Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir

The perfect holiday gift for the crime fiction lover in your life!

Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of eleven delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights.

In Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person,” an unstable pharmaceutical rep tries not to kill anyone at her family dinner on the last night of Hanukkah; in Ivy Pochoda’s “Johnny Christmas,” a taciturn Gulf War vet commissions a tattoo from a man he knew from his prison days, a man not named Christmas but Goldfarb; in David L. Ulin’s “Shamash,” it’s the last night of Hanukkah, and a live-at-home adult son considers doing something drastic to get out of his elderly father’s Upper West Side apartment; in James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries,” a pair of detectives solve a curiously unprompted murder during the holiday season.

This captivating collection contains old-school slapstick comedy, hardboiled noir, gritty procedurals, and poignant reminders of the meaning of Hanukkah, offering something for almost every reader willing to take the journey through these twisted tales.

With stories by: Ivy Pochoda, David L. Ulin, James D.F. Hannah, Lee Goldberg, Nikki Dolson, J.R. Angelella, Liska Jacobs, Gabino Iglesias, Stefanie Leder, and Jim Ruland, plus a foreword and story by Tod Goldberg.

Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir

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Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir

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Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641296137
Publisher:	Soho Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/29/2024
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	73,680
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tod Goldberg is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen books, including the award-winning Gangsterland trilogy and Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His short fiction has been published widely, including in Best American Mystery & Suspense, and his nonfiction appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Alta, and has been anthologized in Best American Essays. He lives near Palm Springs, CA, where he founded and directs the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at UC Riverside.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

08/05/2024
Goldberg (the Gangsterland quartet) presents a winning anthology of 11 Hanukkah-themed crime stories. Stefanie Leder is perhaps the brightest candle in this menorah: her entry, “Not a Dinner Party Person,” centers on pharmaceutical sales rep Rachel, a proud sociopath whose fraught relationship with her family (“My mother? In an ideal world, the next time I see her would be at her funeral”) leads to an eventful final night of Hanukkah. David L. Ulin is a close second; in his defiantly dark “Shamash,” a New York City man who’s grown weary of caring for his ailing 90-year-old father uses the family menorah to carry out some drastic action. Gabino Iglesias’s “Lighting the Remora,” a tongue-in-cheek caper carried out by small-time crooks who converse in punchy, Pulp Fiction–style banter, also impresses. With their dark hearts and memorable antiheroes, these stories make an entertaining complement to Soho Crime’s Christmas anthology, The Usual Santas. Agent: Jamie Dunham, Dunham Literary. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Eight Very Bad Nights

“An engaging Hanukkah anthology that scrambles the holiday’s traditions into eight so-bad-they’re-good nights.”
—Paula Woods, Los Angeles Times

“Right away, you know there will be blood . . . but humor, too. Would it kill you to bring a little something to gnosh on while we figure out who dunnit?”
—Parade

“Goldberg is one of the best (and funniest) crime writers working today . . . [The] contributors are likely to serve up thrills alongside your latkes.”
—Orange County Register

“A welcome departure from the usual holiday fare.”
—The Irish Times

“The Festival of Lights has never been so dark.”
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

“Eight Very Bad Nights is guaranteed to entertain and amuse readers of mysteries and crime fiction. Pass the latkes, please.”
—BookTrib

“Fortunately, unlike your cousin’s famous and always mushy kugel recipe, this book’s tasty enough to keep reheating—that is, re-reading.”
—New York Journal of Books

“With their dark hearts and memorable antiheroes, these stories make an entertaining complement to Soho Crime’s Christmas anthology, The Usual Santas.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Out-fiddles Fiddler on the Roof! Should be made into a musical.”
—Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Get down with the Chosen People before we get down with you.”
—Ivy Pochoda, Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning author

“Goldberg has my address. What was I supposed to do?”
—Gabino Iglesias, Bram Stoker Award–winning author

“Eight Very Bad Nights . . . still better than actually spending Hanukkah with your family.”
—Stefanie Leder

“Unputdownable, another adjective, one more—a verb. And some nouns.”
—Liska Jacobs

“Wait, wait, wait! My story is still in this book?”
—J.R. Angelella

From the Publisher

2024-09-28
Eleven dark tales offer a perplexing take on the Festival of Lights.
Christmas crime stories often focus on the more secular aspects of the holiday: shopping, presents, parties, snow. But many of the stories Goldberg selects seem to regard Hanukkah—a relatively minor festival—as deeply religious and widely observed, even by secular Jews. The tension between characters’ focus on celebrating the holiday correctly and the egregious aspects of their personal behavior is unsettling. In David L. Ulin’s “Shamash,” an aging man becomes increasingly obsessed with his grandmother’s menorah as his traumatic past prods him to violence. In James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries,” a mother turns her back on the death of her adult child to go home and light candles with her new husband. A spurned girlfriend uses a Hanukkah party to get revenge against her boyfriend in Liska Jacobs’ “Dead Weight,” and the annual Hanukkah party at Sucks to Be U Records, with a carefully curated menu of Jewish delicacies, has an equally grisly finale in Jim Ruland’s “The Demo.” A self-diagnosed sociopath loses it when her no-good brother-in-law disrupts her family’s latke celebration in Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person.” And editor Goldberg seems to regard his hero’s string of thefts, drug deals, and causal mayhem as some sort of Maccabean victory. Only in Lee Goldberg’s “If I Were a Rich Man” does the hero recognize the irony of his appropriation of Jewish cultural symbols in facilitating his crimes.
Feh.

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