Venice Noir
Page 24
TONY CARTANO was born in Bayonne, France, where his father was exiled to following the Spanish Civil War. After studying in London and Paris, he enjoyed a distinguished career in French publishing, running a series of major imprints. He has written a dozen novels, of which Blackbird and After the Conquest are available in English, as well a travel book about America. His most recent, Les Gifles au Vinaigre, was published in 2010. He lives in Paris, France.
FRANCESCO FERRACIN was born in Venice and studied philosophy and linguistics there and in Germany and Sweden. He writes for many magazines, including Vogue Italia and Uoma Vogue, among others. His crime novel Una Vasca di Troppo was first published in 2008. He is also a screenwriter with a handful of produced scripts, including a new film by Franco Battisto about Handel currently in production, featuring Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon. He lives in Berlin, Germany.
MICHAEL GREGORIO (the pen name of the Anglo-Italian husband-and-wife writing team, Daniela De Gregorio and Michael G. Jacob) writes historical thrillers. Their first novel, Critique of Criminal Reason, was praised by Playboy as one of the ten best books of the year. The novel features Prussian magistrate Hanno Stiffeniis, who also appears in three subsequent novels: Days of Atonement, A Visible Darkness, and, most recently, Unholy Awakening. They live in Spoleto. For more information, visit www.michaelgregorio.it
MIKE HODGES is best known as a filmmaker (Get Carter, Pulp, The Terminal Man, and, more recently, Black Rainbow, Croupier, and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead) but has also written and directed plays for BBC Radio and the theater. His first novel, Watching the Wheels Come Off, was published in 2010. The theme of all these works is a bleak and blackly humorous take on the world as he sees it. His lighter contributions to the cinema include Flash Gordon and Morons from Outer Space. He lives on a farm in England.
MARY HOFFMAN has published over ninety books, mainly for teenagers and younger readers, but has recently been writing more for an adult audience. David, the story of the young man who posed for Michelangelo’s statue, was published in 2011. She is also known for her popular Stravaganza series, set in Venice, which has now reached five volumes. Many of her books are set in Italy and her work in progress is currently titled The Italian for Love. She lives in Oxfordshire, England.
MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI is an award-winning London-based British editor and writer. He has reviewed crime fiction for the Guardian and Time Out and ran London’s Crime Scene Festival. He has lived in Italy and has been an advisor to the Courmayeur Noir in Fest film and literary festival for twenty years. His latest novel, Ekaterina and the Night, is partly set in Venice, and he edits the Best British Mysteries annual series. With Chiara Stangalino, he was the editor of Rome Noir.
PETER JAMES is published in thirty-four languages. His latest Roy Grace thrillers, Dead Like You and Dead Man’s Grip, went straight onto the UK best-seller lists at number one. Before becoming a full-time novelist, he was an established screenwriter and producer; among his film credits is The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. He is currently chair of the UK Crime Writers’ Association. He lives in Notting Hill, London, and near Brighton in Sussex, England.
MICHELLE LOVRIC was born in Australia. She is a novelist and anthologist with particular interests in art, medical history, and Venice, where she lives and sets her novels. Her highly acclaimed novels include Carnevale, The Floating Book, The Remedy, and, most recently, The Book of Human Skin. Her first children’s novel, The Undrowned Child, was followed by The Mourning Emporium.
EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL was born in British Columbia, Canada. She studied dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York. She is the author of Last Night in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun, and The Lola Quartet. She is currently a staff writer at The Millions (www.themillions.com) and her website is www.emilymandel.com. She is married and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
FRANCESCA MAZZUCATO is a controversial presence in Italian letters, a prolific fiction writer, editor, translator, and blogger. She is the author of a dozen novels, including La Sottomissione di Ludovica, Hot Line, Enigma Veneziana, and L’Anarchiste. In 2011 she published an illustrated volume, Storia dello Striptease. Also a travel writer with books about various cities, she splits her time between the Ligurian coast and Bologna.
