The year is 1953. The Korean War is winding down. The Cold War is heating up. UFOs are appearing all over the world. Five flying saucers zoom across the skies of Tokyo. Then Ichiro Hirano's next-door neighbor is kidnapped by an alien lizard creature. That same creature is now stalking Ichiro's own sister. What do these space aliens hope to accomplish? Here again is the kind of mystery that only Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to solve.
This collection of mystery and horror stories is regarded as Japan's answer to Edgar Allan Poe. Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the first volume of its kind translated into English, is written with the quick tempo of the West but rich with the fantasy of the East. These nine bloodcurdling, chilling tales present a genre of literature largely unknown to readers outside Japan, including the strange story of a quadruple amputee and his perverse wife; the record of a man who creates a mysterious chamber of mirrors and discovers hidden pleasures within; the morbid confession of a maniac who envisions a career of foolproof "psychological" murders; and the bizarre tale of a chair-maker who buries himself inside an armchair and enjoys the sordid "loves" of the women who sit on his handiwork. Lucid and packed with suspense, Edogawa Rampo's stories found in Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination have enthralled Japanese readers for over half a century. Mystery stories include: The Human Chair The Caterpillar Two Crippled Men The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture
From the renowed author NISIOISIN, the creator of BAKEMONOGATARI, Zaregoto Series and KATANAGATARI. Comes a new, innovative mystery series, Pretty Boy Detective Club! Mayumi Dojima is finally a full-fledged member of the Pretty Boy Detective Club, known to her compatriots as Mayumi the Seer, she of the beautiful eyes. Summoned suddenly to the disused art room that serves as the club’s headquarters, Mayumi is pressed into service to assist with an ambitious redecorating project. But when they discover a secret room containing thirty-three mysterious canvases, the Pretty Boys are faced with their most perplexing puzzle yet. Who is responsible for these strange paintings, and are they connected to an impossible kidnapping that took place at Yubiwa Academy seven years ago? The third installment of the Pretty Boy series offers a beautiful mystery with an even more beautiful solution! Best-selling author NISIOISIN (Monogatari series, Decapitation, Katanagatari) brings his trademark blend of wit, wordplay, adventure, and cracked philosophy to a new mystery series for fans of all ages.
Mayumi Dojima, a second-year student at the exclusive Yubiwa Academy middle school, has lost something, a star she glimpsed just once, ten long years ago. But help is on the way, in the form of the unofficial, secretive, and thoroughly mysterious Pretty Boy Detective Club! Rumored to solve problems within the school (most of which they themselves may well have created) for reasons aesthetic rather than financial, these five gorgeous boys sweep Mayumi into their world of excitement, danger, and overwhelming beauty.
When 1930s Tokyo is threatened by a master thief who can disguise himself to look like anyone, and laughs at the law, the people of the city have nowhere else to turn but Japan's greatest detective, Akechi Kogoro. Unfortunately for Tokyo, however, Akechi Kogoro is off on overseas business, so it becomes the job of his 12-year old assistant, Kobayashi Yoshio, to track down the thief and desperately keep him at bay until his mentor returns. In the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Baker Street Irregulars, a classic thriller by Edogawa Rampo, grand master of Japan's Golden Age of crime and mystery fiction. Filled with disguises, tricks, "A-ha!" moments, and spiced with a unique Japanese flair, it is sure to delight readers of all ages. Will Kobayashi's intrepid band of young detectives be able to outwit the nefarious fiend, or will Tokyo be forever at the mercy of the face-swapping phantom?
The first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu. Perfect for fans of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of the party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace and quiet—and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene. When a vulnerable woman is connected to the crime, Kaveri becomes determined to save her and launches a private investigation to find the killer, tracing his steps from an illustrious brothel to an Englishman's mansion. She soon finds that sleuthing in a sari isn't as hard as it seems when you have a talent for mathematics, a head for logic, and a doctor for a husband . . . And she's going to need them all as the case leads her deeper into a hotbed of danger, sedition, and intrigue in Bangalore's darkest alleyways.
The sweetest surrender is love... Fleeing from troubles at home, young Aleyn signs on to the crew of a merchant trade cog off the coast of Eire, but he has no idea what dangers await him on the open water. Viking raiders patrol the shores like hungry wolves, taking whatever they wish, and when Aleyn's ship is attacked and the crew killed, he finds himself the helpless prisoner of Ranulf Eriksen, a ruthless, powerful Viking jarl who commands the longship Lymskyr. Aleyn expects to be killed or sold to the Saxons as a slave, but Ranulf offers him a bargain: his body in exchange for his freedom. Faced with the choice of temporary whoredom or lifelong slavery, Aleyn chooses to give himself to the handsome and oddly-compelling Northman. What Aleyn could not have foreseen was how much two lonely people in extraordinary circumstances could learn about each other in so short a time. Ranulf is also unprepared for the strength of his feelings for Aleyn. As Ranulf's Viking crew begins to suspect Aleyn of using witchcraft to meddle with their leader's wits, the jarl must defend his lover from the murderous intent of his men without further risking his own tenuous hold on power.
The Washington Post hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as "a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing," and People lauded Kayak Morning as "intimate, expansive and profoundly moving." Classic tales of love and grief, the New York Times bestselling memoirs are also original literary works that carve out new territory at the intersection of poetry and prose. Now comes The Boy Detective, a story of the author's childhood in New York City, suffused with the same mixture of acute observation and bracing humor, lyricism and wit. Resisting the deadening silence of his family home in the elegant yet stiflingly safe neighborhood of Gramercy Park, nine-year-old Roger imagines himself a private eye in pursuit of criminals. With the dreamlike mystery of the city before him, he sets off alone, out into the streets of Manhattan, thrilling to a life of unsolved cases. Six decades later, Rosenblatt finds himself again patrolling the territory of his youth: The writing class he teaches has just wrapped up, releasing him into the winter night and the very neighborhood in which he grew up. A grown man now, he investigates his own life and the life of the city as he walks, exploring the New York of the 1950s; the lives of the writers who walked these streets before him, such as Poe and Melville; the great detectives of fiction and the essence of detective work; and the monuments of his childhood, such as the New York Public Library, once the site of an immense reservoir that nourished the city with water before it nourished it with books, and the Empire State Building, which, in Rosenblatt's imagination, vibrates sympathetically with the oversize loneliness of King Kong: "If you must fall, fall from me." As he walks, he is returned to himself, the boy detective on the case. Just as Rosenblatt invented a world for himself as a child, he creates one on this night—the writer a detective still, the chief suspect in the case of his own life, a case that discloses the shared mysteries of all our lives. A masterly evocation of the city and a meditation on memory as an act of faith, The Boy Detective treads the line between a novel and a poem, displaying a world at once dangerous and beautiful.
A killer is on the loose in the Arizona Territory. One by one, Tonto Basin ranchers are being murdered for their livestock. And the Cattle Raisers Association has hired two range detectives to catch the culprit. From the looks of them, Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman are just another pair of high plains drifters. But with their razor-sharp detective skills and rare talent for trouble, they're the last remaining hope for one young cowboy who's been arrested for the murders.
