The Decagon House Murders

Author: Yukito Ayatsuji
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
ISBN: 1782276343
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
"Ayatsuji's brilliant and richly atmospheric puzzle will appeal to fans of golden age whodunits... Every word counts, leading up to a jaw-dropping but logical reveal" — Publishers Weekly A hugely enjoyable, page-turning murder mystery sure to appeal to fans of Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, and Agatha Christie, with one of the best and most-satisfying conclusions you'll ever read. A classic in Japan, available in English for the first time. From The New York Times Book Review: "Read Yukito Ayatsuji’s landmark mystery, The Decagon House Murders, and discover a real depth of feeling beneath the fiendish foul play. Taking its cues from Agatha Christie’s locked-room classic And Then There Were None, the setup is this: The members of a university detective-fiction club, each nicknamed for a favorite crime writer (Poe, Carr, Orczy, Van Queen, Leroux and — yes — Christie), spend a week on remote Tsunojima Island, attracted to the place, and its eerie 10-sided house, because of a spate of murders that transpired the year before. That collective curiosity will, of course, be their undoing. As the students approach Tsunojima in a hired fishing boat, 'the sunlight shining down turned the rippling waves to silver. The island lay ahead of them, wrapped in a misty veil of dust,' its sheer, dark cliffs rising straight out of the sea, accessible by one small inlet. There is no electricity on the island, and no telephones, either. A fresh round of violent deaths begins, and Ayatsuji’s skillful, furious pacing propels the narrative. As the students are picked off one by one, he weaves in the story of the mainland investigation of the earlier murders. This is a homage to Golden Age detective fiction, but it’s also unabashed entertainment."

We Run the Tides

Author: Vendela Vida
Publisher: HarperLuxe
ISBN: 9780063063136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
An achingly beautiful and wickedly funny story of female friendship, betrayal, and a mysterious disappearance, set in the changing landscape of San Francisco Teenage Eulabee and her alluring best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy, oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know the ins and outs of the homes and beaches, Sea Cliff's hidden corners and eccentric characters--as well as the swanky all-girls' school they attend. Their lives move along uneventfully, with afternoon walks by the ocean and weekend sleepovers. Then everything changes. Eulabee and Maria Fabiola have a disagreement about what they did or didn't witness on the way to school one morning, and this creates a schism in their friendship. The rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola's sudden disappearance--a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths. Suspenseful and poignant, We Run the Tides is Vendela Vida's masterpiece depiction of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre-tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one's authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth, We Run the Tides is both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion. --Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes

The Decagon House Murders 2

Author: Hiro Kiyohara
Publisher: Kodansha America LLC
ISBN: 1636993656
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
The manga based off the best-selling The Decagon House Murders novel by Yukito Ayatsuji! The members of a particular university's Mystery Club travel to a ten-sided house on a remote island...which just happens to have been the scene of a gristly, and unsolved, mass murder. Armed with details of the murder and keys to the property, they set out to dig deeper...but can they trust the "facts" of the case? And moreover...can they trust each other? After arriving on the island, the Mystery Club discover mysterious tablets with things like "Detective" and "Murderer" written on them. They initially see it as a tasteless prank, but later that night, the tablet reading "First Victim" ends up on somebody's door, and the group is forced into solving a real mystery... Meanwhile, on the mainland, Kawaminami and Shimada are getting closer to the secret of the island after receiving letters from Seiji Nakamura, who's supposed to be dead...!!

How to Order the Universe

Author: María José Ferrada
Publisher: Tin House Books
ISBN: 1951142314
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
A San Francisco Chronicle and Southwest Review Best Book of the Year and A World Literature Today Notable Translation of the Year “A dreamscape of a book. I adored this compelling, wise, and utterly unique coming-of-age tale.” —Tara Conklin For seven-year-old M, the world is guided by a firm set of principles, based on her father D’s life as a traveling salesman. Enchanted by her father’s trade, M convinces him to take her along on his routes, selling hardware supplies against the backdrop of Pinochet-era Chile. As father and daughter trek from town to town in their old Renault, M’s memories and thoughts become tied to a language of rural commerce, philosophy, the cosmos, hardware products, and ghosts. M, in her innocence, barely notices the rising tensions and precarious nature of their work until she and her father connect with an enigmatic photographer, E, whose presence threatens to upend the unusual life they’ve created. María José Ferrada expertly captures a vanishing way of life and a father-daughter relationship on the brink of irreversible change. At once nostalgic, dangerous, sharply funny, and full of delight and wonder, How to Order the Universe is a richly imaginative debut and a rare work of magic and originality.

