Crime Fiction with an Edge
Dive into gripping crime fiction with an edge—explore a curated list of intense, thrilling books that push boundaries and keep you on the edge of your seat. Discover your next dark, unputdownable read.
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5 Shots
by Jemir Johnson
What you do in the dark is your business ... keeping it there is hers. Jay Nova is a private eye ... a "fixer" ... the right one to call at the wrong time. Armed with a semi automatic and mind reading abilities she goes where others won't, to do what they can't ... if the money;s right. But when jobs get nastier and clients with things to hide plot her death, she'll need more than a strong hustle and good aim to make it through. 5 Shots - a graphic novel collection about crime, murder and a mind reader caught in the middle - shows what happens when violence isn't the best answer ... but the only one
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Beyond Control
by Rebecca York
When he asks Lindsay Fleming to help him investigate the strange death of a local millionaire's son, journalist Jordan Walker discovers that they share a mysterious telepathic bond, linking them both mentally and physically, as they get closer to the truth. Original.
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Thieves' Paradise
by Eric Jerome Dickey
New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey presents a powerful novel about grifters and con artists, brothers and sisters, looking for love and making ends meet—on the wrong side of the law.... Dante black did his stretch of hard time in juvenile jail. Now he's out...and down. Facing a mountain of unpaid bills, a car on its last legs, and imminent eviction, he doesn't stand a chance with Pam, a sexy waitress/actress on the hunt for a man with means. Enter Scamz, a slick brother from Dante's past cruising L.A. in custom-tailored suits and a Benz CL600. He's got a job that'll put Dante back on top—especially with Pam. Seduced by easy money, she's finding Dante suddenly irresistible. But then the perfect sting goes horribly wrong, and a dangerous game is just beginning.
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The High Window
by Raymond Chandler
Crime fiction master Raymond Chandler's third novel featuring Philip Marlowe, the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times). A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune—the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation. "Raymond Chandler is a star of the first magnitude." Erle Stanley Gardner "Raymond Chandler has given us a detective who is hard-boiled enough to be convincing . . . and that is no mean achievement." --The New York Times
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The Coldest Winter Ever
by Sister Souljah
Winter Santiaga, the daughter of one of Brooklyn's most powerful drug czars, uses her own weapons--including sex and an aggressive attitude--to stay on top, after her father's empire is threatened by a drug war. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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No Disrespect
by Sister Souljah
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, rapper, and activist—Sister Souljah uses her passionate voice to deliver what is at once a fiercely candid autobiography and a survival manual for any Black woman determined to keep her heart open and her integrity intact in modern America. Each chapter of No Disrespect is devoted to someone who made a difference in Sister Souljah’s life—from the mother who raised her to the men who educated (and mis-educated) her about love—and each bares a controversial truth about the Black condition in America: the disintegration of families; the unremitting combat between the sexes; and the thousand and one ways in which racism continues to circumscribe how Black people see themselves and treat one another. The result is an outspoken and often courageous rejoinder to the pieties of race, class, and gender by a writer who is at once wise, bawdy, brutally funny, and as sensitive a lightning rod in a thunderstorm.
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Dark Star
by Alan Furst
Paris, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague, 1937. In the back alleys of nighttime Europe, war is already under way. André Szara, survivor of the Polish pogroms and the Russian civil wars and a foreign correspondent for Pravda, is co-opted by the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and becomes a full-time spymaster in Paris. As deputy director of a Paris network, Szara finds his own star rising when he recruits an agent in Berlin who can supply crucial information. Dark Star captures not only the intrigue and danger of clandestine life but the day-to-day reality of what Soviet operatives call special work.
