Wear Your Home Like a Scar

Wear Your Home Like a Scar

Nik Korpon

Mystery / Noir / Fiction

In Wear Your Home Like a Scar, Nik Korpon explores the catastrophic consequences of trying to start anew and reinvent yourself. A clandestine surgeon goes to extreme lengths when she's torn between family loyalties. A con man tries to help his girlfriend escape her pimp, despite what the tarot cards tell her. A drifter hunts down the man who hung her out to dry with a cartel boss. A sicario has a crisis of faith when an old legend stalks him. From the streets of Baltimore to the comunas of Medellín, the Mexican Sierras to Texas border towns, Wear Your Home Like a Scar shows that no matter how deep you cut, you'll never truly leave your home behind. Praise for the Stories by Nik Korpon: "Nik Korpon's stories read like Sonny Chiba and Don Winslow somehow made a literary baby, in that they will kick your ass, then kick you in the head, and then in the heart." —Todd Robinson, author of The Hard Bounce and Rough Trade "There's an electric...
Read online
  • 609
EAST VILLAGE NOIR

EAST VILLAGE NOIR

Russell Atwood

Mystery / Crime / Noir

"Finding a runaway teenager in New York City is easy. The hard part is finding the one your looking for."Private eye Payton Sherwood is hired by the parents of a runaway girl, and while searching for her through the shadowy sidestreets of the East Village, he comes across a connection to a murdered autograph expert.Short story originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July 1997.This story takes place prior to the events in L.A. Metro.Kim Donovan and Jess McKenna have never met. They are both successful doctors, but each longs to find that one person to share her life with. In a jaded world filled with cynicism, do dreams really still come true? Maybe all it takes is a wish upon a star...
Read online
  • 573
Baltimore Stories: Volume Two

Baltimore Stories: Volume Two

Nik Korpon

Mystery / Noir / Fiction

A mini-collection of short stories by Nik Korpon, author of Stay God, Old Ghosts and By the Nails of the Warpriest. Some are noir, some are literary, all take place in Baltimore.To overcome your fear, you must first face it. Someone is out to destroy Greg Robertson and everyone he has ever loved. After an accident leaves his teenage daughter depressed and distraught, Greg will do anything to make her happy again, including hiring a bodyguard to protect her. Olivia Cummings lost both her fiance and her cousin in a deadly avalanche. She has vowed never to set foot on a ski hill again. But now, working as a bodyguard with Marshall Security, Olivia must face her greatest fears to save Greg and his daughter. Something about Olivia's determination strikes a chord in Greg, but will she be the salvation he needs, or will he be her destruction?
Read online
  • 397
Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Andrez Bergen

Noir / Science Fiction / Fiction

Cut to Melbourne, Australia–the most glamorous city in the world. It also happens to be the only one left standing, but nevermind that, we’re there now and I’d like you to meet your narrator, a certain Floyd Maquina, a likable chap with one hell of a story to share. See, the powers that be are knuckling down on the Deviant menace that plagues the city, and our boy Floyd’s unknowingly got himself in the thick of it. Cue guns, intrigue, kidnappings, conspiracy and all sorts of general mayhem that make for cracking good headlines. Does Floyd stop the bad guys? Does he get the girl? Does he make Humphrey Bogart proud? Grab some popcorn and read on.
Read online
  • 338
Old Ghosts

Old Ghosts

Nik Korpon

Mystery / Noir / Fiction

After barely escaping Boston with his life, Beto has settled in Baltimore and now leads a quiet life, working construction and carving a tiny existence for him and his wife, Luz, whose family was driven from Mexico by warring cartels. What they really want is a child, but because of Beto's accident with a piece of rebar, they are unable. At least, that's what he tells Luz. But when a pair of old childhood friends come into town unannounced and threaten to tear apart Beto's life by exposing his criminal past, Beto learns that not all family is blood, and no amount of blood can save all family. Praise for OLD GHOSTS: "Who you are is who you've been, for better or for worse. There's old ghosts everywhere, but, now, as far as I'm concerned, there's only one Old Ghosts, and it's Nik Korpon's."—Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels "Nik Korpon brings us back to a Baltimore we haven't seen since The Wire and answers the question of what might've been if...
Read online
  • 148
The Condimental Op

