Dallas Hudgens

"Atlanta has its share, maybe more than its share, of prosperity. But wealth is no safeguard against peril...Creepy as well as dark, grim in outlook...Hints of the supernatural may make these tales...appealing to lovers of ghost stories." -- Kirkus Reviews "These stories, most of them by relative unknowns, offer plenty of human interest...All the tales have a Southern feel." --Publishers Weekly "Jones, author ofLeaving Atlanta, returns to the South via Akashic's ever-growing city anthology series. The collection features stories from an impressive roster of talent including Jim Grimsley, Sheri Joseph, Gillian Royes, Anthony Grooms and David James Poissant. The 14 selections each take place in different Atlanta neighborhood." --^ Atlanta-Journal Constitution Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 withBrooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. This much-anticipated and long-overdue installment in Akashic's Noir Series reveals many sides of Atlanta known only to its residents. Brand-new stories by: Tananarive Due, Kenji Jasper, Tayari Jones, Dallas Hudgens, Jim Grimsley, Brandon Massey, Jennifer Harlow, Sheri Joseph, Alesia Parker, Gillian Royes, Anthony Grooms, John Holman, Daniel Black, and David James Poissant. From the introduction by Tayari Jones: Atlanta itself is a crime scene. After all, Georgia was founded as a de facto penal colony and in 1864, Sherman burned the city to the ground.^ We might argue about whether the arson was the crime or the response to the crime, but this is indisputable: Atlanta is a city sewn from the ashes and everything that grows here is at once fertilized and corrupted by the past... These stories do not necessarily conform to the traditional expectations of noir...However, they all share the quality of exposing the rot underneath the scent of magnolia and pine. Noir, in my opinion, is more a question of tone than content. The moral universe of the story is as significant as the physical space. Noir is a realm where the good guys seldom win; perhaps they hardly exist at all. Few bad deeds go unrewarded, and good intentions are not the road to hell, but are hell itself...Welcome to Atlanta Noir.Come sit on the veranda, or the terrace of a high-rise condo. Pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, and fortify it with a slug of bourbon. Put your feet up. Enjoy these stories, and watch your back.

Wanting desperately to be behind the wheel, Luke Fulmer counts down the days to his sixteenth birthday, when he can finally get his license. Unfortunately, the first thing he does with it is "borrow" his neighbor's car. When he is pulled over and found in possession of an air pistol, a ski mask, a stolen TV, and a bag of pot, the unforgiving local magistrate takes scissors to his license and vows to lock him up if he ever stands in front of her again. So with an absent father and a mother descending into alcoholism, he moves in with his older brother, Nick, an easygoing ex-con who wants to steer Luke onto the straight and narrow. In the summer that follows, Luke contends with a kleptomaniac girlfriend, a duffel bag full of cocaine, and the realization that he must save his family from themselves, even as he plots to beat a path out of town. In his hilarious, unforgettable debut -- with everything from stock car racing to drug dealing -- Dallas Hudgens brilliantly evokes Southern culture in a tale that is raucous and wrenching, funny and wise.

In these collected stories of deeply human, flawed men and women in search of connection, consolation and better odds, Dallas Hudgens once again taps into the powerful and resonant view of ordinary lives made less so that has earned him national praise for his novels, "Drive Like Hell" and "Season of Gene." In a Nation's Capital fully occupied by the ninety-nine percent, going about the business of their lives, and in Detroit, Buffalo, Winnipeg, Oxnard and Tampa, life lays down its rhythm in dreams, promises and bills, the truth in neon light through the hazy smoke, and the telltale beat of inconstant hearts, foreclosures, and the everyday rigors of smoking, drinking, working, parenting, cheating, and praying that just one break could make it. America, down on her luck, ready for redemption, has never looked closer than this, or more like us.