Barcelona Noir edited by Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina, who are a magazine editor and a Random House digital program director, respectively, is a Spain-set installment in the Akashic Noir series of excellent location-themed mystery anthologies, this one filled with stories by native Spanish and Catalan and foreign writers telling mystery & suspense tales set throughout history in the eponymous city, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Akashic Books, who are generously running a holiday advent calendar promotion.
If you happen to like this one and wish to read more (the entire series is well worth it, and I've been slowly collecting them during the sporadic price-drops), Akashic Books are couponable at Kobo if you want to put them on your wishlist in anticipation of future holiday sales.
Currently free until midnight December 9th directly @
the publisher's promotional blogpost (DRM-free ePub & Mobi available worldwide), and you can read more about the book on its
regular catalogue page, where you can see the full list of contributors and their stories.
Description
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Brand-new stories by: Jordi Sierra i Fabra, Imma Monsó, Santiago Roncagliolo, Francisco González Ledesma, Valerie Miles, David Barba, Isabel Franc, Lolita Bosch, Eric Taylor-Aragón, Antonia Cortijos, Cristina Fallarás, Raúl Argemí, Teresa Solana, and Andreu Martín
From the introduction by Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina:
“Its physical beauty alone, surrounded by mountains with a view of the sea, was cause enough for architect Antoni Gaudí to raise his version of Candy Land upon its soil; a daily impetus for the city’s mimes and living statues to claim a spot along Las Ramblas and transform it into their stage. But don’t be fooled: Barcelona, with all its illustrious color and exterior fineness, hasn’t always been able to curb the darker yearnings of its Hyde to its Jekyll. Blame it on a bubbling, repressive concoction made with a pinch of Church, a touch of Crown, and a large dose of General Francisco Franco to stir up the insides of its very independent and anarchic Catalonian spirit. One that has allowed it to conserve its own language and modus operandi from the rest of Spain, and that has always attracted the vanguard to create under the sereneness of its palm trees and Mediterranean light . . .
Repression, vice, immigration . . . the fourteen stories within will divert your eyes from Barcelona’s lively Ramblas and Gaudi spires, opening them onto the city’s tainted side. One that will never appear in any recommended walking tour.”