City Noirs

Ann Hood is the author of, most recently, An Italian Wife. She is also the author of the best-selling novels The Obituary Writer, The Knitting Circle, and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine. Her memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and chosen as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. Hood has won two Pushcart Prizes, the Paul Bowles Prize in Short Fiction, and her work has been selected for inclusion in three volumes of the Best American Writing anthology series. She is the editor of the new anthology, in which celebrated writers explore the rhythm, ritual, and pleasure of knitting. In Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting (W. W. Norton & Company), two dozen writers reflect on the transformative and healing powers of knitting.  Contributors include Lily King, Laura Lippman, Jodi Picoult, Bill Roorbach, Steve Almond, Ann Leary, Christina Baker Kline, Lee Woodruff, and knitting rock stars Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed and the Yarn Whisperer, Clara Parks.  The twisted (and often tightly knit) stories in Providence Noir (Akashic), edited by Hood, serve as a darkly hued tour of the city in all its nooks and crannies.

Neely Tucker is the author of two Sully Carter novels Murder D.C. and The Ways of the Dead, and the memoir Love in the Driest Season, which was named one of the Best 25 Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. Tucker is currently a staff writer at the Washington Post Sunday magazine. In The Ways of the Dead (Penguin Books), Sarah Reese, the teenage daughter of a powerful Washington, D.C. judge, is dead, her body discovered in a slum in the shadow of the Capitol. Though the police promptly arrest three local black kids, newspaper reporter Sully Carter suspects there’s more to the case. With the city clamoring for a conviction, Sully pursues the truth about the murders—all against pressure from government officials, police brass, suspicious locals, and even his own bosses at the paper. Inspired by the real-life 1990s Princeton Place murders and set in the last glory days of the American newspaper, The Ways of the Dead is a wickedly entertaining story of race, crime, the law, and the power of the media. In his latest Sully Cater novel, Murder, D.C. (Viking), Billy Ellison, the son of Washington, D.C.’s most influential African-American family, is found dead in the Potomac River near a violent drug haven, and reporter Sully Carter knows it’s time to start asking some serious questions—no matter what the consequences. With the police unable to find a lead and pressure mounting for Sully to abandon the investigation, he has a hunch that there is more to the case than a drug deal gone bad or a tale of family misfortune. Riding the city's backstreets on his Ducati 916, Sully finds that the real story stretches far beyond Billy and into D.C.’s most prominent social circles.

Nelson George is an author, filmmaker, and lifelong resident of Brooklyn. His novels include the first two in his D Hunter mystery series, The Accidental Hunter and The Plot Against Hip Hop. Among his many nonfiction works are The Death of Rhythm & Blues, Hip Hop America, The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture & Style, and City Kid, his memoir. As a filmmaker he's directed the documentaries Brooklyn Boheme for Revolt, The Announcement for ESPN, and Finding the Funk for VH1. With gentrifying Brooklyn as the backdrop, George presents The Lost Treasures of R&B (Akashic Books), third in the D Hunter mystery series, a tale of gunfire, deceit, police corruption, and the sacred code of the streets.