Warrior monks in their armed citadels block the road to the capital; castles are destroyed, villages plundered, fields put to the torch.Amid this devastation, three men dream of uniting the nation. At one extreme is the charismatic but brutal Nobunaga, whose ruthless ambition crushes all before him. At the opposite pole is the cold, deliberate Ieyasu, wise in counsel, brave in battle, mature beyond his years. But the keystone of this triumvirate is the most memorable of all, Hideyoshi, who rises from the menial post of sandal bearer to become Taiko-absolute ruler of Japan in the Emperor's name.When Nobunaga emerges from obscurity by destroying an army ten times the size of his own, he allies himself with Ieyasu, whose province is weak, but whose canniness and loyalty make him invaluable. Yet it is the scrawny, monkey-faced Hideyoshi-brash, impulsive, and utterly fearless-who becomes the unlikely savior of this ravaged land. Born the son of a farmer, he takes on the world with nothing but his bare hands and his wits, turning doubters into loyal servants, rivals into faithful friends, and enemies into allies. In all this he uses a piercing insight into human nature that unlocks castle gates, opens men's minds, and captures women's hearts. For Hideyoshi's passions are not limited to war and intrigue-his faithful wife, Nene, holds his love dear, even when she must share it; the chaste Oyu, sister of Hideyoshi's chief strategist, falls prey to his desires; and the seductive Chacha, whom he rescues from the fiery destruction of her father's castle, tempts his weakness.As recounted by Eiji Yoshikawa, author of the international best-seller Musashi, Taiko tells many stories: of the fury of Nobunaga and the fatal arrogance of the black-toothed Yoshimoto; of the pathetic downfall of the House of Takeda; how the scorned Mitsuhide betrayed his master; how once impregnable ramparts fell as their defenders died gloriously. Most of all, though, Taiko is the story of how one man transformed a nation through the force of his will and the depth of his humanity. Filled with scenes of pageantry and violence, acts of treachery and self-sacrifice, tenderness and savagery, Taiko combines the panoramic spectacle of a Kurosawa epic with a vivid evocation of feudal Japan.

    P. Lovecraft. Written between March and August 1921, it was first published in Weird Tales, April 1926. In this work, a mysterious man who has been living alone in a castle for as long as he can remember decides to break free in search of human contact. "The Outsider" is one of Lovecraft's most commonly reprinted works and is also one of the most popular stories ever to be published in Weird Tales.

    A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon--until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won't come out of the fitting room--and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband's features are beginning to slide around his face--to match her own.In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien--and, through it, find a way to liberation. The English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

    It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.It won a Hugo Award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was recently reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales (2009).

    In the middle, meanwhile, are The Great Switcheroo and The Last Act, two stories exploring a darker side of desire and pleasure.In the black comedies of Switch Bitch Roald Dahl brilliantly captures the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex.'Dahl is too good a storyteller to become predictable' Daily TelegraphRoald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

    The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he's been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on 'homestay' in the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. It looks like Makoto doesn't have a single friend, and his family don't seem to care about him at all. But as the soul begins to live Makoto's life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him, and sees their true colors more clearly, shedding light on Makoto's misunderstandings.Since its initial release over twenty years ago, Colorful has become a part of the literary canon, not only in Japan—where it has sold over a million copies—but around the world, having been translated into several different languages. Now, Eto Mori's beloved classic is finally available in English.

    An influential novella by one of the most best-known writers of fantasy and horror, set in a place and time Blackwood knew well.

    She is the author of more than seventy-five books, including twenty volumes of original poetry and the definitive translation into modern Japanese of the Tale of the Genji. Although probably best known for her exquisite erotic poetry, Akiko's work also championed the causes of feminism, pacifism, and social reform. Akiko's poetry is profoundly direct, often passionate, exposing the complexity of everyday emotions in poetic language stripped of artifice and presenting the full breadth of her poetic vision. Included in this volume are ninety-one of Akiko's tanka (a traditional five-line form of verse) and a dozen of her longer poems written in the modern style.

    Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story.It was subsequently printed in her short story collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters in 1975.

    She tells him seven stories of human/android interaction in order to reveal the secret behind humanity's fall. The story takes place centuries in the future, where the diminished populations of humans live uncultured lives in their own colonies. They resent the androids, who have built themselves a stable and cultural society. In this brutal time, our main character travels from colony to colony as a “storyteller,” one that speaks of the stories of the past. One day, he is abducted by Ibis, an android in the form of a young girl, and told of the stories created by humans in the ancient past.The stories that Ibis speaks of are the 7 novels about the events surrounding the announcements of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 20th to 21st centuries. At a glance, these stories do not appear to have any sort of connection, but what is the true meaning behind them? What are Ibis' real intentions?

    Expertly and seamlessly interweaving the real and the unreal, Naoko involves a regular guy whose world is rocked when his wife dies in a bus accident. His young daughter survives, but seems to be inhabited by her mother’s personality.

    It shows a changing city, its slums, backstreets, temples and shrines, a city filled with erudite establishments and brothels. It shows a man trying to justify his life, and a glimpse into the creative process and a gentle eulogy on things passing.

    On its journey seaward, it passes through countryside that has long been at the heart of the Japanese tradition. And it flows too past the mountains and the villages, past the dams, ditches and rice fields that provide such a richly textured backdrop to this novel.Powerful enough to sweep away people on its banks and placid enough to carry along with its flow a sumptuous wedding procession, The River Ki dominates the lives of the people who live in its fertile valley and imparts a vital strength to the three women, mother, daughter and granddaughter, around whom this novel is built. It provides them with the courage to cope, in their different ways, with the unprecedented changes that occurred in Japan between the last years of the last century and the middle of this century.Sawako Ariyoshi, one of Japan's most successful modern novelists, describes this social and cultural revolution largely through the eyes of Hana, a woman with the vision and integrity to understand the inevitability of the death of the traditional order in Japan. Ariyoshi writes with a love for detail bound to a broader understanding of the importance of the geographical and biological forces that mold her characters-and the result is a story that flows with all the vitality of The River Ki itself.

    Moving through landscapes of fairy tales, family history, strange words and letters, dreams, and every-day reality, Tawada's work blurs divisions between fact and fiction, prose and poetry. Often set in physical spaces as disparate as Japan, Siberia, Russia, and Germany, these tales describe a fragmented world where even a city or the human body can become a sort of text. Suddenly, the reader becomes as much a foreigner as the author and the figures that fill this book: the ghost of a burned woman, a woman traveling on the Trans-Siberian railroad, a mechanical doll, a tongue, a monk who leaps into his own reflection. Tawada playfully makes the experience of estrangement -- of a being in-between -- both sensual and bewildering, and as a result practically invents a new way of seeing things while telling a fine story.

    Rarely do they even leave their own rooms, in which all of their needs are met by the Machine. The Machine allows the humans to communicate "ideas" with one another, which is essentially their only activity. It doesn't stop them from leaving their rooms, but they have little desire to do so anyway. They've started to believe the Machine is omnipotent and omniscient, not to be questioned. And when it begins to malfunction, they trust that it knows what it's doing--forgetting they invented it in the first place . . .From the author of A Passage to India, A Room with a View, and other classic novels, and a sixteen-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, this remarkable science fiction story, which was included in a Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology, was published in 1909--yet becomes more relevant and thought-provoking with each passing day of the twenty-first century.