Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Noir books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
- 1. Noir: A Novel (2019)
- 2. The Best American Noir of the Century (The Best American Series ®) (2011)
- 3. Enemies With Benefits (2019)
- 4. Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection (2019)
- 5. Best Fake Fiancé (2019)
- 6. Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem (1994)
- 7. L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City (2010)
- 8. How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling (2007)
- 9. Horror Noire (2011)
- 10. The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir (2014)
- 11. Film Noir Reader (Limelight) (2004)
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1. Noir: A Novel (2019)
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!The absurdly outrageous, sarcastically satiric, and always entertaining New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore returns in finest madcap form with this zany noir set on the mean streets of post-World War II San Francisco, and featuring a diverse cast of characters, including a hapless bartender; his Chinese sidekick; a doll with sharp angles and dangerous curves; a tight-lipped Air Force general; a wisecracking waif; Petey, a black mamba; and many more.San Francisco. Summer, 1947. A dame walks into a saloon . . .It’s not every afternoon…
2. The Best American Noir of the Century (The Best American Series ®) (2011)
“Well worth its impressive weight in gold, it would be a crime not to have this seminal masterpiece in your collection.”—New York Journal of Books In his introduction to The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, “Noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It’s the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It’s the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad.” Offering the…
3. Enemies With Benefits (2019)
Eli Loveless was my nemesis from the first day of kindergarten until we graduated high school. Everything I did, he had to do better – and vice versa. The day he left town was the best day of my life.The day he came back, ten years later, was the worst.And now? He's my co-worker.Grown-up Eli Loveless is sexy as sin. He's hotter than asphalt in the summer. The irritating kid I once knew is gone, and he's been replaced by a man with green eyes, perfect abs, and a cocky smile.It's bad that I want him.It's worse that he wants me back.There are looks. There are smirks….
4. Spider-Man Noir: The Complete Collection (2019)
The hard-boiled adventures of the grittiest webslinger in the Spider-Verse! In the dark days of the Great Depression, young reporter Peter Parker finds himself forever changed by a spider's bite — and resolves to take on crime and corruption as the urban vigilante called Spider-Man! And there are no shortage of foes — from gangland bosses the Goblin and Crime Master, to pulp-era twists on familiar faces like Kraven, Chameleon, Doctor Octopus and more! But will the seductive Felicia Hardy prove friend or foe? Plus, Spider-Man Noir enters the Spider-Verse via an encounter with Mysterio — and shares…
5. Best Fake Fiancé (2019)
My life has room for exactly two women: my daughter Rusty and my best friend Charlotte — known to everyone as Charlie. One is a feisty, tomboyish firecracker. The other is my seven-year-old. I can’t imagine life without either.So when my ex springs a custody hearing on me, I find myself telling the judge that I’m engaged to Charlie.The only problem? I’m not. Time to fake an engagement.Pretending we’re a couple will be no big deal.We’ve been friends for years. We used to sneak cigarettes behind the bleachers. We turned cans of hairspray into…
6. Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem (1994)
Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he’d seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison…This collection includes:MARCH VIOLETSTHE PALE CRIMINALA GERMAN REQUIEM…
7. L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City (2010)
Midcentury Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as “the white spot of America,” a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world’s most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of “pleasure girls” and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men—one L.A.’ s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief—each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city….
8. How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling (2007)
How to Draw Noir Comics: The Art and Technique of Visual Storytelling is an instructional book based on the cinematic, high contrast noir style of acclaimed comic book and graphic novel illustrator, Shawn Martinbrough.Martinbrough’s work has been published by DC Comics, Vertigo and Marvel Comics, illustrating stories ranging from Batman to the X-Men. This is his first book, released through Watson-Guptill Publications and The Nielsen Company.In How to Draw Noir Comics, Martinbrough shows how the expert use of the color black is critical for drawing noir comics. He demonstrates how to set a mood, design…
9. Horror Noire (2011)
From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890’s to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to…
10. The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir (2014)
The poster art from the noir era has a bold look and an iconography all its own. During noir’s golden age, studios commissioned these arresting illustrations for even the lowliest “B” thriller. The Art of Noir is the first book to present this striking artwork in a lavishly produced, large-format, full-color volume. The more than 300 dazzling posters and other promotional material range from the classics to rare archive films such as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Blonde Kiss. With rare offerings from around the world and background information on the illustrators, The Art of…
11. Film Noir Reader (Limelight) (2004)
This bountiful anthology combines all the key early writings on film noir with many newer essays, including some published here for the first time. The collection is assembled by the editors of the Third Edition of Film Noir: An Enclyclopedic Reference to the American Style, now regarded as the standard work on the subject….
Best Noir Books: The Ultimate List
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Genesis and download some noir books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation
Author(s): Linda Badley, Andrew Nestingen, Jaakko Seppälä
ID: 2700707, Publisher: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2020, Size: 7 Mb, Format: pdf
Miami Noir
Author(s): Les Standiford
ID: 2817798, Publisher: Akashic Books, Year: 2020, Size: 4 Mb, Format: epub
Neo-Noir as Post-Classical Hollywood Cinema
Author(s): Robert Arnett
ID: 2877768, Publisher: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan, Year: 2020, Size: 3 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not absolute. Some books are absolutely hot items according to Los Angeles Times, others are drafted by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.