Short Stories

When I First Held You

Becoming a father can be one of the most profoundly terrifying, exhilarating, life-changing occasions in a man’s life. Now 22 of today’s masterful writers get straight to the heart of modern fatherhood in this incomparable collection of thought-provoking essays. From making that ultimate decision to have a kid to making it through the birth to […]

FaceOff

Edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author David Baldacci and including stories by Dennis, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, and more, this one-of-a-kind anthology pulls together the most beloved characters from the best and most popular thriller series today. n an unprecedented collaboration, twenty-three of the world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed thriller writers have paired […]

Boston Noir

In keeping with the Akashic Noir Series tradition, each story in BOSTON NOIR is set in a different neighborhood of the city; the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor; and all stops in between. Brand new stories by Dennis Lehane, Stewart O’Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne […]

Coronado: Stories

From Dennis Lehane, the award-winning author of Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the Kenzie-Gennaro series, comes a striking collection of five short stories and a play. A small southern town gives birth to a dangerous man with a broken heart and a high-powered rifle. . . . A young girl, caught up in an inner-city […]

Small Mercies

In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.

One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances.

The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.

Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.