Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Tokyo, 1947.
The Pink Labyrinth is one of the bomb-scarred city's most shady neighbourhoods. There, in the dead of night a patrolling policeman catches a young Buddhist monk digging in the back yard of The Black Cat Cafe, a notorious brothel. In the shallow...Read more
The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself - a maze of sloping floors and strange staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny dolls. When a guest is found murdered in...Read more
Winner of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and the Honkaku Mystery Prize. Osaka, 1943. The Second World War rages, and American bombers rain down death upon Japan. The once prosperous Omari household, now ruined by the terrible conflict, is struck by a succession of ghastly murders. Young...Read more
There used to be a cafe called Mon Cheri at Nishi Waseda where members of the Waseda Mystery Club spent day after day frothing in excitement over the latest mystery novels, and now he and Kaede solve mysteries together . . .
As a lover of classic crime stories, it’s...Read more
Fierce, mixed-race fighter Shindo has been kidnapped by the yakuza. After brutally beating most of them in an attempt to escape, she is forced to work as a bodyguard to protect the gang boss's sheltered daughter Shoko, a strange, friendless eighteen-year-old who could order Shindo's death...Read more
In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives.
A young mother among them finally cracks and...Read more
Four twenty-somethings share an apartment in Tokyo. In Parade each tells their story: their lives, their hopes and fears, their loves, their secrets.
Kotomi waits by the phone for a boyfriend who never calls. Ryosuke wants someone that he can’t have. Mirai spends her...Read more
A triumph by Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992), the master of Japanese mystery writing. A beautifully written novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.
Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uehara, ten...Read more
A prominent official in a ministry tinged with scandal. A dining car receipt. A name missing from a passenger list. And a young man and woman dead on a beach in an apparent suicide - lovers who had one final drink together. Disconnected points, but not to Detective Torigai, who keeps...Read more
Miyuki Miyabe’s bestselling mystery opens with a gruesome discovery in a Tokyo park, followed by an anonymous call to a TV station. As the police investigation gets underway, surprising turns of events suggest they may be up against a band of serial killers who ruthlessly manipulate their...Read more
While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed....Read more
We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps find them . . .
Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food...Read more
The body of a young girl is found at her home in Yokohama, contorted in fear, but the cause of her death is a mystery. Soon afterwards the bodies of three more teenagers are discovered - dead in chillingly similar circumstances.
Sensing a story, journalist Asakawa becomes fixated...Read more
Iwasaki Shiro, a 46 year old salaryman in Tokyo is having a midlife crisis. Unexceptional in his IT job, he works in the shadow of his boss’s charisma. His children are embarrassed by his mediocrity and his wife rarely thinks of him as an individual. He has nothing to show for decades of...Read more
When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away?
As Tokyo police...Read more
1985. Kazumasa Yuuki, a seasoned reporter at the North Kanto Times, runs a daily gauntlet of the power struggles and office politics that plague its newsroom. But when an air disaster of unprecedented scale occurs on the paper’s doorstep, its staff is united by an unimaginable...Read more
A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out house. There’s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family....Read more
SIX FOUR.
THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE.
THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE.
THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT.
For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter...Read more
A fierce typhoon strikes Tokyo one night, flooding the city streets. Someone has unlawfully removed a manhole cover, and a little boy out searching for a lost pet goes missing, possibly drowned in the sewers. Is it murder or accidental? These events bring together a struggling journalist...Read more
Pathologist Ando is at a low point in his life. His small son's death from drowning has resulted in the break-up of his marriage and he is suffering traumatic nightmares. Work is his only escape, and his world is shaken up by a series of mysterious deaths that seem to be caused by a deadly...Read more
A sinister hidden room.
A dead space between two walls.
A sealed cellar.
A child's face glimpsed at a window.
Every house hides secrets.
But some secrets are far darker than others.
More than a million readers...Read more
An exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . .
A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.
A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.
A sketch...Read more
Can you solve the mystery of the tattoo murder?
Tokyo, 1947. At the first post-war meeting of the Edo Tattoo Society, Kinue Nomura reveals her full-body snake tattoo to rapturous applause. Days later she is gone. A dismembered corpse is discovered in the locked...Read more
A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable.
The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo...Read more
She had appeared from nowhere quietly watching the storm through the French doors of the Chateau Chantal's salon. Away from the cares of work and family in Japan, Kohei Daigo felt strangely drawn to this woman, also Japanese, whose haunting scent thrilled his senses. In the darkness of that...Read more
When the body of one of Nagano Prefecture's most prominent businessmen is found propped against a tree on Poison Plain, home of the legendary Demoness Maple, Inspector Takemura finds himself searching for the killer with the help and hindrance of an esteemed Tokyo professor and a beautiful...Read more
Astrologer, fortuneteller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must in one week solve a mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years. Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, the supreme woman? With...Read more
As the last petal falls, the final page is turned…
Welcome to The Cherry Blossom Bookshop, a haven for book lovers that only appears during the fleeting cherry blossom season. Nestled amidst the bloom of delicate petals, you’ll find a sanctuary for...Read more
Nestled deep in the mist-shrouded mountains, The Village of Eight Graves takes its name from a bloody legend: in the Sixteenth Century eight samurais, who had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure, were murdered by the inhabitants, bringing a terrible curse down upon their village...Read more
The body of Yoshino, a female insurance saleswoman, is found at Mitsue Pass, an eery inland spot in the southernmost region of Japan, rumoured to be home to ghosts. A young construction worker, Yuichi, is soon arrested by the Nagasaki police on suspicion of strangling the victim.As Yuichi...Read more