Description
Famed detective and mystery writer Lawrence Block (A Walk Among the Tombstones, 8 Million Ways to Die) takes the helm as guest editor for DARK CITY LIGHTS, the fourth edition of the Have a NYC series. Twenty-three thrilling, hilarious and poignant short stories—all based in New York City—written by new and acclaimed fiction masters, including Robert Silverberg (Hugo and Nebula Award multiple winner; grand master of SFWA); Ed Park (author, Personal Days; senior editor, Amazon’s literary imprint, Little A); Jim Fusilli (rock and pop music critic, The Wall Street Journal; author, Closing Time and A Well-Known Secret); Parnell Hall (author, Last Puzzle & Testament); S. J. Rozan (Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero and Macavity award-wining author); Brian Koppelman (co-writer, Ocean’s 13 and Rounders); and Elaine Kagan (author, No Good-Byes; actress, GoodFellas).
Additional authors include Thomas Pluck (Blade of Dishonor), Warren Moore (Broken Glass Waltzes), Jerrold Mundis (How to Get Out of Debt, The Dogs), Jonathan Santlofer (The Death Artist, Anatomy of Fear), David Levien (co-writer, Ocean’s 13 and Rounders; author City of the Sun), Jill D. Block (contributor to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine), Jane Dentinger (author, Murder on Cue), Erin Mitchell (Crimespree magazine contributor); Peter Carlaftes (author, I Fold with the Hand I Was Dealt; co-director, Three Rooms Press and A Year on Facebook), Tom Callahan (author), Eve Kagan (actress and international teaching artist), Bill Bernico (author, Cooper, PI series), Kat Georges (author, Our Lady of the Hunger; co-director, Three Rooms Press), Annette Meyers (author, The Smith & Wetzon Wall Street Wall Street mystery series), and Peter Hochstein (author, Heiress Strangled in Molten Chocolate at Nazi Sex Orgy).
DARK CITY LIGHTS is a brilliant book that redefines the New York of today—and tomorrow. DARK CITY LIGHTS is part of the HAVE A NYC: NEW YORK STORIES series, an anthology of New York-based stories published annually since 2011.
Dark City Lights: New York Stories, Edited by Lawrence Block ISBN: 978-1-941110-21-8 Trade Paperback; ISBN: 978-1-941110-22-5 ebook 390 pages; $18.95 Publication date: Tuesday, April 28, 2015
For wholesale and trade orders, please visit our distributor, PGW.
High Praise for DARK CITY LIGHTS
“Each story, no matter how brief or how weird, feels indelibly true to New York.” —Manhattan Book Review
“Dark City Lights: New York Stories (Three Rooms Press, out now), edited by Lawrence Block, gathers 23 original short stories by fiction writers (including Block, a bestselling mystery novelist), screenwriters, actors and others, all set in the city. . . . Thrilling to comic, from a visit to a Garment District shop by Marilyn Monroe to an invasion of Central Park by space aliens . . . Nicely twisted . . .” —Tampa Bay Times
“A gritty new noir collection.” —am New York
“It is a given that New York will never exhaust itself as a setting for stories, and each of the tales selected for DARK CITY LIGHTS finds a different vein to mine from that very large and diverse mountain . . . One cannot ask for better.” —Bookreporter
Notes on the Contributors
Lawrence Block’s several Life Achievement awards have made it abundantly clear to him and others that his future is largely in the past. Nevertheless, he’ll follow the recent film version of his Matthew Scudder novel, A Walk Among the Tombstones, with a new noir thriller, The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes, coming in September 2015 from Hard Case Crime. (His film agent describes it as “James M. Cain on Viagra.”)
Robert Silverberg has been a professional writer since 1955, and is known mainly for his science fiction. In 2004 the Science Fiction Writers of America awarded him its Grand Master designation, the highest honor in the science-fiction field.
Parnell Hall is the author of the Stanley Hastings private eye novels, the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries, and the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas. His books have been nominated for Edgar, Shamus, and Lefty awards. Parnell is an actor, screenwriter, singer/songwriter, and former private eye. He lives in New York City.
Jim Fusilli is the author of eight novels. He also serves as the rock and pop music critic of the Wall Street Journal and is the founder of www.ReNewMusic.net, a music website for grownups. He lives in New York City.
S. J. Rozan has won most of crime writing’s awards, including the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon. Her fifteen novels include two as part of the writing team of Sam Cabot. From the Bronx, she now lives in lower Manhattan. She teaches in the summer at Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy, and invites you all to come join her.
Tom Callahan spent three decades as an award-winning reporter and freelance writer (The New York Times, Parade Magazine) and writing teacher before moving into fiction and film. Born in Harlem to a family with firm roots in the Bronx, he currently lives north of the Bronx border—but visits frequently.
