Santa Cruz Noir (Akashic Noir) - Softcover

"Concluding with a serious gutpunch of a story, Santa Cruz Noir is a worthy addition to the series, one that proves no locale is too outre for the Akashic Noir treatment."
--San Francisco Book Review

"Another stellar installment in the marvelous Akashic Noir series of anthologies that take readers around the world...In these stories, you will find struggle and cruelty, madness and kindness, and everything human. I recommend it highly."
--Tonstant Weader Reviews

"In June, Akashic has three of the more exciting recent installments to its wildly popular Noir city series: Santa Cruz, Lagos, and São Paolo. The Lagos volume is a standout, with Chris Abani serving as editor and tapping into the city's vibrant literary scene, but Santa Cruz and São Paolo both have plenty to be excited about, especially if you're a fan of seaside noir or Brazilian fiction. These are three vibrant, international cities with distinct cultures and social issues best explored through noir."
--CrimeReads, included in "Summer's Most Anticipated Crime, Mystery, and Thrillers"

"There's also plenty of human-on-human crime. There are intricate plots, sketchier plots, dubious motives, inscrutable movites, downright creepiness, edgy stuff, and wonderful humor. Something for everyone's taste in noir."
--Escape Into Life

"Santa Cruz Noir, an electric, wide-ranging collection of short stories edited by local legend Susie Bright, is a book about the paradox of Santa Cruz, the zen and the gunshots, the perfect waves and their broken riders, the million-dollar houses and the flooded homeless encampments. The book is structured from north to south, beginning with tales of bodies not entirely buried on lonely northern beaches and ending in unforgiving agricultural fields to the south. The stories are also grouped into thematic sections, starting with "Murder Capital of the World"--bloody fever dreams of bad drugs and hitchhiking gone terribly wrong. Fair warning: These stories are as grisly as a good episode of Game of Thrones and just as addictive."
--Bookshop Santa Cruz Newsletter

"A few [stories] spotlight surfing, a few more feature psycho killers on the loose, and others offer magical overtones."
--Publishers Weekly

Susie Bright is a best-selling author and editor who landed in Santa Cruz in 1979. Her previous short story collections include The Best American Erotica, Herotica, Bitten, and X. She is the host of the podcast In Bed with Susie Bright, author of the memoir Big Sex Little Death, and cowrote and choreographed the noir film Bound.