Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

“As the 14 stories in DeMarco-Barrett’s fine noir anthology set in Palm Springs, Calif., and vicinity show, swimming pools are meant for more than leisurely dips, and Frank Sinatra songs are an ever-present soundtrack to the desert landscape of abandoned dreams and broken hearts … It’s rare to find a group of stories without a bad one, but DeMarco-Barrett has chosen well and there’s not a dud in the bunch.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“In Los Angeles, the rich don’t know the names of their pool “boys,” but in Palm Springs those men have a past, a motive and a weapon — the pool itself. The well-off and the working class sometimes form a tenuous alliance, as in DeMarco-Barrett’s “The Water Holds You Still.” Several characters are trying their best, or worst, to exit the ranks of the working poor … For all the playfulness of the genre and the location, the wisecracks and the kidney-shaped pools, there is an unmanageable darkness waiting to seep in, like so much blood in the pool water.”

—Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times

“Brilliantly conceived, DeMarco-Barrett and the other contributing authors effortlessly transport the reader to the edgy, moody, and sleazier side of one of Southern California’s most renowned and iconic locales. A sure thing bestseller and a must-have summer read, Palm Springs Noir unquestionably brings the heat. Bravo!”

—Michael Thomas Barry, New York Journal of Books

“As editor DeMarco-Barrett points out, it’s hard to think “noir” in a landscape that offers 300 days of sunshine a year. But unrelenting heat and light can do funny things to your brain. An engaging mix of the good, the bad, and the off-kilter.”

—Kirkus