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Dark Voyage
by Alan Furst
“In the first nineteen months of European war, from September 1939 to March of 1941, the island nation of Britain and her allies lost, to U-boat, air, and sea attack, to mines and maritime disaster, one thousand five hundred and ninety-six merchant vessels. It was the job of the Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy to stop it, and so, on the last day of April 1941 . . .” May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the Santa Rosa, she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malmö. But she is not the Santa Rosa. She is the Noordendam, a Dutch freighter. Under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan, she sails for the Intelligence Division of the British Royal Navy, and she will load detection equipment for a clandestine operation on the Swedish coast–a secret mission, a dark voyage. A desperate voyage. One more battle in the spy wars that rage through the back alleys of the ports, from elegant hotels to abandoned piers, in lonely desert outposts, and in the souks and cafés of North Africa. A battle for survival, as the merchant ships die at sea and Britain–the last opposition to Nazi German–slowly begins to starve. A voyage of flight, a voyage of fugitives–for every soul aboard the Noordendam. The Polish engineer, the Greek stowaway, the Jewish medical officer, the British spy, the Spaniards who fought Franco, the Germans who fought Hitler, the Dutch crew itself. There is no place for them in occupied France; they cannot go home. From Alan Furst–whom The New York Times calls America’s preeminent spy novelist–here is an epic tale of war and espionage, of spies and fugitives, of love in secret hotel rooms, of courage in the face of impossible odds. Dark Voyage is taut with suspense and pounding with battle scenes; it is authentic, powerful, and brilliant.
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Ridin' the Rails
by Kimberly Kaye Terry
When sci-fi author Naomi Gibson is told to spice up her books, she sees her career spiraling into oblivion. Her agent tells her the name of the game in women's fiction is hot, raw, give-it-to-me-now, don't-make-me-hurt-you, boy, sex and she needs to turn up the steam to stay in the game.Well that would be fine, except Naomi doesn't do hot-and hasn't a clue how to turn on the heat. Her agent suggests she loosen up and find inspiration, and she doesin an erotic weekend encounter with sexy corporate attorney, Brice Anders. The feelings he arouses in her leave Naomi shaken, trembling, completely inspiredand scared. After spending weeks trying to get the curvaceous, sexy author out of his mind, Brice is both relieved and angry when he finds himself traveling on the same train with Naomi. When he learns their interlude was only meant to feed her muse, he sets out to seduce her, but this time he'll give her exactly what she wants-sex-nasty, hot, screaming-when-she-comes-sex. The next time she won't find it so easy to walk away.
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American Gangster
The novelization of the major motion picture from Universal Pictures about Frank Lucas, drug czar of Harlem. The film stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, and is directed by Ridley Scott. For decades the Mafia controlled the flow of heroin onto the streets of Harlem. Frank Lucas changed all that. Born in rural North Carolina, he came to New York and rose to power under notorious mobster Bumpy Johnson. When Bumpy died, Frank moved to take over the drug business. Caught in a squeeze play between the Mafia and the street dealers, Frank got creative. Instead of being a tool of the mob, he went straight to the source--Cambodia--and set up his own unique distribution system. Using his brothers as his lieutenants and selling "quality" heroin in trademark blue plastic bags, Frank Lucas and his "Country Boys" became the kings of One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Street. Frank had it made. He was rich, successful, and untouchable. . . . . . . until Richie Roberts came along. Roberts, the Eliot Ness of drug enforcement, became a pariah among other detectives in the NYPD when he turned in the million dollars in cash he found in the trunk of a dealer's car. His personal life was a mess--his wife left him, and his son hardly knew him anymore--but on the job, Roberts was all business, and his business, heading up a Federal Narcotics Squad, was busting big-time dealers. His next target? Frank Lucas. This violent, action-filled chronicle of a uniquely American family.is based on Ridley Scott's film, itself based on a New York magazine profile, "The Return of Superfly" by Mark Jacobson.
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Skin Game
by Max Allan Collins
The saga of Dark Angel continues! Someone is killing normal humans in the fog-enshrouded city of Seattle. The murders are brutal and grisly, but inside Terminal City they barely cause a ripple of concern. The transgenics who live there have problems of their own. In an area under siege by the oppressive arm of the police, the transgenics must protect their fledgling colony against the outside world--a world that eyes them with contempt and suspicion . . . and will do anything to be rid of them. As the killings escalate, Joshua comes to Max with a dire suspicion: the killer may be one of their own. Tensions are high between normal humans and transgenics, and many inside the protected City would just as soon let the humans fend for themselves. Yet Max and her inner circle know they must investigate the crimes and stop the bloodshed. Doing nothing would simply give the normals more reasons to hate. But what they discover will shock even the most jaded among them--and expose a sinister agenda that leads to an old, nefarious foe. . . .