Jerrold Mundis is a novelist and nonfiction writer whose books have been selected by major book clubs and widely translated. His short work has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times Magazine to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has lived for most his adult life in (where else?) New York City.
Annette Meyers, author of the Smith & Wetzon Wall Street mysteries, enjoys exploring New York’s history in her fiction. As Maan Meyers, she and her husband Martin have written seven history-mysteries known as The Dutchman Chronicles, and numerous short stories set in New York over the past several centuries.
Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the co-editor of Read Hard, Read Harder, and the forthcoming Buffalo Noir. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Vice, and elsewhere. He lives in Manhattan.
Jonathan Santlofer’s work has earned him a Nero Wolfe Award and two NEA grants; he’s been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome and serves on the board of Yaddo, the oldest arts community in the United States. A distinguished novelist, short story writer, anthologist, and visual artist, he is currently at work on a new crime novel and a fully illustrated novel for children.
Brian Koppelman is the co-writer of Ocean’s Thirteen and Rounders, writer/co-director of Solitary Man, host of the influential podcast The Moment, and creator of the Vine “Six Second Screenwriting Lessons” series which has generated over thirty-seven million loops. He has never been to Kazakhstan.
David Levien is a screenwriter, director, and novelist, best known for occasionally eating semi-gluten free and as co-writer of the films Ocean’s Thirteen and Rounders and author of the Frank Behr detective novels, including City of the Sun and Where the Dead Lay. The latest in the Behr series, Signature Kill, was published in March 2015.
Jane Dentinger came to Manhattan to be an actress and enjoyed a long run Off-Broadway in Jack Heifner’s Vanities. When it closed, she wrote Murder on Cue, the first of six Jocelyn O’Roarke mysteries, all newly available from Open Road Media. She managed Murder Ink, the mystery bookstore, and has held executive positions at the Mystery Guild Book Club.
Warren Moore is the author of the crime thriller Broken Glass Waltzes and an English professor at a small college in the South. Despite this, none of his activities have warranted mention in Penthouse Forum. Instead, he lives in Newberry, SC, with his wife and daughter.
Elaine Kagan is a Los Angeles-based actress, journalist (Los Angeles Magazine, Los Angeles Times) and novelist (No Good-Byes, Losing Mr. North). When she visits New York she always has a tuna melt at the Viand Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue. On rye.
Bill Bernico has written a novel and more than three hundred short stories. His Cooper, PI series began in 1989 and now numbers 156 short stories featuring five generations of private eyes named Cooper. He and his wife, Kathie, live on the shores of Lake Michigan in Cleveland, Wisconsin.
Thomas Pluck has slung hash, worked on the docks, and even cleaned the crappers of the Guggenheim. He is the author of the World War II action thriller Blade of Dishonor, and the editor of the anthology Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT, and he hosts Noir at the Bar in Manhattan, at Shade in the Village.
Jill D. Block’s first published story appeared recently in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. She lives in Manhattan where she is an attorney by day.
Peter Hochstein is a former small town and big city newspaper reporter, advertising agency creative star, and closet sex novelist. He was born in Brooklyn but has lived most of his adult life in Manhattan. If for some reason you need to know more about him, you can read his memoir, Heiress Strangled in Molten Chocolate at Nazi Sex Orgy.
Eve Kagan is a writer, critically acclaimed actress, and international theater teaching artist. Her recent teaching adventures include a devised original production based on Virgina Woolf’s unpublished short stories with students at Brandeis and running the IB Drama program at the International School of Uganda. Her first trip to New York City was when she was two—she stepped out of the hotel, clamped her hands over both ears, and smiled. Hers has been a visceral love ever since.
The first time Erin Mitchell visited New York, she went to the Rainbow Room wearing fishnet stockings. Since then, she’s spent a great deal of energy pretending to live there, when not pursuing her passion for exploring crime fiction, because, as she recently noted in Crimespree magazine, “It is about the human condition. It is about aspects of society we might prefer to ignore. It is rife with social commentary that gives us room for thoughtful consideration.”
Peter Carlaftes is an author, playwright, and performer. He is the author of five books, including, most recently, Teatrophy (3 More Plays). He is co-director of Three Rooms Press.
Kat Georges is a writer, playwright, performer, and designer. Her books include Our Lady of the Hunger, Maiden Claiming, and Punk Rock Journal. In New York since 2003, she is co-director of Three Rooms Press.
More About Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published in excess of one hundred books and no end of short stories. Block is best known for his series characters, including cop-turned-private investigator Matthew Scudder, gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner, and introspective assassin Keller. Several of Block’s books have been filmed. The latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, stars Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder and was released in September, 2014.
Block is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). He’s also been honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Ink magazine and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the short story. Block and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers who have visited around 160 countries.