, and she (conveniently) doesn’t remember a thing about that night. But the police charged someone else—a stranger—and put him away for life. And Hannah packed up her six-year-old daughter and left London behind.But now her hard-won countryside peace is threatened. Conviction, a viral true crime podcast known for getting cases reopened and old verdicts overturned, has turned its attention to Hannah’s husband’s murder for its new season. They say police framed the man who was found guilty, and that Hannah has more suspicious secrets than just her memory loss: a history of volatility; citations at the clinic where she worked as a psychiatrist; dependencies on alcohol and pills; and a familicidal grandmother, locked away in a Gothic insane asylum until her death. As Hannah loses the trust of everyone she loves, the only person she feels she can confide in is a former colleague, Darcy, who’s come back into her life—but who may have motives of her own. But Hannah can’t tell even Darcy her deepest secret: that she’s still tormented by the memory of her husband and the crater he carved through her life.
Blackmailer (Hard Case Crime #32)
George Axelrod - 1952
From the Academy Award-Nominated Screenwriter of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE Comes a Breathtaking Story of Murder and Mischief...IT'S THE STORY of a big-game hunter, fisherman, fighter, visitor to Cuba, drunk, and Nobel Prize-winning author, recently deceased of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, whose final unpublished manuscript could fetch a mint...IT'S THE STORY of a short, balding man with a high-pitched voice and a vicious wit, whose cocktail parties are the talk of the town, especially when a beautiful woman dies at one of them...IT'S THE STORY of Hollywood's sexiest starlet, who manages to conceal things even when she's wearing nothing but a towel......and it's the story of Dick Sherman, intrepid New York publisher, on the trail of the literary find of the century-and the killer who will stop at nothing to keep it from being found.
Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night
James PattersonEric Van Lustbader - 2006
Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for Thriller to keep you up all night.
Just Watch Me
Jeff Lindsay - 2019
From the author of the wildly successful Dexter series comes a new, mesmerizing bad guy we can root for: Riley Wolfe. He’s a master thief, expert at disguise, and not averse to violence when it’s needed. It’s no accident, though, that Riley targets the wealthiest 0.1 percent and is willing to kill them when they’re in his way: he despises the degenerate and immoral rich and loves stealing their undeserved and unearned valuables. In this series launch, Riley aims for an extraordinary target in a heist that will make history. Riley will try to steal the Crown Jewels of Iran. Yes, these jewels are worth billions, but the true attraction for grabbing them comes down to one simple fact: it can’t be done. Stealing these jewels is absolutely impossible. The collection is guarded by space-age electronics and two teams of heavily armed mercenaries. No one could even think of getting past the airtight security and hope to get away alive, let alone with even a single diamond from the Imperial Collection. No one but Riley Wolfe. He’s always liked a challenge. But this challenge may be more than even he can handle. Aside from the impenetrable security, Riley is also pursued by a brilliant and relentless cop who is barely a step behind him. With the aid of his sometime ally, a beautiful woman who is a master art forger, Riley Wolfe goes for the prize that will either make him a legend—or, more likely, leave him dead.
Tales From the Hinterland
Melissa Albert - 2021
I loved these.” ―Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble“This inventive, enchanting collection reads like the fairy tales of old, hushed stories passed woman to woman, before the Grimms came and wiped away all the blood.” ―Laura Ruby, author of Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All“The writing is as spare and precise as poetry, connected to the darker, edgier elements of fairy-tale conventions. Albert’s rich and tightly focused collection forms the core of the mythology created in her novels, and her fans will be thrilled at this further glimpse into that world.” ―Booklist, starred review “Stories fueled by feminist rage, the frustration of being unnderestimated, and the insatiable longing to experience more mark this collection as timely and universal.” ―SLJ
Seven Demons
Aidan Truhen - 2021
Meet Jack Price and the Seven Demons: Doc, the evil mad scientist presently using Jack for sex; Rex, an explosives expert who doesn't ask too many questions so long as something goes boom; Volodya, a Ukrainian assassin who may or may not be a cannibal; Charlie, a comic book artist with computer skills and an anarchist bent; Lucille, whose specialty is razor-edged hugs; and Jack's predecessor, Fred, who doesn't contribute a whole lot owing to being a severed head on a stick. Finally there's Jack himself, former coffee magnate turned cocaine dealer turned First Demon, but basically just a guy trying to get along.Jack has a problem. The Seven Demons don't have a contract, and there's nothing more volatile than a gang of deadly killers with nothing to do. Luckily, a shadowy Eurotrash businessman wants them to pull off the heist of a lifetime, breaking into a bank that makes Fort Knox look like the corner candy store. Jack thinks this will be a nice little diversion for his crew . . . until a rosy-cheeked, lederhosen-wearing little psychopath named Evil Hansel stabs him with an oyster knife, and the whole situation goes completely to hell. Someone isn't playing straight, and in a game of double crosses, Jack Price will do anything--literally, anything--to come out on top