Tussinland


Mike Monson - 2014
    His inertia is broken when he becomes the chief suspect in the murders of his soon-to-be ex-wife and her new lover. Set in the town of Modesto, deep in California’s Central Valley, Tussinland is about sex, drugs, addiction, smart phones, Facebook and the internet, digital cable, anti-government militias, reality TV, fundamentalist homophobic Christians, families, 12-step groups, pornography, marriage, death, disease, and love.

The Big Ugly


Jake Hinkson - 2014
    She’s only been out for a day when she accepts a strange job offer from the head of a Christian political advocacy group. He wants her to track down a missing ex-con named Alexis. Although no one knows where Alexis has gone, it seems like everyone in Arkansas is looking for her—from a rich televangelist running for Congress to the governor’s dirty tricks man. When Bennett finds the troubled young woman, she has to decide whether to hand her over to the highest bidder or help her escape from the most powerful men in the state.

Uncle Dust


Rob Pierce - 2015
    Dustin loves to drink. Dustin loves his women. Dustin loves loyalty. He might even love his adopted nephew Jeremy. And, he sometimes gets a little too enthusiastic in his job doing collections for local bookies--so, sometimes, he loves to hurt people. Told in the first person, Uncle Dust is a fascinating noir look inside the mind of a hard, yet very complicated criminal.Rob Pierce has been nominated for a Derringer Award for short crime fiction, and has had his stories published in Flash Fiction Offensive, Pulp Modern, Plots With Guns, Revolt Daily, Near To The Knuckle, and Shotgun Honey. The editor of Swill Magazine, he lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and two children. He is equally comfortable taking romantic walks on the beach or dumping the body elsewhere. "I was imprisoned for bank robbery, where I read plenty of novels with a bank robber as the protagonist. Only a few writers entertained me with killer dialogue. I even contacted Elmore Leonard when I was paroled, told him crime writer to crime writer that he understood criminal dialogue real swell. Here's the thing: Had I read "Uncle Dust" while I was incarcerated I would've got out and contacted Rob Pierce before Elmore. The story and dialogue in "Uncle Dust" captured so much of that world and circumstance in all its squalid glory. Made me wish I'd done time with tough guy Dustin. I thoroughly enjoyed our criminal hero's mind as he observed the world, and himself, through a cynical thief's lens. And I think you will too."– Joe Loya, author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of A Bank Robber.

A F*ckload of Shorts


Jedidiah Ayres - 2012
    Two stories from this collection have been adapted into the films Viscosity and A F*ckload of Scotch Tape.

Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled


David CranmerAmy Grech - 2011
    This collection includes thirteen lean and mean stories from the fingertips of Garnett Elliott, Glenn Gray, John Hornor Jacobs, Patricia Abbott, Thomas Pluck, Brad Green, Ron Earl Phillips, Kent Gowran, Amy Grech, Benoit Lelievre, Kieran Shea, David Cranmer, and Wayne D. Dundee and a boiled down look at hardboiled fiction in an introduction by Ron Scheer. Edited by David Cranmer and Scott D. Parker.

What We Reckon


Eryk Pruitt - 2017
    Pruitt is one of our best Southern fiction writers." —BookreporterMeet Jack Jordan. He’s a smooth-talking con artist with a penchant for the fast life. He’s snuck into Lufkin, Texas, in the dead of night with little more than a beat-up Honda, a hollowed-out King James Bible full of cocaine, and enough emotional baggage to sink a steam ship. He’s charming, dedicated, and extremely paranoid. Summer Ashton, his partner-in-crime. She’s stuck by him through thick and thin, but lately her mind has begun to slip. They’ve told their fair share of lies and she’s having a devil of a time remembering what’s the truth. And recently, she’s been hearing voices. Unfortunately for both of them, she’s the brains of the operation. Furthermore, they have begun to tire of one another. For these two career grifters, the sleepy East Texas countryside is but another pit stop on their rampage across the American South.Will it be their last? In WHAT WE RECKON, Eryk Pruitt explores themes of identity, loyalty, and purpose with psycho-delic, transgressive, chicken-fried twists that read like Trainspotting cut with a couple grams of Helter Skelter.

Drive


James Sallis - 2005
    Sallis combines murder, treachery and payback in a sinister plot with resonances of 1940s pulp fiction and film noir. Told through a cinematic narrative that weaves back and forth through time and place, the story explores Driver's near existential moral foundations, intercut with moments of bloody violence.

