W. Craven, author of The Puppet Show ‘You’ll be laughing out loud every five minutes’ You-jeong Jeong, author of The Good Son ‘A mash-up of Tarantino and Camus set in contemporary Seoul’ Louisa Luna, author of Two Girls Down ‘An incredible cast of characters’ Le monde ‘Smart but lightning fast’ Brian Evenson, author of Last Days Plotters are just pawns like us. A request comes in and they draw up the plans.

There’s someone above them who tells them what to do. And above that person is another plotter telling them what to do. You think that if you go up there with a knife and stab the person at the very top, that’ll fix everything.

But no-one’s there. It’s just an empty chair. Reseng was raised by cantankerous Old Raccoon in the Library of Dogs.

To anyone asking, it’s just an ordinary library. To anyone in the know, it’s a hub for Seoul’s organised crime, and a place where contract killings are plotted and planned. So it’s no surprise that Reseng has grown up to become one of the best hitmen in Seoul.

He takes orders from the plotters, carries out his grim duties, and comforts himself afterwards with copious quantities of beer and his two cats, Desk and Lampshade. But after he takes pity on a target and lets her die how she chooses, he finds his every move is being watched. Is he finally about to fall victim to his own game? And why does that new female librarian at the library act so strangely? Is he looking for his enemies in all the wrong places? Could he be at the centre of a plot bigger than anything he’s ever known?

Enter Shoko: a popular lifestyle blogger whose work Eriko follows obsessively. Shoko lives a life of controlled chaos—messy apartment, take-out dinners, a kind, easy-going husband. She writes about daily contentment, though her fractured relationship with her father gnaws at the edges of her happiness.

When Eriko orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Shoko, the two women strike up an unlikely connection. For a fleeting moment, Eriko believes she’s finally found what she’s always longed for. But as her fascination turns to fixation and Shoko’s carefully balanced life begins to dissolve, both women are pushed to breaking points neither of them saw coming.

Deftly translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is a taut, provocative novel about modern womanhood, the hunger for connection, and the quiet, ordinary ways our lives can spiral out of control. With razor-sharp insight and disarming empathy, Asako Yuzuki explores how far we’ll go to be seen and what happens when the ones who see us don’t like what they find.

Her daughter didn’t die in an accident. Her daughter was killed by two people in the class. And before she leaves, she has a lesson to teach…

But revenge has a way of spinning out of control, and Yuko’s last lecture is only the start of the story. In this bestselling Japanese thriller of love, despair and murder, everyone has a confession to make, and no one will escape unharmed.

Trapped in Bright’s cave home with her new “husband”, she plans her escape… not so easily done in this isolated and remote village where she is watched day and night. Will her tenacity and free spirit survive, or will she be broken?

Kidnapping Yosep seemed like the ultimate act of love. But inside a secluded mansion, plagued by paranoia and with their grip on reality slowly loosening, the women use increasingly disturbing strategies to keep Yosep in their possession. As their angel’s halo slips and their perfect plan unravels, the women must fight not only to keep him, but to keep their secret buried – at all costs.

More than a little unhinged, Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo is an exhilarating descent into the dark side of devotion. Translated from the Korean by Joheun Lee.

The third title in Japan’s most popular murder mystery series — following The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse — fiendish classics featuring investigator Kosuke Kindaichi

Nestled deep in the mist-shrouded mountains, The Village of Eight Graves takes its name from a bloody legend: in the Sixteenth Century eight samurais, who had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure, were murdered by the inhabitants, bringing a terrible curse down upon their village.

Centuries later a mysterious young man named Tatsuya arrives in town, bringing a spate of deadly poisonings in his wake. The inimitably scruffy and brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi investigates.

There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a master class in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that Rika might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body. Do she and Kajii have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of a convicted con woman and serial killer—the “Konkatsu Killer”—Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance, and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime… Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto’s masterpiece – and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written.