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Bones
by Max Allan Collins
An original novel based on Fox's new hit television series, inspired by real-life forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs, creator of the Temperance Brennan series. Original.
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Before the Dawn
by Max Allan Collins
In 2019, Max, a beautiful, streetwise member of a gang of thieves and a genetically altered super-soldier who escaped from the top-secret agency that created her, finds her past coming back to haunt her as she heads for Seattle to confront one of her fellow escapees. Original. (The FOX television series, created by James Cameron & Charles Eglee, starring Jessica Alba & Michael Weatherly) (Science Fiction & Fantasy)
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Deadly Beloved
by Max Allan Collins
Female private eye Ms. Michael Tree takes on a case that looks open and shut, but may have ties to the murder of her husband. Based on characters from Collins' graphic novel series, Ms. Tree.
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The Last Quarry
by Max Allan Collins
On the 30th anniversary of his first appearance, enigmatic assassin Quarry stars in this gritty novel inspired by Collins's award-winning short film "A Matter of Principal," written for his acclaimed anthology movie "Shades of Noir." Lured out of retirement, Quarry is hired to kill a young librarian. He doesn't count on falling in love. Original.
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Road to Perdition
by Max Allan Collins
The basis for the major motion picture, ROAD TO PERDITION is an enthralling crime noir story of revenge, morality and family loyalty. Michael OSullivan is a deeply religious family man who works as an Irish mob familys chief enforcer. But after his elder son witnesses one of his fathers hits, the godfather orders the death of OSullivans entire family. Barely surviving an encounter that takes his wife and younger son, OSullivan and his remaining child embark on a dark and violent mission of retribution against his former boss. Featuring accurate portrayals of Al Capone, Frank Nitti and Eliot Ness, this book offers a poignant look at the relationship between a morally-conflicted father and his adolescent son who both fears and worships him.
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Mind Games
by KaShamba Williams
Imagine being 25 year old Serenity Wells. She's trying to raise two children while living in the basement of her mother's house with her 'has-been' husband Kyron, who's finally home from a 3-year prison bid. When it comes to beauty Serenity ups pageant standards. Ironically, when it comes to insecurity and lack of trust, Kyron tops them all. Their lives wouldn't be that bad if Serenity hadn't cheated on him, and to make matters worse, had a baby on him! Serenity's tired and so is Kyron of trying to make this young marriage work. However, when both of them invite extra curricular activities in, the love returns. Or, does it? Will love overrule betrayal, or have they been playing Mind Games with each other?
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Dymond in the Rough
by KaShamba Williams
Fourteen-year-old Dymond finds herself the only one in her crew without a boyfriend, until Kyle Banks comes along and she finds herself lying to her mother in order to be with him.
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Girls from Da Hood 2
by KaShamba Williams
Malek Shaw is the best - and the worst - thing that has ever happened to three very different young ladies from the Marcy Projects. Helena Smith was just about to escape the ghetto on an academic scholarship, when the events of the night of her boyfriend's 18th birthday pulled her back into its clutches. Storm Johnson was happily settled with Malek until the morning the police came knocking and a charge of possession with intent landed in her lap. Keyshawn Nixon is Malek's old flame. An ex-prostitute, she is seeking revenge on Malek, the man who turned her out.
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Runaway
by Juwell
Starting her freshman year without a boyfriend, Dymond faces pressure from members in her peer group--Kera and Porsha--who already have boyfriends, so when she meets Kyle Banks, she is quickly smitten with him.
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At the Court's Mercy
by KaShamba Williams
Nasir Johnson, a young man haunted by his past and torn between street life and fatherhood, just wants a normal life with his son and new fiancee. And just when it seems his dreams could come true, reality enters, in the form of his vindictive baby momma, who has teamed up with his own mother to regain the custody rights she so freely relinquished years ago. And he's being hounded by a stalker who threatens to deal the final blow to his dreams of a new life.
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Even Sinners Have Souls
by Noire
A collection of urban fiction presents stories of characters with unacceptable lifestyles according to mainstream society, but who find themselves open to change when they acknowledge the power of a higher being.