Psychosomatic


Anthony Neil Smith - 2006
    But the beating turns to murder, and the murder into lust and desperation between Lydia and an underworld clean-up man. Meanwhile, overgrown frat boy car thieves take up cop killing as a side hobby. When these paths cross, a horror show of violence unfolds as they all slide into a hell of their own design, surrounded by the neon and noise of the casino strip on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Violent, vivid, life at hyper-speed. This debut novel from the editor of Plots with Guns is a noir nightmare that asks how much is too much in a relationship, and what is the cost of leaving? Ken Bruen calls it the darkest song I've ever read.

Maybe I Should Just Shoot You In The Face


Brian PanowichMark Krajnak - 2014
    This collection features new stories from all the Zelmer Pulp regulars as well as stunning noir photography from Mark Krajnak and an introduction by Brit Grit Godfather Paul D. Brazill.Zelmer Pulp arrives with both guns out in this Volume 1 noir collection.

Killing Suki Flood


Robert Leininger - 1991
    The moment Frank Limosin sees gorgeous eighteen-year-old Suki Flood sitting on the rear deck of the red Trans Am in the hot empty desert, he feels trouble in the air. The Trans Am has a flat tire. They're over ten miles from the nearest highway. And Suki, dressed in short shorts and a tiny halter top, doesn't know how to change a tire. Against Suki's will, Frank gives her a lesson in tire changing, then he thinks that's it, he'll never see her again. How wrong can one man be? Because Suki turns out to be fifty times more trouble than Frank ever dreamed possible. He saved her once. Now he has to save her again and again and again . . .

Rumrunners


Eric Beetner - 2015
    They're not criminals. They're outlaws. They have made a living by driving anything and everything for the Stanleys, the criminal family who has been employing them for decades. It's ended with Tucker. He's gone straight, much to the disappointment of his father, Webb. When Webb vanishes after a job, and with him a truck load of drugs, the Stanleys want their drugs back or their money. With the help from his grandfather, Calvin-the original lead foot-Tucker is about to learn a whole lot about the family business in a crash course that might just get him killed.Praise for RUMRUNNERS:“A killer. If you dug Bull Mountain, you’ll love it.”—Brian Panovich, author of Bull Mountain“The best word to sum up this book is ’FUN’, in capital letters.”—Stuart MacBride, author of The Missing and the Dead“Buckle up...RUMRUNNERS is a fast and furious read.”—Samuel W. Gailey, author of Deep Winter“Few contemporary writers do justice to the noir tradition the way Eric Beetner does. Others try to emulate and mimic; Beetner just takes the form and cuts his own jagged, raw and utterly readable path.”—Gar Anthony Haywood, author of Assume Nothing, Cemetery Road and the Aaron Gunner series“Rumrunners just never lets up. It's a fuel-injected, mile-a-minute thrill ride. I had a blast.”—Grant Jerkins, author of A Very Simple Crime and Done In One

The Fever Kill


Tom Piccirilli - 2007
    It's where crease was beaten, jailed, and kicked clear of the town line ten years earlier.Now Crease is back. He's been undercover for so long that most days he feels more like a mobster than a cop. He doesn't mind much: the corrupt life is easier to stomach than a wife who can't understand him, a son who hates him, and a half-dozen adopted kids he can't even name anymore. He's also just gotten his drug-dealing, knife-wielding psycho boss Tucco's mistress pregnant.A fine time to decide to settle old scores and resolve a decade-old mystery.With Tucco hot on his tail, Crease has to find his answers fast. Who kidnapped little mary? Who really killed her? Was his own father guilty? And what happened to the paltry fifteen grand ransom that seems to spell salvation to half the population of Hangtree? The town still has a taste for his blood and secrets it wants to keep. Crease has a single hope; a raw and raging fever driving him toward the truth that might just burn him up along the way.

Queenpin


Megan Abbott - 2007
    Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young protégée the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet--as long as she doesn't take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and protégée scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other.

The Bitch


Les Edgerton - 2011
    He’s married, expecting a child, and preparing to open his own hair salon. But then an old cellmate re-enters his life begging for a favor: to help him with a burglary. Forced by his code of ethics to perform the crime, Jake’s once idyllic life quickly plunges into an abyss. Jake soon realizes that there is only one way out of this purgatory . . . and it may rupture his soul beyond repair.

Nobody's Angel


Jack Clark - 2010
    While Chicago cabbie Eddie Miles drives the city streets at midnight, two killers--one targeting prostitutes, the other cab drivers--are out plying their trade.