Walking My Second Path in Life: Volume 1


Otaku de Neet - 2017
    Fie, first princess of Daeman, finds herself isolated and stranded in the foreign Kingdom of Orstoll all by her lonesome - effectively having been wed off as a dowry gift in accessory to her sister, Princess Fielle's marriage.Trapped and isolated in a small back garden that once used to be a storehouse, Fie lives her days without purpose, and eventually without food - after the only member of her entourage, the chef, resigns.Just as Fie was about to give in to despair, she finds a pamphlet advertising a squire's test for the Royal Knights of Orstoll - beginning her journey of friendship, hard work, and guts, along with masquerading as a boy to walk her second path in life.What will Fie find along the way?

If We Were Villains


M.L. RioM.L. Rio - 2017
    On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago.As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.

The Drowning of Arthur Braxton


Caroline Smailes - 2013
    It is a dark and brooding modern fairy tale from one of our most gifted writers.

A Tale for the Time Being


Ruth Ozeki - 2013
    A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

魔道祖师 [Mó Dào Zǔ Shī]


墨香铜臭 - 2015
    In the end, he was backstabbed by his dearest shidi and killed by powerful clans that combined to overpower him.He incarnates into the body of a lunatic who was abandoned by his clan and is later, unwillingly, taken away by a famous cultivator among the sects—Lan WangJi, his archenemy.This marks the start of a thrilling yet hilarious journey of attacking monsters, solving mysteries, and raising children. From the mutual flirtation along the way, Wei WuXian slowly realizes that Lan WangJi, a seemingly haughty and indifferent poker-face, holds more feelings for Wei WuXian than he is letting on…

Call Me By Your Name


André Aciman - 2007
    Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet


David Mitchell - 2010
    To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.

The Detective Is Already Dead Light Novels, Vol. 1


nigozyu - 2019
    For as long as he can remember, he’s been stumbling across murder scenes or receiving mysterious attache cases to transport. When he met Siesta, a brilliant detective fighting a secret war against an organization of pseudohumans, he couldn’t resist the call to become her assistant and join her on an epic journey across the world. …Until a year ago, that is. Now he’s returned to a life that is normal and tepid by comparison, knowing the adventure must be over. After all, the detective is already dead.

xxxHOLiC: AnotherHOLiC


CLAMP - 2006
    . . eternal indentured servitude. Still he soldiers on, ready for whatever number of adventures lie ahead. But in Kimihiro’s case, three may not be the charm!His first assignment–to procure a pair of fake eyeglasses–is exceptionally pointless, even by Yûko’s standards. Or at least it seems that way, until Kimihiro watches a woman throw herself into traffic. He soon discovers that the doors of bespectacled perception can swing both ways. Next, when a classmate seeks help solving a mystery involving text messages from the dead, Kimihiro is glad to play Sherlock. But he must turn to Yûko to determine whether the root of the riddle is otherworldly shenanigans, deceit, or murder. Finally, however ready, willing, and able Kimihiro thinks he is to face the most unusual of circumstances, he still finds himself completely bewildered by the stranger who chases away his darkest spirits, condemns Yûko as a craven charlatan, and offers Kimihiro a way out of his preternatural predicament–and a fortune besides.

The Aosawa Murders


Riku Onda - 2005
    The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. The youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisako’s and witness to the discovery of the killings. The truth is revealed through a skillful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbors, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.

Deathbound Duke's Daughter: Volume 1


Terasu Senoo - 2020
    As if that wasn’t bad enough already, Erika’s role in the game is to pester the main character... and then die in order to kick off a mysterious series of events! These incidents are different in each love interest’s route, and seven routes means seven deaths to avoid. Not one to throw in the towel, Erika knows she must take action to destroy her death flags—and since her life is on the line, there’s no time to lose!Her very first death flag is set to rise after she meets two noble children from a prominent magician’s house. In order to prevent the resulting incidents, the Gold Rush Murders, she arms herself with her brother's expensive(!!!) magical items and heads into the ancient Seafarer’s Ruins. But things don’t quite go according to plan...

Boogiepop Omnibus Vol. 1-3


Kouhei Kadono - 2018
    This “shinigami” has a name—Boogiepop. When female students start disappearing from Shinyo Academy, everyone assumes the girls have run away, but Kirima Nagi knows something sinister is afoot. Something that might just involve Boogiepop…and an entity even more malevolent.Told in a non-linear fashion that asks the reader to piece together the sequence of events to solve the mysteries alongside the characters, this special omnibus edition contains the first three volumes of the Boogiepop novel series, spanning the introduction of the shadowy Towa Organization, as well as Boogiepop’s epic battle against the creature known as the Imaginator.Contains the first three novels:– Boogiepop and Others -Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator Part 1 -Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator Part 2

The Flowers of Evil, Vol. 1


Shūzō Oshimi - 2009
    And his favorite book right now is Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil. While the young man may often be seen lost in thought as he rabidly consumes page after page, Takao is not much of a student. Actually when we are first introduced to the middle school teen, we find him sneaking some reading as he receives and F on a recent language exam. Nakagawa is known as the class bully. When she is not receiving zeros she is usually muttering profanities to those around her. While she doesn't care for books or their readers, she does have a thing for troublemakers. Takao may not be one, but having read over his shoulder a few times, she knows he is not very innocent. If anything he is bored and aware of it. Together, by chance, they shake up their entire rural community as Takao tries to break out of his shell in a random moment of passion and affection...not directed towards Nakamura. And contrary to Takao's predictions, the girl he was falling for, Nanako Saeki, responds by eventually accepting the bibliophile for who he is. Or at least, who she thinks he is.And therein lies the conflict. Takao is not a hero. He is not trouble-maker, either. He is a regular teen who through equal moments of cowardice and chivalry takes a long step towards adulthood as he desperately tries to cover up a dark secret. Takao Kusuga has stolen an item precious to someone he is attracted to, and if he doesn't form a "contract" with his new best friend, she is going to tell.