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.
Laure always believed she would die young, a murder victim. At 40, she had assumed time for the killing had run out. Yet here she was, kneeling on gravel in the middle of the night, about to die in the high-altitude plains of Ladakh . . .
Whenever I start a restoration project, I take before-photos, and when I finish, I take after-shots . . .
Detective Mercer wasn’t all that sure the man he had bound in the trunk of his cruiser was the right guy, but he was sure enough that he’d risk his badge over it . . .
Brigid Quinlan clutched the corduroy sleeve of Russell Townsend’s blazer and sneered at the herd of journalists being restrained by two burly policemen. She smiled smugly as she and Townsend breezed past them. “Fuck you all,” she whispered under her breath . . .
Marlowe felt his life crumbling around him. He had recently been called before the Privy Counsel, a combination grand jury, federal prosecutor and Supreme Court. His friend and roommate, the playwright Thomas Kyd, had been arrested for treason . . .
Soaking rain had stopped, typical of an August afternoon. It hadn’t cooled things off, only made the air more steamy and humid . . .
Daryl pressed my back against the cold iron railing on the crumbling steps beside the Shelton Auto Body. His kiss was even colder, but only because he was in a rush . . .
When the sun sets, the dogs come out in Tikiwin. You can’t hear them, not at first . . .