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 maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion, pieced together like a great stage tragedy, challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders joins a new wave of Japanese murder mysteries being translated into English.Soji Shimada, author of over 100 mystery novels, is a designer, musician, and astrology writer.From the publisher: for more mystery from Japan, check out The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo.

    Kyoko Kuonji is said to be with child for the last twenty months, and her husband Makio disappeared a few months prior to her pregnancy. The odd circumstances have left the family with no one to turn to for help, until a freelance writer asks his exorcist friend to take on the case. The catch-the exorcist does not believe in ghosts. To Akihiko "Kyogokudo" Chuzenji, the supernatural is as much metaphysical and mental as it is unearthly.The Summer of the Ubume was the debut work by the Neil Gaiman of Japanese mystery fiction - Natsuhiko Kyogoku. Weaving together intrigue and Kyogoku's passion for Japanese folklore, particularly the paranormal and preternatural, this Summer gives birth to a new form of Japanese fiction.

    With The Ruined Map, he crafted a mesmerizing literary crime novel that combines the narrative suspense of Chandler with the psychological depth of Dostoevsky.Mr. Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these he embarks upon an ever more puzzling pursuit that leads him into the depths of Tokyo’s dangerous underworld, where he begins to lose the boundaries of his own identity. Surreal, fast-paced, and hauntingly dreamlike, Abe’s masterly novel delves into the unknowable mysteries of the human mind.Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.

    . . . So reminisces old Hanshichi in a story from one of Japan's most beloved works of popular literature, Hanshichi torimonocho. Told through the eyes of a street-smart detective, Okamoto Kido's best-known work inaugurated the historical detective genre in Japan, spawning stage, radio, movie, and television adaptations as well as countless imitations. This selection of fourteen stories, translated into English for the first time, provides a fascinating glimpse of life in feudal Edo (later Tokyo) and rare insight into the development of the fledgling Japanese crime novel.Once viewed as an exclusively modern genre derivative of Western fiction, crime fiction and its place in the Japanese popular imagination were forever changed by Kido's unsung Sherlock Holmes. These stories--still widely read today--are crucial to our understanding of modern Japan and its aspirations toward a literature that steps outside the shadow of the West to stand on its own.

    Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon."In a Grove" is an early modernist short story consisting of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.The story is often praised as being among the greatest in Japanese literature.

    But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime?

    Predictably, they get picked off one by one by an unseen murderer. Is there a madman on the loose? What connection is there to the earlier murders? The answer is a bombshell revelation which few readers will see coming. The Decagon House Murders is a milestone in the history of detective fiction. Published in 1987, it is credited with launching the shinhonkaku movement which restored Golden Age style plotting and fair-play clues to the Japanese mystery scene, which had been dominated by the social school of mystery for several decades. It is also said to have influenced the development of the wildly popular anime movement.This, the first English edition, contains a lengthy introduction by the maestro of Japanese mystery fiction, Soji Shimada.

    explores themes of time, healing and fate, and how her urban, sophisticated, independent young men and women come to terms with them. The stories are a blend of traditional Japanese and contemporary popular culture.

    Ordinary people plunge into insurmountable personal debt and fall prey to dangerous webs of underground creditors-so dangerous, in fact, that murder may be the only way out. A beautiful young woman vanishes, and the detective quickly finds she was not whom she had claimed to be. Is she a victim, a killer, or both? In a country that tracks its citizens at every turn, how can two women claim the same identity and then disappear without a trace?

    Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure. Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.

    Behind this unexceptional facade, his life is dedicated to the conquest of a never-ending succession of young women; a secret apartment facilitates his many phony identities, a diary records each seduction. Over the next months, three of Honda's bedmates are murdered. He's eventually convicted of two of the killings. The evidence against him--in part, blood and semen traces, lack of alibis and his diary--seems solid as granite, but elderly Kentaro Hatanaka, his appeal lawyer, is a man of sensitivity, tenacity and imagination. He needs all of those qualities to get to the surprise spider in this tightly woven web. Full of subtly menacing tensions and sharp psychological insights, told in lean, sparsely ornamented style. This one is a must for the discerning reader. - kirkus reviews

    In these seven stories, the author of The Makioka Sisters explores the territory where love becomes self-annihilation, where the contemplation of beauty gives way to fetishism, and where tradition becomes an instrument of refined cruelty.

    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 crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections...But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.

    When they were children, Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuko were tricked into separating from their friend Emily by a mysterious stranger. Then the unthinkable occurs: Emily is found murdered hours later.Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuko weren't able to accurately describe the stranger's appearance to the police after the Emily's body was discovered. Asako, Emily's mother, curses the surviving girls, vowing that they will pay for her daughter's murder.Like Confessions, Kanae Minato's award-winning, internationally bestselling debut, Penance is a dark and voice-driven tale of revenge and psychological trauma that will leave readers breathless.

    The first English language translation of a chilling murder mystery by a prolific Japanese detective novelist both psychological and legal.