“On the Bus” by Nathan Ward
New York was scruffier then; everywhere you saw signs of its humbling in its bald park lawns and strobe-popping Broadway head shops . . .
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.
“Swans Mate for Life” by Patrick Cooper
“Man gon’ fry out there,” Kinfolk said. He sipped from the tall boy of Hurricane and passed it to Sam . . .
“A Woman of Privilege” by Désirée Zamorano
The body didn’t belong in the freezer. It belonged in the Pasadena sunshine, skateboarding down the uneven sidewalks, cycling around McDonald Park, kicking a soccer ball around the Rose Bowl . . .
“The Price of Oil” by J. Kevin Shushtari
The next morning Anoush left so early with Baba Bijan that the chill of the night air still hung over the desert . . .
“Breath” by Cezarija Abartis
Elizabeth didn’t know what to do. Go along with the kid holding the knife and the other kid with the gun? Lie? Try to escape? . . .
“Progress” by Patrick McEvoy
Progress. Ronald laughed ruefully at the concept. Sure, yeah, that’s what he was looking at. Or a physical manifestation of it anyway . . .
“Real Love” by Jennifer Celestin
Me and Tino are sitting in the bay window of the lobby. Our building, like the other brown, seven-storied buildings around it, is really majestic just people never take the time to look at it . . .
“Last Tango in Sinaloa” by Howard Gimple
Jay sat cross-legged under a cobia tree, the majestic Mayan tree of life, where the gods hung out to keep an eye on their minions below . . .