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Author: Soji Shimada
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
ISBN: 1782271422
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
One of The Guardian’s “Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries” An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bizarre” Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as “one of the most original” (Daily Mail). Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years—in just one week. With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, ‘the perfect 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 falls. This quintessential Japanese “logic mystery”—eerie, gory, and intriguing—combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard

Author: Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Book Description
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Lady Molly of Scotland Yard" by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The Lady Killer

Author: Masako Togawa
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
ISBN: 1782274103
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
A dizzying tale of lust, mystery, and murder—from a beloved Japanese crime fiction author and LGBT icon The Lady Killer leads a double life in Tokyo's shadowy underworld. By day, he is a devoted husband and hard worker; by night, he cruises cabaret bars and nightclubs in search of lonely single women to seduce. But now the hunter is being hunted, and in his wake lies a trail of gruesome murders. Who is the culprit? The answer lies tangled in a web of clues—and to find it, he must accept that nothing is what it seems. The Lady Killer pulls from author Masako Togawa’s vibrant personal life as a cabaret performer for Tokyo’s gay nightclub scene during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Throughout her writing career, Togawa continued to champion the LGBT community as a queer woman—sealing her reputation as one of Japan’s most prominent crime fiction authors and LGBT heroines.

Murder in the Crooked House

Author: Soji Shimada
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1782274642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Book Description
The sequel to the acclaimed Tokyo Zodiac Murders – a fiendish locked room mystery from the Japanese master of the genre The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself – a maze of sloping floors and strange staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny dolls. When a guest is found murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances, the police are called. But they are unable to solve the puzzle, and more bizarre deaths follow. Enter Kiyoshi Mitarai, the renowned sleuth. Surely if anyone can crack these cryptic murders it is him. But you have all the clues too - can you solve the mystery of the murders in The Crooked House first? Born in 1948 in Hiroshima prefecture, Soji Shimada has been dubbed the 'God of Mystery' by international audiences. A novelist, essayist and short-story writer, he made his literary debut in 1981 with The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, which was shortlisted for the Edogawa Rampo Prize. Blending classical detective fiction with grisly violence and elements of the occult, he has gone on to publish several highly acclaimed series of mystery fiction. He is the author of 100+ works in total. In 2009 Shimada received the prestigious Japan Mystery Literature Award in recognition of his life's work.

The Tattoo Murder Case

Author: Akimitsu Takagi
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1569471568
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
Kinue Nomura survived World War II only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs discovered in a room locked from the inside. Gone is the part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos ever rendered. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor who was first to discover the crime scene, feels compelled to assist his detective brother, who is in charge of the case. But Kenzo has a secret: he was Kinue’s lover, and soon his involvement in the investigation becomes as twisted and complex as the writhing snakes that once adorned Kinue’s torso. The Tattoo Murder Case was originally published in 1948; this is the first English translation.

The Crooked House

Author: Christobel Kent
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
ISBN: 0374714479
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
"A taut psychological thriller, loaded with mood, and a puzzle tricky enough to keep you guessing to the final page" —The Washington Post In the chilling tradition of Daphne du Maurier and with the acuity of Kate Atkinson comes an atmospheric psychological thriller about an isolated British village and the sinister abandoned house that holds the key to its most shameful secrets. Alison is as close to anonymous as you can get: she has no ties and no home, and her only anchors are her boyfriend and her small backroom job in publishing. Which is exactly how she wants it. Because once, Alison was a teenager named Esme who lived in a remote, dilapidated house by a bleak estuary with her parents and three siblings. One night something terrible happened in the family’s crooked house, leaving Alison the only survivor. In order to escape from the horror she witnessed, she moved away from the village, changed her name, and cut herself off from her past. But now her boyfriend has invited her to a wedding being held in her old hometown, which means returning there for the first time since that night. She decides that she’s never going to overcome the trauma of what happened to her without confronting it, so she accepts his invitation. But soon Alison realizes that the events of that night left their awful mark not just on her but on the entire village, and she begins to suspect that everyone there might somehow be implicated in her family’s murder. Christobel Kent’s The Crooked House is a haunting thriller about one woman’s search for the truth about her past through a closed community full of dark secrets.