Urban Noir Fantasy

Private eye Eddie Valiant doesn't like Toons - those cartoon characters who live side-by-side with humans. But Eddie will work for a Toon if his cash supply is low enough. So he reluctantly agrees when Roger Rabbit, a Toon who plays straight man (or should that be straight rabbit) in the Baby Herman cartoon series, asks him to find out who's been trying - unsuccessfully - to buy his contract from the DeGreasy Brothers syndicate. Then Rocco DeGreasy is murdered - and Roger is the prime suspect!

Name's Kane, Kate Kane. I'm a paranormal private investigator, which is like a normal private investigator except - and stop me if you're having trouble following this - more paranormal. This business comes with a few basic rules: don't start drinking before noon, don't get your partner killed, don't sleep with the woman who killed him. Last year I broke all of them.

A troll in a pinstriped suit walks into a bar. He's looking for Alex Southerland, private investigator and summoner of elementals. A gorgeous dame is going to come to Southerland with a case, and the troll tells him that he is going to turn the case down - or else! But Southerland doesn't respond well to threats. Besides, he needs the dough! Framed for a murder he didn't commit, Southerland weaves his way from seedy neighborhoods to the dazzling lights of downtown - and from one savage beating to the next - to clear his name and uncover a shocking secret.

Alex Southerland is back, along with Smokey and Badass. Our hardboiled private dick and elementalist is searching the mean streets of the city for the secret behind a deadly curse. It all starts during a rare Yerba City heat wave when a witch with strange snake tats winding up her gams walks into his office to report that she has committed a murder. Thing is, the murdered man isn't dead, and, well, it's complicated.

Atlantica - the forgotten isle, the glittering gem in the cesspool of humanity's future. Anything you do inside your own home is allowed. Those with obscene wealth find it a haven, while every major country of in the world craves the secrets they believe are buried in the mist. Where mystery happens, John Chambers can exist: ex-soldier, gritty realist, detective. It's whispered that John "Dick" Chambers is the man you go to when you need someone who can't be bought.

From the pulpy pages of Black Mask Magazine in the 1920s and '30s, through the film noir era of the 1940s, to today, noir fiction has lured many a reader and movie-goer away from the light and into the dark underbelly of society. Names such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain; titles like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice...these have inhabited our collective consciousness for decades. Humanity, it seems, loves the dark. And within the dark, one figure stands out: that of the femme fatale.

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he's no longer a zombie. But after killing his brother, Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie's death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen - without Vitus, that is. Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie's messes, but tracking down his brother's homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. The first of them is a convicted killer assumed to be safely behind bars.

Years ago, while serving in the Borderland, Alexander Southerland watched helplessly as his friend was terrorized and murdered by the Sihuanaba, a mysterious avenging spirit known as the Woman in White. Now an established private investigator in the teeming metropolis of Yerba City, Southerland finds himself on a collision course with this specter from his past. As the detective tries to solve the riddle of a beautiful nightclub singer’s death, Southerland finds himself battling corruption, temptation, betrayal - and deadly horrors from his own nightmares!

As his 18th birthday approaches, the only thing that Xander Stryker wishes for is death. Yet, he wakes up each morning, forced to go on living and remembering the image of his stepfather murdering his mother. Instead of dying, he is thrown into a supernatural world and offered a choice: Continue his sorry life or start anew. For Xander, the choice is obvious. In the new world, life is just as unforgiving. Horrors from his past lurk from the shadows. As they fuel a fresh legacy, Xander has to stand tall and show old monsters a stronger, better version of himself.

A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light.

Tyrant magus Edrin Walker destroyed the monster sent by the Skallgrim, but not before it laid waste to Setharis, and infested their magical elite with mind-controlling parasites. Edrin's own Gift to seize the minds of others was cracked by the strain of battle, and he barely survives the interrogation of a captured magus. There's no time for recovery though: a Skallgrim army is marching on the mountain passes of the Clanhold. Edrin and a coterie of villains race to stop them, but the mountains are filled with gods, daemons, magic, and his hideous past.

I refused my legacy, but my destiny doesn't want to take no for an answer. The plan seemed simple. Run away from home. Go to college. Pretend I wasn't raised to control silver with magic, dance around a fire under a full moon, or guard the barriers between lupines and clueless humans. And for a while, it was that simple. Then, Tobias Somfield had to walk into that alley and into my life, with his English swagger and his sorrowful tale of woe. Sure, the lone werewolf may have come to my rescue, but that doesn't mean I owe him anything, right?

Can your name decide your fate? I was named after Gerwalta Faust, and if that means nothing to you, then you don't know the real story of Little Red Riding Hood. It is my birthright to lead the House of Red, my destiny to be the next Grand Matron of all hoods. But as the namesake of the Betrayer, am I also doomed to repeat her crimes?

The streets are about to explode…and Puyallup’s local paranormal investigator Jimmy Kincaid is caught right in the middle of it. The neighborhood’s criminal syndicates are on the brink of all-out war, and if they go at it, the streets will run red—literally. But Jimmy’s got more problems. Someone’s sending him a particular message by sending him severed limbs. And then there’s the hitmen coming after him. Last but not least, he’s got to broker a deal between the biggest elven street gang in Seattle and a vicious Triad gang—and not get himself killed in the bargain.

Murder isn’t uncommon in a big city, but when young women start turning up dead next to mysterious symbols painted in their blood, the police turn to Alex Lockerby to find the killer. Unfortunately, the bloody symbols aren’t any form of magic Alex knows, leaving him precious little to work with and a nagging feeling that he’d better stop this madman before he finishes whatever spell he’s attempting.

An offbeat suspense tale about an unemployed man who is mistaken for a professional vampire slayer. Lost and frustrated after missing out on a job interview, Ryan is offered a job by a mysterious woman in the office parking lot. Only one hitch, the woman thinks that Ryan is a hitman and the "job" is killing her sister-in-law whom she insists is a vampire.

A routine case of industrial espionage pitches hardboiled PI Alexander Southerland headlong into a maelstrom of shadowy political intrigue and deadly supernatural mayhem - not to mention some malevolent owls and the mysterious "boy who talks backwards"! After his exposure of a white-collar thief has harrowing consequences, a guilt-ridden and disconsolate Southerland roams the mean streets and dark alleys of Yerba City seeking to uncover a secret so stunning - so staggering - that just knowing it could unravel the bonds that keep the social order from dissolving into chaos!

Alexander Southerland is hired to discover how a teenage boy is disappearing at night without passing through any doors or windows. Next thing Southerland knows, he’s shackled to an altar while a hungry spirit prepares to sacrifice him to “the toothless one who brings nothing but good.” Southerland soon finds himself negotiating a minefield of dream-hopping supernatural spirits, howler monkeys, a homicidal client, a shotgun-wielding spinster, and a whistling demon.

The Los Angeles Firestorm killed over a hundred thousand people, set in revenge against necromancer Eric Carter for defying the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Carter feels every drop of that blood on his hands. But now there's a new problem. Too many ghosts in one spot and the barrier separating them from the living cracks. And when they cross it, they feed off all the life they can get hold of. People die. LA suddenly has a lot more ghosts.

Alex Bledsoe’s fantasy novels have drawn rave reviews for their ingenious blend of classic fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. Now Bledsoe returns with an all-new tale of intrigue and murder.