The more you watch Moscow, the more it looks like a huge chameleon that keeps changing its face—and it isn’t always pretty. Following Akashic Books’ international success with London Noir, Delhi Noir, Paris Noir, and others, the Noir series explores this fabled and troubled city’s darkest recesses. Features brand-new stories by: Alexander Anuchkin, Igor Zotov, Gleb Shulpyakov, Vladimir Tuchkov, Anna Starobinets, Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, Sergei Samsonov, Alexei Evdokimov, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Maxim Maximov, Irina Denezhkina, Dmitry Kosyrev, Andrei Khusnutdinov, and Sergei Kuznetsov. Natalia Smirnova was born in 1978 in Moscow. In 2006, together with Julia Goumen, she founded Goumen & Smirnova Literary Agency, representing Russian authors worldwide. Julia Goumen was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1977. She holds a PhD in English and has worked in publishing since 2001

“The Russian soul is well suited to a style defined by dark, hard-edged moodiness in underground settings. With St. Petersburg, the tsar’s ‘Window on Europe’, we get European-style existential angst as well—not to mention the scary sociopolitical realities of the new Russia… For all sophisticated crime fiction readers.” “Fourteen uniformly strong stories in this outstanding noir anthology devoted to Russia's second city, St. Petersburg. With its rich if often tragic history, deep literary traditions, inspiring landscape, famous architecture, and an aging population stuffed into overcrowded ‘kommunalkas’ amid a post-Soviet decline and soaring crime rates, the city provides an ideal backdrop for crime fiction… The diversity of these skillfully crafted tales testifies to the vigor of contemporary Russian writing.” Original stories by: Lena Eltang, Sergei Nosov, Alexander Kudriavstev, Andrei Kivinov, Julia Belomlinsky, Natalia Kurchatova, Kseniya Venglinskaya, Evgeniy Kogan, Anton Chizh, Konstantin Gavrilov, Vladimir Berezin, Andrei Rubanov, and others. Natalia Smirnova was born in 1978 in Moscow, Russia. In 2006 she co-founded the Goumen & Smirnova Literary Agency with Julia Goumen, representing Russian authors worldwide. She and Goumen were also the co-editors of Moscow Noir. Julia Goumen was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1977. With a PhD in English, she has been working in publishing since 2001, and since 2006 has run the Goumen & Smirnoval Literary Agency with Natalia Smirnova