Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographical area of the book. In this volume, a star-studded cast of authors sifts through the hidden dirt of the Garden State.--Publisher.

Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek--alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd's gleeful disgust and derision--going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There's no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak...

This anthology, with stories set in different prisons across the US, presents a new perspective on prison literature.