From award-winning author Tom Piccirilli comes a wholly original crime novel introducing the Rands, a vipers' nest of crooks and cons, one generation stealing from the next. Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation. Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older brother, Collie, went on a senseless killing spree that left eight dead.

Welcome to Felicity Grove.... This upstate New York village is as small as it is peaceful. But somehow, Jonathan Kendrick's eccentric grandma, Anna, always manages to find trouble. Crime, scandal, you name it...this wheel-chair-bound senior citizen is involved. So, when the phone rings at four a. m. in Jonathan's New York City apartment, he knows to expect some kind of dilemma. But Anna's outdone herself this time. She's stumbled across a dead body in her trash can.

After his brutally violent cop father kills his mother in a heinous fashion on Christmas day, a young boy is raised on the streets of Brooklyn to become the deadliest hitman for the Mob. But even while he carves out a life and reputation for himself dispatching enemies of the syndicate, the hitter is planning his revenge against those who helped to make him what he is. From the cruel mob family to his own murderous old man, who sends threats and taunts from the safety of his jail cell.

The Last Deep Breath follows Grey, a drifter on the search for his foster sister, who showed up for the first time in 10 years with a knife in her side, then vanished without a trace. Grey winds up in Los Angeles, dealing with manipulative actresses and scummy agents, hoping to find some clue as to what happened to her after she dropped out of a porn career he didn't know about.

Futile Efforts features nearly 500 pages of Tom Piccirilli's unique blend of intense and provocative writing. Includes the stories "Alchemy" - "Voice C" - "An Average Insanity, a Common Agony" - "Around it Still the Sumac Grows" - "With Eyes Averted" - "Shadder" - "Making Faces" - "Thief of Golgotha" - "These Strange Lays" - "Two in the Eyes" - "Tortures of that Inward" - "Traveling" - "Jesus Wrestles the Mob to Feed the Homeless" - "Jonah Arose" - and continues with 45 of the author's most acclaimed poems.

Chase is a performance poet with a history of mental illness who's spent time in jail and hospitals while trying to deal with traumas from his past. A cult figure in New York City, he's as well known for his mania as he is for his poetry. During a reading, Chase sees a woman he believed had died on the ward due to the cruelty of a brutal guard - is she a hallucination, a ghost, or a killer who faked her own murder?

Jon Willing was just a teenager when he and his buddies Augie and Ben stole a fortune in drug money. Brazen with youth and stoned out of their gourds, they thought they had the perfect plan for getting away with it. They were wrong. Twenty-five years later, Jon’s marriage is in ruins, his kids are virtual strangers, and the recession has decimated his finances. When he finds Augie murdered in Vegas, Jon knows his past has risen from the grave to grab him by the throat. Now Jon Willing faces a choice: run to a paradise of wine and women and endless sunshine or confront the demons from his past and fight for what’s left of his imperfect suburban life.

On the morning before her 67th death, it is business as usual for Agent Jesse Sullivan: Meet with the mortician, counsel soon-to-be-dead clients, and have coffee while reading the latest in regeneration theory. Jesse dies for a living, literally. Because of a neurological disorder, she is one of the rare people who can serve as a death surrogate, dying so others don't have to. But when Jesse is murdered and becomes the sole suspect in a federal investigation, more than her freedom and sanity are at stake. She must catch the killer herself - or die trying.

Mitchell Tucker has come back to the small Texas town of Gila Rock looking for something Julianne Boyce has no intention of giving him: forgiveness. It's been eight years since Mitch went to jail for starting a fire that claimed her husband's life...and longer still since Juli and Mitch fell into a forbidden first love that their feuding families brought to an end. She's lost too much because of his thoughtlessness to let herself fall under that familiar spell again.

On a warm May evening in the spring of 1979, the people of Heartsridge, Massachusetts, are living the American dream. Families are gathered for barbecues. Kids are playing in front yards. Gardens are being kept. Meanwhile, Kara Price stumbles home through the woods, raped and beaten, her life shattered by a wicked act of violence, perpetrated by one of the town's most beloved and public figures.

Colleen McElroy grew up wealthy and pampered, the daughter of a prominent society family in Lexington, Kentucky. But her privileged upbringing could not prepare or protect her from her cruel and abusive first husband. Although her calamitous marriage left her with physical and emotional scars that have yet to heal, they haven't prevented her from doing her best to rebuild her life.

Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books has published over 60 volumes in its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Featuring Noir Series stories from: Dennis Lehane, Don Winslow, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Susan Straight, Jonathan Safran Foer, Laura Lippman, Pete Hamill, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Terrance Hayes, and more.

When 17-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the present and the past. Nearly 100 years earlier, a misguided violent encounter propels 17-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self-discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what's right the night Tulsa burns.

When Jessie Conway survives a horrific mass high school shooting, in the aftermath she finds herself thrust into the media spotlight, drawing all kinds of attention. But some of it is the wrong kind. A sadistic serial killer has been watching her every move. A skilled hunter, he likes his victims to be a challenge. Jessie is strong, fearless, a survivor, and now she is his ultimate prey. As the killer picks off his current victims one by one, chasing, killing, and butchering them with his crossbow, he's closing in on Jessie.

Clayton Burroughs is the Sheriff of Bull Mountain and the black sheep of the Burroughs clan. In the past, the family ran moonshine and farmed marijuana; now they're the dominant suppliers of methamphetamine. So when an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms shows up in Clayton's office with a plan to shut them down, his agenda will pit brother against brother and set Clayton on a path to self-destruction.