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tart noir books
Tart Noir
Our Latest Books
Lauren . . Katy . . Sparkle . . Tony . . Stella . . Jennifer G. . . Lea . .
Our mall is under construction and will be opening very soon. To stay updated on Tart City news, please send a blank message to tartcity-subscribe@onelist.com to get on to our mailing list or check our message board for announcements. These are a few of the books we'll have available:
Katy Munger
Money to Burn
When a favorite client gets killed on her watch, Casey vows to find the killer no matter what the cost, either personally or professionally. When the trail leads her into the rarified ranks of North Carolina's social elite, Casey's dirt-poor childhood comes rushing back in a wave of self-doubt that adds fire to her considerable fury. She fights to regain her self-confidence and expose an incendiary killer out to destroy more than her name. Casey moves from farmland to the mountains, from debutante balls to drag bars, from boardrooms to bedrooms-and even down the prickly path of lust-at-first-sight as she battles unknown enemies anxious to see her, quite literally, go up in flames.
Meet Casey Jones--an unlicensed, no-nonsense private detective who hides 160 pounds of muscle with an in-your-face femme fatale style. She's bold, she's bad and, most of all, she's nobody's fool. Underneath her wise-cracking, 100% Southern exterior, there beats a 14-karat heart with a definite spot for life's losers. With the brains to take on any challenge and the guts to impose her own brand of justice, Casey Jones has what it takes to be your best friend--or your very worst enemy. (Among Katy's other books are Out of Time, Legwork, and the Gallagher Grey series.)
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Lauren Henderson
Black Rubber Dress
Sam Jones, the sculptress turned private detective, is sexy, sarcastic and stroppy.
Sam is the sort of person who leaps at danger like she leaps at her men, who decides that a tasteful little number in black rubber is appropriate attire for the launch of her sculpture at a staid City bank. In her run-down Holloway warehouse she has just finished her latest mobile - 'Thing 111' (renamed Floating Planet by her agent) - and she is all set for its launch in the atrium of a well known City bank. However, things take a turn for the worse, and when one of the guests is murdered, Sam embarks on her own investigation.
Thrown into a social world distinctly different from her own, vodka swigging Sam feels that she has taken on more than even she can chew. Surrounded by loudmouthed merchant bankers who earn obscene amounts of money, the last thing she expects is to have a wild affair with Sebastian, also a merchant banker who drives a BMW and lives in a flat to die for in Kensington. Think of her 'street cred'! Sam is in a world not her own; and as the deaths increase she comes to realise that her own life is at risk.
'Sam Jones is a breathless heroine of charming stubbornness, quick repartee and impulsive conduct, a lively and fresh antidote to the sometimes over serious attitudes of some of today's women of detection.' The Times
''Genuinely tough-minded, with Sam knocking back the booze, wallowing in daytime TV and pursuing sex in beds, parks and taxis in a way that nice girls rarely own up to' Literary Review
(Lauren's other books include Too Many Blondes, Freeze My Margarita, and The Strawberry Tattoo.)
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Sparkle Hayter
The Last Manly Man
Overnight
success, two handsome boyfriends, plenty of employees to boss
around... everything is suddenly going right in the life of
newswoman and reluctant sleuth Robin Hudson. Under these
circumstances, she can afford to be generous and take the High
Road, right? But Hudson's life is ruled by no law but Murphy's. It
isn't long before a good deed for a strange man in a hat and a
series of other seemingly random encounters lead Robin into a
bizarre murder investigation -- and a secret world of men she
never knew existed. Hot on the trail of a mysterious chemical
known as Adam One, Robin braves fistfighting goons, a
testosterone-filled hunting expedition, libidinous chimps, and a
convention of drugged feminists to resolve her most challenging
case yet.
"IN SEARCH of the ephemeral essence of man, Robin Hudson, a network television reporter, finds only murdered men, narrowly missing their fate herself. Storming her sassy, yet cynical, way through such politically delicate subjects as animal liberation and the battle of the sexes, she emerges relatively unscathed, despite reports of her death being greatly exaggerated. Quirky and fun, this is an excellent commuting read." Times of London
"One of
the best of a great crop of summer mysteries." San Francisco Examiner
One of Salon Magazine's Ten Best of 1998
(Sparkle's other books include What's a Girl Gotta Do, Nice Girls Finish Last, and Revenge of the Cootie Girls.)
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Tony Fennelly
1-900 Dead
There are more unusual means by which to murder someone, but the sword used to skewer the New Orleans psychic known as the "Mystic Delphine" ranks right up there. Adding to the confusion of the murder scene is the strange glyph found written in blood near her body. Together, the murder method and the glyph mean one thing to the police: They've got a strange one on their hands.
