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Mina’s Matchbox
49,000 TNDAfter the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.
The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle’s magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.
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Mistress Koharu
69,000 TNDAkira, a meticulous editor at a major publishing house in Tokyo, harbors a secret: he lives with Koharu, a Hungarian-made love doll. Each night, he speaks to her and finds a long-sought solace in her presence—a comfort he cannot attain even in the arms of real women in his life. Things only improve when Koharu breaks free from her role as a love doll and starts speaking and moving on her own, transformed into the perfect wife.
But when a new woman enters Akira’s life, everything changes. A single confession to Koharu about his attraction sets off a chain of disturbing events that spiral into the unexpected.
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More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
59,000 TNDIn Tokyo, there is a neighbourhood with the highest number of bookstores in the world. It is called Jinbocho where book lovers can browse to their heart’s delight and where hunters of first editions or autographed copies prowl the bookcases. The Morisaki bookshop, a small family-run shop, is so packed with books that barely five people can fit inside.
Books crowd the shelves and invade every corner of the floor; when a customer arrives, the owner, Satoru, immediately pops out from behind the counter. Recently, his wife Momoko has joined him, and often, in her free time after work, their niece Takako also helps out. For the first time, the girl does not feel lonely; she has new friends and new rituals to keep her company: the annual Jinbocho festival, the café around the corner, or an unexpected visitor.
Because, as she has discovered, a bookstore is populated not by the characters contained in the books, but also by those who frequent it. And those stories create bonds. As a sign of gratitude, Takako gives her aunt and uncle a trip, promising to look after the shop while they are away.
Everything seems to be going swimmingly, but then why is Satoru behaving so strangely? And what does that woman with the red umbrella want who has appeared at the end of the street? How many other stories, emotions, and treasures does the Morisaki bookshop hold?Loved by thousands of readers worldwide, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is a story of hope, friendship and the healing power of books. Will we see you in the bookshop this summer?PRAISE FOR DAYS AT THE MORISAKI BOOKSHOP:’Brims with genuine charm -
Ms Ice Sandwich
49,000 TNDA young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he’s ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags.
But life keeps getting in the way – there’s his beloved grandmother’s illness, and a faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti, who she invites him into her private world. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.
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Murder in the House of Omari
59,000 TNDOsaka, 1943. The Second World War rages, and American bombers rain down death upon Japan. The once prosperous Omari household, now ruined by the terrible conflict, is struck by a succession of ghastly murders.
Young trainee doctor and budding sleuth Natsuko is desperate to help her old friend, Mineko Omari, to solve the mystery and bring an end to the gruesome deaths tearing the family apart.
To do so, the pair will have to delve into the Omari clan’s past, where a dark and deadly secret has been festering for decades…
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My Grandfather, the Master Detective
69,000 TNDThere used to be a cafe called Mon Cheri at Nishi Waseda where members of the Waseda Mystery Club spent day after day frothing in excitement over the latest mystery novels, and now he and Kaede solve mysteries together
As a lover of classic crime stories, it’s perhaps no surprise that twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher Kaede encounters everyday mysteries more often than your average person. Solving them is another matter, though, and the person she always heads to for guidance is her beloved grandfather – who, despite having dementia, retains a keen sharpness of mind.From impossible locked-room murders to confounding missing person cases, the granddaughter and grandfather team ‘weave stories’ in master-and-apprentice fashion. Together, they get to the bottom of case after case.
But, all the while, a shadow slowly closes in on Kaede, posing a more insidious threat . . .
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Naruto: Sasuke’s Story–Sunrise
39,000 TNDA new series of prose novels, straight from the worldwide Naruto franchise. Naruto’s allies and enemies take center stage in these fast-paced adventures, with each volume focusing on a particular clanmate, ally, team…or villain. A new series of prose novels, straight from the worldwide Naruto franchise.
Naruto’s allies and enemies take center stage in these fast-paced adventures, with each volume focusing on a particular clan mate, ally, team…or villain. The Great Ninja War has ended, but to untangle the mystery that remains, Sasuke sets out on a journey—a journey that he hopes will allow him to atone for his sins. During his travels, those ninja faithful to the avenger Sasuke bring about tragedy.
