McNally Jackson is best known for its excellent selection of literary fiction, especially its many shelves devoted to translated literature where books are separated by the author’s country of origin. What isn’t as widely known is their mystery section located downstairs. Among the crime novels are some great noir titles. Here’s what caught our eye:
Gabrielle:
Ever since Melville House released Derek Raymond’s Factory Series, five crime novels set in Margaret Thatcher’s London, they’ve been on my must-read list. Whenever I see their orange covers with their awesome images, I grab them off the shelf, read the jacket copy, toss them from hand to hand, and hold them up for another look.
Until now, I’ve let myself get sidetracked by other titles but the tipping point came this weekend when, on the most recent episode of the Three Percent podcast, New Directions’ Publicity and Marketing Director, Tom Roberge, mentioned he’d just read the first in the series, He Died with His Eyes Open. He said they are the “darkest noir novels he’s ever read” and that the first one was “pretty fantastic.”
He Died with His Eyes Open is an “unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a city plagued by poverty and perversion and a policeman who may be the only one who cares about the ‘people who don’t matter and who never did.’” (Melville House)
David:
When I was in college my favorite literary palate cleanser was American noir fiction, and when I tired of textbooks and classics I would dig into the works of Chandler, Hammett, and others.
These days I am just as likely to the read modern literary noir of authors like Laura Lippman, James Ellroy, and Megan Abbott, but my favorite crime writer has long been George Pelecanos. Stephen King agrees, and has called him “perhaps the greatest living American crime writer.”
The Cut is the first novel in a series that features Iraq war veteran Spero Lucas, a conflicted and unlicensed private detective drawn in the spare, stark prose that has become a Pelecanos trademark.
If you’re not familiar with 
Margaret Drabble’s novels have illuminated the past fifty years, especially the changing lives of women, like no others. Yet her short fiction has its own unique brilliance. Her penetrating evocations of character and place, her wide-ranging curiosity, her sense of irony–all are on display here, in stories that explore marriage, female friendships, the English tourist abroad, love affairs with houses, peace demonstrations, gin and tonics, cultural TV programs, in stories that are perceptive, sharp, and funny. With an introduction by the Spanish academic Jose Fernandez that places the stories in the context of her life and her novels, this collection is a wonderful recapitulation of a masterly career.
When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own–this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making “My Father and Myself” a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
Yesterday, Book Boroughing swung by the 
The store is known for its excellent selection of cultural and political theory titles that you probably won’t find elsewhere.
They have a great selection of poetry titles, taking up two book cases. You can also find literary journals, offbeat magazines, and self published zines.
Their bargain table in the back is awesome.
Ismet Prcic's Shards: One of 
Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City: One of the things I like best about St. Mark's is the bargain book section in the back, where you can pick up international editions of books like Jonathan Lethem's novel Chronic City at a fraction of their original price.
Gabrielle is currently reading The Speed Chronicles, a collection of essays and short stories by a range of authors about speed — in all its varied forms. Really incredible writing. Brooklyn’s Tao Lin has written her favorite story so far with Jerry Stahl coming in at a close second.