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Driven
by KaShamba Williams
What happens when an unseen tragedy occurs? Life begins to unravel and skeletons begin to leap out of the closet. Nasir is a young man torn between street life and fatherhood, who finds his mother's scorned vengefulness and his girlfriend's enraged insecurities are driving him close to the edge. Will he be a father to his child - or will he fold under pressure?
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The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. Look for Cormac McCarthy's new novel, The Passenger, coming October '22.
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No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law—in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell—can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers—in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives—McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines. No Country for Old Men is a triumph. Look for Cormac McCarthy's new novel, The Passenger, coming October '22.
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Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post
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Outer Dark
by Cormac McCarthy
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • A novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution.
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Drama Is Her Middle Name
by Wendy Williams
Shock jock extraordinaire Wendy Williams lets loose with the first in a series of novels based on her alter ego, the divalicious radio DJ Ritz Harper. Ritz puts the s in shock and the g in gossip, and Drama is her middle name. Ritz is a suburban girl on the outside, but inside she’s a hustler’s hustler who’s masterfully maneuvered her way into the spotlight after ruining the career of a well-respected newswoman (and former college friend). Ritz’s “exclusive” rockets her to the top of the ratings, and she’s rewarded with her very own show. Like a talking Venus flytrap, she verbally seduces her on-air guests, only to have them for lunch as she spews gossip about their lives. Ritz becomes the darling of the station’s afternoon slot. But when Ritz goes from drive-time diva to drive-by victim, all she can think as she struggles to maintain consciousness is “Who did this to me?" Has Ritz bad-mouthed the wrong person? Has her signature cat-and-mouse “bomb drop” been dropped on her instead? Readers will salivate as they try to figure out where the fictional Ritz ends and the real-life Wendy begins.
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Is the Bitch Dead, Or What?
by Wendy Williams
In the sequel to Drama Is Her Middle Name, Ritz Harper, left for dead following a drive-by shooting, is forced to look back on her climb to the top as she reassesses the people she has loved, lost, and abused along the way and attempts to come to terms with what is real life and what is the bitchy radio persona she maintains. Original. 50,000 first printing.
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Wendy's Got the Heat
by Wendy Williams
Known as the "biggest mouth in New York," shock jock diva Williams is candid in discussing her own drama-filled life--including her drug addiction, miscarriages, and being forced out of her job and rehired to a top spot in radio.
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Cinnamon Kiss
by Walter Mosley
It's 1966, and Easy Rawlins is desperate for cash to pay for his daughter's much-needed medical treatment. Easy gets a gig working for a legendary private eye on a missing person case. Soon, Easy's search uncovers a shocking crime in Mosley's latest sizzling "New York Times" bestseller.
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Devil in a Blue Dress
by Walter Mosley
Devil in a Blue Dress, a defining novel in Walter Mosley’s bestselling Easy Rawlins mystery series, was adapted into a TriStar Pictures film starring Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins and Don Cheadle as Mouse. Set in the late 1940s, in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles, Devil in a Blue Dress follows Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Monet, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.
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Little Scarlet
by Walter Mosley
Watts is smoldering in ruins-and the cops are on Easy Rawlins's doorstep. Easy expects the worst, as usual. But, incredibly, they're asking for his help. A redheaded woman known as Little Scarlet had sheltered a man during the riots. Witnesses later saw him fleeing her building; not long after, Little Scarlet was found viciously murdered. Now, with his old friend Mouse at his side, Easy follows the case's single clue across Los Angeles. The missing man is the key, but he's only the beginning. Hidden in the heart of the city is a killer whose red-hot rage is as fierce as the fires that rocked L.A.
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Killing Johnny Fry
by Walter Mosley
When Cordell Carmel catches his longtime girlfriend with another man, the experience dissolves his calm, everyday existence into a thirst for revenge and a sexual odyssey in search of a new way of life.
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Diablerie
by Walter Mosley
Enjoying a precarious sober life balancing family duties with his relationship with a patient mistress, Ben finds his years of alcoholism catching up with him when he encounters a woman with knowledge of a significant event from his past that Ben cannot r