Meanwhile danger closes in on the villages of Konoha, Kiri, and Kumo, where red eyes burn with hatred. What is the future Sasuke stares down? -
No Longer Human
59,000 TNDMine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings.
His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: “The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.” (The Japan Times)
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No One Knows
59,000 TNDNo one really understands how we suffer. One day, when we’re adults, we may come to recall this suffering, this misery, as silly and laughable, but how are we to get through the long, hateful period until then? No one bothers to teach us that. Osamu Dazai was a master raconteur who plumbed—in an addictive, easy style—the absurd complexities of life in a society whose expectations cannot be met without sacrificing one’s individual ideals on the altar of conformity.
The gravitational pull of his prose is on full display in these stories. In “Lantern,” a young woman, in love with a well-born but impoverished student, shoplifts a bathing suit for him—and ends up in the local newspaper indicted as a crazed, degenerate communist. In “Chiyojo,” a high-school girl shows early promise as a writer, but as her uncle and mother relentlessly push her to pursue a literary career, she must ask herself: is this what I really want? Or am I supposed to fulfill their own frustrated ambitions? In “Shame,” a young reader writes a fan letter to a writer she admires, only to find out, upon visiting him, that he’s a bourgeoise sophisticate nothing like the desperate rebels he portrays, and decides (in true Dazai style): “Novelists are human trash.
No, they’re worse than that; they’re demons. . .
They write nothing but lies.”This collection of 14 tales—a half-dozen of which have never before appeared in English—is based on a Japanese collection of, as Dazai described them, “soliloquies by female narrators.” No One Knows includes the quietly brilliant long story “Schoolgirl” and shows the fiction of this 20th-century genius in a fresh light.
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Norwegian Wood
59,000 TNDThe haunting, enigmatic love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar in Japan, and is his bestselling title throughout the worldAutumn 1969, and soon I would be 20. When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
‘Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami’s writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility’ Guardian’Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and loss of faith’ Sunday Times’A masterly novel’ New York Times
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Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (novel), Vol. 1
69,000 TNDIF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU WILL SURVIVE. Kill each other within the time limit or die. It’s just another evening commute on the train, until the passengers are given an order they can’t disobey. Utter chaos ensues, but ordinary office worker Dokja Kim only feels an unsettling calm. He knows exactly how this will play out! The subway car, the passengers’ reactions, even the bizarre creature that suddenly appears to oversee this sadistic scenario…everything is straight out of his favorite story, an online novel so obscure he is its sole reader. And as the only one who knows where the plot is headed, Dokja must use his knowledge to survive the oncoming apocalypse!
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One Hundred Flowers
59,000 TND‘A tender meditation on memory, familial bonds, and the evanescence of every day moments … a profoundly affecting read’ – Storizen Magazine’A believable slice-of-life window into human nature that resonates on multiple levels’ – The Japan TimesFROM THE AUTHOR OF THE JAPANESE BESTSELLER IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD WHICH HAS SOLD OVER TWO MILLION COPIESThe fragrance of a single stem in a vase. The shimmering reflection of fireworks in a lake.
The quiet of a bookshop as evening falls. The feeling of opening a brand-new diary and beginning to write … Moments of beauty endure.
But what happens when you begin to forget?Yuriko leads a quiet, orderly life as a piano teacher. It’s New Year’s Eve and her grown-up son Izumi comes to visit. Yuriko makes him his favourite meal: omelette and hayashi rice.
Together, they look like a normal family. But Yuriko has a secret. Many years earlier, when Izumi was a boy, Yuriko suddenly disappeared for an entire year.
She returned, but the lost year was never discussed. Now as Yuriko begins to lose her memory, Izumi is forced to race against time as he seeks the truth behind this long-buried mystery. Will he learn to understand the woman his mother once was, before it is too late? And is he ready to become a father himself?One Hundred Flowers is a story about the preciousness of every moment, the beauty and pain of family love, and the healing power of letting go.