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In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives. A young mother among them finally cracks and strangles her philandering, gambling husband then confesses her crime to Masako, the closest of her colleagues. For reasons of her own, Masako agrees to assist her friend and seeks the help of the other co-workers to dismember and dispose of the body. The body parts are discovered, the police start asking questions, but the women have far more dangerous enemies -a yakuza connected loan shark who discovers their secret and has a business proposition, and a ruthless nightclub owner the police are convinced is guilty of the murder. He has lost everything as a result of their crime and he is out for revenge. OUT is a psychologically taut and unflinching foray into the darkest recesses of the human soul, an unsettling reminder that the desperate desire for freedom can make the most ordinary person do the unimaginable.
Two prostitutes are murdered in Tokyo. Twenty years previously both women were educated at the same elite school for young ladies, and had seemingly promising futures ahead of them. But in a world of dark desire and vicious ambition, for both women, prostitution meant power. Grotesque is a masterful and haunting thriller, a chilling exploration of women's secret lives in modern day Japan.
In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls drift through a hot smoggy August and tedious summer school classes. There's dependable Toshi; brainy Terauchi; Yuzan, grief-stricken and confused; and Kirarin, whose late nights and reckless behaviour remain a secret from those around her. Then Toshi's next-door neighbour is found brutally murdered and the girls suspect Worm, the neighbour's son and a high school misfit. But when he disappears (taking Toshi's bike and cell phone with him) the four girls become irresistibly drawn into a treacherous vortex of brutality and seduction which rises from within themselves as well as the world around them.
From bestselling author Natsuo Kirino comes a chilling story of retribution and one woman's revenge. Two sisters, Namima and Kamikuu, born to the family of the oracle, are separated as children. Kamikuu begins her training to become the next oracle, while Namima becomes Priestess of the Night. The Goddess Chronicle—a retelling of the ancient Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi—pulls the reader deep into the realm of the undead. Japanese crime queen Natsuo Kirino's dark, twisted tale is a fantastical, fabulous tour-de-force. It is a dazzling story of sex, death, gods and revenge that will draw the reader in and won't let go until the exhilarating end.
"Maggie understands that splatter for splatter's sake is boring. Psychopathy is boring. Coldness is boring. She's interested in feeling, and when her stories turn violent (as they frequently do), it's with a surreal emotional barbarity that distorts the entire world. You can mop up blood with any fabric. Maggie's concern is with the wound left behind, because the wound never leaves-it haunts. As a result, each of these stories leaves a wound of its own. Some weep, watching as you try (and fail) to recover. Others laugh. But never without feeling." -B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space "And once finished, I felt like my tongue had been misplaced, guts heavy and expanded ... gums numb with a tongue that'd been put elsewhere, my mouth clean around a pipe weaving up through pitch and shadow ... and well past ready, primed for delight, waiting but knowing I had already been filled to skin; crying shit, hearing piss, fingernails seeping bile, pores dribbling blood, soles slopping off and out to meet a drain mid-floor ..." -Christopher Norris, author of Hunchback '88
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A rollercoaster ride from the cult master of the psycho-thriller 'A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs' Kirkus 'Deft and fascinating . . . A grisly tour of the darkness and confusion of the human mind' New York Times It's just before New Year, and Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's red light district. As Frank's behaviour becomes increasingly unsettling, Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous intentions. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends into the troubling waters of Frank's mind, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.
R is the other woman. Labelled simply with one initial, her identity in the famous 1940s novel that recounts the damage she did to her lover's family remains shrouded in mystery. The novelist who carried out an illicit relationship with her, and then used her as material for his work, became a celebrated writer. But R never had the chance to put her side of the story. Tamaki is determined to find out who R really was. A writer herself, she is working on a book about R and begins to uncover clues about the real story behind the novel, and the great tragedy of the novelist's life. While she throws herself into her research she's aware that her own imperfect relationships are also up for scrutiny.Her ex-lover, Seiji, is gravely ill in hospital and her reminiscences about their long affair strike echoes with the subject of her work. In this compelling and moving novel, prize-winning author, Natuso Kirino explores the themes of love and death, and the significance of fiction.
Sex creates odd cultural conventions everywhere, but nowhere has an institution quite like the Japanese love hotel. To be rented by the hour for amorous liaisons, the theme rooms revealed in this provocative collection of photographs are steeped in fantasy, their elaborate dcor ranging from simulated subway cars to religious bondage with much kink in between. These brash rooms are fascinating in themselves, but also present a window into a very classified aspect of this society. The foreword by best-selling author Natsuo Kirino and passages from hotel guest books lend humor and context to these 80 haunting room portraits, creating an astonishing document of sex and romance, public and private space in Japan.
Tokyo's Inspector Shunsake Honma investigates the case of a woman who may have murdered another in order to take her identity. A tale of credit cards and debt and rampant consumerism in today's Japan.