When she begins using her gift of pyrokinesis to take the law into her own hands and punish violent criminals, her executions attract the attention of two very different groups: the Guardians, a secretive vigilante organization that tries to recruit her, and the arson squad of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Soon the police are on Junko's trail, most notably Detective Chikako Ishizu, a rationalist who must come to terms with the existence of paranormal forces. As Junko's crusade against evil escalates and she finds it harder to control her power, we are taken on a breathtaking and brutal journey through the urban landscape of Tokyo on a journey that challenges us, along with Chikako, to think about what's right and what's wrong in the name of justice.Atmospheric, suspenseful, provocative, and even romantic, Crossfire is a tour de force sure to secure Miyuki Miyabe's place in the pantheon of today's top mystery writers.

    Matigari is in search of his family to rebuild his home and start a new and peaceful future. But his search becomes a quest for truth and justice as he finds the people still dispossessed and the land he loves ruled by corruption, fear, and misery. Rumors spring up that a man with superhuman qualities has risen to renew the freedom struggle. The novel races toward its climax as Matigari realizes that words alone cannot defeat the enemy. He vows to use the force of arms to achieve his true liberation. Lyrical and hilarious in turn, Matigari is a memorable satire on the betrayal of human ideals and on the bitter experience of post-independence African society.

    When twenty-year-old Jane finds in the attic a packet of love letters written years ago by Guy, her mother’s one-time fiance who died in World War I, the discovery has explosive repercussions. It is not clear to whom the letters are addressed, and their appearance begins to lay bare the strange and unspoken connections between the adults now living in the house. Soon, a girl on the brink of womanhood, a mother haunted by love lost, and a ruined matchmaker with her own claim on the dead wage a battle that makes the ghostly Guy as real a presence in Montefort as any of the living.

    He is horrified, confused and bored by the contrived "broadcasts" of the "apes", a series of pseudo artists who resemble, on the one hand, absurd mechanical dolls, and on the other, specific personages of the era.

    Subtitled a "psychological novel" by its author, who also called it a biography, the work is actually a highly authentic autobiography. The work is singular for two reasons, the first being its perspective. Moritz was a neglected child of a loveless marriage living in a family near the bottom of the social ladder. It is small wonder that Moritz developed into the eternal outsider. With this background, his description of the struggles he endured in acquiring an education give us an unusually rich picture of that day. This autobiography is also quite singular in that it is not the usual summation by some elderly person of his road to success; rather, it is an examination by a thirty-year-old of how the various forces playing on him in his first twenty years joined to misdirect him into hopes for a theatrical career. With a gift for self-examination doubtless acquired from his Pietistic background, he is able to give a brilliant picture of how he acquired and struggled with his own neuroses, and it is this struggle that gives his book its timeless character.

    The title character is a papier mache bird that shares the front room of an apartment with a collection of bowling trophies that some time earlier were stolen from the home of the Logan brothers. The human tenants of this apartment are John and Pat, who have just returned from seeing a Greta Garbo movie in a local movie theater. Their neighbors are Bob and Constance, a married couple going through some rough times in their relationship. Because of their failing relationship, Bob becomes depressed. Meanwhile the Logan brothers are looking for their stolen trophies. The brothers have turned their happy life of bowling into a life of vengeance...

    When her mother-in-law suddenly dies of a stroke, Akiko becomes the sole caregiver for her selfish father-in-law Shegezo.The Twilight Years raises important issues about the quality of life at the end of life, caregiving for the old, and the dilemma of women who have both career and family obligations.

    It is in fact the baron's own reminiscences which give the book its title.

    Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but he seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brücker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brücker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war's end - that is the tastiest part. Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena's fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale's real charm.

    The central figure of the novel is Calman Jacoby, who stands between the old and the new, unable to embrace either whole-heartedly.

    Upon their return to England, Amy is ungratefully reluctant to maintain their friendship, but the skeins of their existence seem inextricably linked as grief gives way to resilience and again to tragedy. Reversals of fortune and a compelling cast of characters, including Ernie, ex-sailor turned housekeeper, and Amy's wonderfully precocious granddaughters, add spice to a novel that delights even as it unveils the most uncomfortable human emotions.

    The daily routine of a man in charge of children at a state welfare organization and the demands that are made upon him are depicted in this novel set in present day Hungary.

    Howard Halliday, the editor of the Midnight Examiner and the unlikely protagonist in William Kotzwinkle's latest novel, becomes embroiled with several shady characters, including a bloodthirsty crime lord and a porn queen in danger, who lead him into a bizarre escapade that rivals only the freakish headlines in the Midnight Examiner.

    The first of Roussel's two major prose works, Impressions of Africa is not, as the title may suggest, a conventional travel account, but an adventure story put together in a highly individual fashion and with an unusual time sequence, whereby the reader is even made to choose whether to begin with the first or the tenth chapter.A veritable literary melting pot, Roussel's groundbreaking text makes ample use of wordplay and the surrealist techniques of automatic writing and private allusion.

    In this novel, Juan Goytisolo, one of Spain's most celebrated novelists, speaks for a generation of Spaniards who were only small children during the Spanish Civil War, grew up under a stifling dictatorship, and, in many cases, emigrated in desperation from their dying country. Upon his return, the narrator confronts the most controversial political, religious, social, and sexual issues of our time with ferocious energy and elegant prose. Torn between the Islamic and European worlds around him, he finds both ultimately unsatisfactory. In the end, only displacement survives.