Enter Margo Fortier, former topless dancer, now cream of New Orleans society (due to an advantageous marriage to the gay scion of an old and powerful family), as well as the local society gossip columnist. Desperate to finally break into hard news at her paper, she parlays her acquaintanceship with the victim into an inside track into the police investigation--something she may not live to regret.
With all of Tony Fennelly's trademark wit and offbeat characters, 1-900-DEAD is sure to delight her many fans. (Synopsis from The Tangled Web Page. Other books by Tony include The Hippie in the Wall, The Glory Hole Murders, Kiss Yourself Good-bye, andThe Closet Hanging.)
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Stella Duffy
Fresh Flesh
Patrick Freeman, celebrity chef, with the legendary bad temper and the obligatory wild child wife... Chris Marquand, adopted son of wealthy parents, a successful doctor, father-to-be... Georgina Leyton, high-powered lawyer and a beautiful bitch who's as cool as they come.... Luke Godwin, owner of the hottest South London bar and a talent for scaring the life out of people with his mad rages. Four virtual strangers unwittingly bound together by a dark secret from the past. And, after all these years, it's about to blow up in their faces.
Everything was going just fine for Saz Martin and her partner Molly. It is summer in London, they're having a baby and all looks right with the world. Saz has even stopped taking on any weird and wild cases. No more danger, just easy, steady work and tucked up in bed before midnight... Yeah, right.
Fresh Flesh, Stella Duffy's latest Saz Martin thriller, is a high-paced ride across a contemporary London of glitzy offices, fancy restaurants, designer bars and damaged lives. It is also a frightening journey through the emotional ruins of the past, a tale of the sins of the fathers, and the mothers, and of the greatest theft of all.
'Gets better with each book . . . .Clever, cunning and careful to avoid the obvious. A real treat' Val McDermid' Val McDermid
'The clever money should be on Duffy when the crime-writing Oscars are dished out' Daily Telegraph
'Cracking dialogue and exuberant characters' The Times
(Other books by Stella Duffy: Calendar Girl, Beneath the Blonde, and Wavewalker.)
Read a chapter from Fresh Flesh
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Jennifer Gould
Vodka, Tears and Lenin's Angel:
A Journalist on the Road in the Former Soviet Union
"Wild west meets 1930s Chicago" -- this was the world that Canadian journalist Jennifer Gould discovered when she set out to explore the former Soviet Union. Engrossing, surprising, entertaining. sometimes harrowing, Vodka, Tears and Lenin's Angel draws back the curtain of official reporting to reveal a nation rarely seen in the mainstream media.
"Vibrant and compelling. . . the captivating energy of her books lies in the Alice-in-Wonderland face of Western normality she brings to this dizzying memoir. We learn more about the weird realities of modern Russia from [this book] than from any number of serious analyses." The Washington Post
"Go to Russia with Jennifer Gould. Go because she is plucky and smart, and because she will show you a former Soviet Union you won't read [elsewhere] . . . . She blends aggressive reporting with novel-rich description, buoyed by authentic curiosity, boundless energy, and a kind of survival-instinct-of-the-fittest. From the epigraph to this book's thoughtful end, Gould succeeds in convincing us that capitalism unleashed without ethics and compassion is a crime." Swing Magazine
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Lea Hernandez
Rumble GirlsCan Raven Tansania Ransom Survive the Trajectory of Celebrity when no Rumble Girl before her has?
Debuting in April 2000, RUMBLE GIRLS: Silky Warrior Tansie, is Lea Hernandez' first series from Image comics!
Rumble Girls, female pilots of powered armor know as HardSkins, are near-future counterparts to professional wrestlers-- brawlers in staged battles playing characters made to be loved or loathed.
Raven Tansania Ransom finds herself unwittingly assuming the persona of the Rumble Girl Silky Warrior Tansie for mammoth media conglomerate EnTeCo. "Tansie" will be the beautiful, innocent adversary of EnTeCo's fading but still-profitable mega-star, the anti-hero Crimson August.
A career as a Rumble Girl always brings three things: Money, Fame, and Heartbreak. All of Raven's predecessors, save one, found meteoric ascensions were followed by equally hard falls as popularity suddenly fell or the grind of glory wore their lives away. For some ex-Rumblers, the landing is mere obscurity, for others, the fall is fatal.
Raven, who's never followed anyone or anything, including her own heart, will find that to save her soul from EnTeCo she'll have to do the impossible--believe in her own strength and trust her enemy in fantasy and in real life: Crimson August himself!
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