The Condimental Op

Andrez Bergen

Noir / Science Fiction / Fiction

A collection of noir, surreal stories, comicbook asides, hardboiled moments, fantasy, dystopia, sci-fi, snapshots of Japanese culture, and the existentialism of contemporary experimental electronic music. This is Bergen's baptismal short story collection, bringing together recent short stories, never-before-seen older material, new comicbook art, and a range of incisive pop-culture articles written about music and Japan from 1999 to 2013.
Read online
  • 135
City Kitty and Country Mouse

City Kitty and Country Mouse

Alyssa Linn Palmer

Noir / Romance / Gay & Lesbian

Kitty Kerr is a high-flying lawyer when her career plans are derailed by the luscious blackberries from Lucy Shen's Country Mouse Farms. Kitty can't get enough of the fruit, or of Lucy. Suddenly, she's wanting things she never dared to want—Lucy, and the life on the farm. But how will being an artisan cook/farmer fit with her legal ambitions and city habits?Between her beautiful farm and her sculpture, Lucy's life is set. Falling for a big city lawyer is not part of the plan. Even as Kitty helps make her dreams of spotlighting her farm's produce in restaurants a reality, Lucy's terrified that she and the farm aren't enough to keep Kitty interested in love and the simpler things in life.Pulled in two different directions, will the city kitty and country mouse be able to make it work?
Read online
  • 119
Vee (Volume 1)

Vee (Volume 1)

Alyssa Linn Palmer

Noir / Romance / Gay & Lesbian

In Alex's notebooks, the story of Vee unfolds, from their first kiss, their first date, and the moments in between. It’s a May-December romance between a former punk girl gone conservative, and a gamine young woman in combat boots and fishnets. They find each other on the streets of New York City and it's love at first sight. This is a short collection of stories.
Read online
  • 75
Whom Gods Destroy

Whom Gods Destroy

Clifton Adams

Mystery / Crime / Noir

He trafficked in rum and women, this modern-day Al Capone. Clifton Adam's famous tale of bootlegging in Oklahoma, 20 years after Prohibition's repeal in 47 other states. Legendary to this day for its dark account of a man on the wrong side of the tracks out to get what's his, any way he can. Originally published in 1953.
Read online
  • 71
Queen of the Struggle

Queen of the Struggle

Nik Korpon

Mystery / Noir / Fiction

When freedom is brutally withheld, the people have no choice but to rise up, in this post-apocalyptic science fiction sequel to The Rebellion's Last TraitorOverthrowing the tyrannical Tathadann government should have been cause for celebration. But as Eitan City announces its independence, soldiers from the northern province of Vårgmannskjør storm the ceremony and annex the city. The cruelties of the Tathadann soon pale beside their new rulers' atrocities. Henraek finds himself resettled in the north, in a city where the people seem happy and well... until its labor camps and enslaved spirits come to light. The rebellion must begin anew, in Eitan City and throughout Vårgmannskjør, and now the stakes are higher than ever. File Under: Science Fiction
Read online
  • 68
Betting on Love

Betting on Love

Alyssa Linn Palmer

Noir / Romance / Gay & Lesbian

Land poor, Elly leaves the family farm and heads to the big city to become something better than a waitress in a small-town diner. Though she's succumbed to economic necessity and the siren song of her one-time lover, Alex, she can't bear to give up the farm that has been in her family for generations. As much as she wants to, she can't have everything she desires, and she'll have to decide what is more important: the past or the future. Alex has always been a daredevil, up for anything, never tying herself down to anyone. When she falls head over heels for quiet Elly, everyone's surprised, no one more than her best friend and occasional lover, Will. As things heat up between them, Elly must choose between her past and her future, and Alex is faced with a decision that will shake her to the core of all she holds dear.
Read online
  • 65
216