MATTEO RIGHETTO was born in Padova in 1972. In 2008 he established and cofounded the Surgarpulp literary movement. His novel Savana Padana appeared in 2009, followed by another “folk noir” volume, Bacchiglione Blues, in 2011. Joe Lansdale has called him “one of the more knowledgeable noir practitioners, part of the new wave of sharp darkness.” His website is www.matteorighetto.com. He lives in Padova.
ISABELLA SANTACROCE has written nine books, including Fluo, Destroy, Luminal, Lovers, Revolver, and Lulu Delacroix. A highly visible figure in Italy (and once part of the New Cannibal movement of young writers), Santacroce is notorious for her public appearances and modeling. In 2011 she issued the first volume of her autobiography, Io Non So Chi Sono, in an edition of only ten copies.
MARIA TRONCA was born in Palermo, Sicily in 1962 and now lives in Milan where she runs a web and cell phone company. She lived for a number of years in Venice, where she jointly ran, with her partner, writer Massimiliano Sosella, a literary erotica imprint for the major Italian publisher Mondadori, which was very successful and included her 2005 book L’Isola delle Femmine. Her first noir novel, Rosanero, was published in 2010, and was followed in 2011 by L’Amante delle Sedie Volanti.
Also available from the Akashic Noir Series
ROME NOIR
edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski 280 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Antonio Scurati, Carlo Lucarelli, Gianrico Carofiglio, Diego De Silva, Giuseppe Genna, Marcello Fois, Cristiana Danila Formetta, Enrico Franceschini, Boosta, and others.
From Stazione Termini, immortalized by Roberto Rossellini’s films, to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s desolate beach of Ostia, and encompassing famous landmarks and streets, this is the sinister side of the Dolce Vita come to life, a stunning gallery of dark characters, grotesques, and lost souls seeking revenge or redemption in the shadow of the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, the Vatican, Trastevere, the quiet waters of the Tiber, and Piazza Navona. Rome will never be the same.
BOSTON NOIR
edited by Dennis Lehane 240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O’Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, J. Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.
“In the best of the eleven stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic’s noir series, characters, plot, and setting feed off each other like flames and an arsonist’s accelerant … [T]his anthology shows that noir can thrive where Raymond Chandler has never set foot.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
PARIS Noir
edited by Aurélien Masson 300 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Didier Daeninckx, Jean-Bernard Pouy, Marc Villard, Chantal Pelletier, Patrick Pécherot, DOA, Hervé Prudon, Dominique Mainard, Salim Bachi, Jérôme Leroy, and others.
“Rarely has the City of Light seemed grittier than in this hard-boiled short story anthology, part of Akashic’s Noir Series … The twelve freshly penned pulp fictions by some of France’s most prominent practitioners play out in a kind of darker, parallel universe to the tourist mecca; visitors cross these pages at their peril …”
—Publishers Weekly
ISTANBUL NOIR
edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler 300 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Müge Iplikçi, Behçet Çelik, Ismail Güzelsoy, Lydia Lunch, Hikmet Hükümenoglu, Riza Kiraç, Sadik Yemni, Baris Müstecaplioglu, Yasemin Aydinoglu, Feryal Tilmaç, and others.
“The authors do an excellent job introducing readers to a city unknown to many American readers, explo
ring the many issues of religion and culture that face modern Istanbul. Landscape is essential to these stories, all of which convince the reader that they couldn’t possibly have been set anywhere other than Istanbul.” —Booklist
NEW JERSEY NOIR
edited by Joyce Carol Oates 288 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Jonathan Safran Foer, Bradford Morrow, Bill Pronzini, S.J. Rozan, Edmund White, Robert Pinsky, and others.
“Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book … Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry.”—Publishers Weekly
BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin 350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of Shamus Award, Anthony Award, Robert L. Fish Memorial Award; finalist for Edgar Award, Pushcart Prize.
Brand-new stories by: Pete Hamill, Arthur Nersesian, Ellen Miller, Nelson George, Nicole Blackman, Sidney Offit, Ken Bruen, and others.
“Brooklyn Noir is such a stunningly perfect combination that you can’t believe you haven’t read an anthology like this before. But trust me—you haven’t … The writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come.”
—Laura Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:
AKASHIC BOKS
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
www.akashicbooks.com, info@akashicbooks.com
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $12 to each book ordered.)