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Last Stop Tokyo

Last Stop Tokyo
  • Author(s): James Buckler
  • Location(s): Tokyo
  • Genre(s): Crime, Thriller
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Alex thought running away would make everything better. Six thousand miles from the mistakes he’s made and the people he’s hurt, Tokyo seems like the perfect escape. A new life, a new Alex. The bright lights and dark corners...

Pure Invention

Pure Invention
  • Author(s): Matt Alt
  • Location(s): Japan
  • Genre(s): Nonfiction
  • Era(s): WW2 to present

The Walkman. Karaoke. Pikachu. Pac-Man. Akira. Emoji. We’ve all fallen in love with one or another of Japan’s pop-culture creations, from the techy to the wild to the super-kawaii. But as Japanese-media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant...

The Cat with Three Passports

The Cat with Three Passports
  • Author(s): C J Fentiman
  • Location(s): Japan
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): Current

A girl struggling to fit in. A homeless kitten. An unexpected job offer in an unfamiliar country that changes everything. CJ had a long history of escaping places and people she wasn’t fond of. But for the sake of...

The Flower Arranger

The Flower Arranger
  • Author(s): J J Ellis
  • Location(s): Tokyo, Iriomote Island
  • Genre(s): Crime
  • Era(s): Present Day

Holly Blain wants to cover real news. The entertainment beat — pop stars and teen trends — was not why she moved to Tokyo. When she meets Inspector Tetsu Tanaka, head of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police’s Gaikoku-jin unit, it might...

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment
  • Author(s): Jennifer Cody Epstein
  • Location(s): Japan
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1930s -1960s

In this evocative and thrilling epic novel, fifteen-year-old Yoshi Kobayashi, child of Japan’s New Empire, daughter of an ardent expansionist and a mother with a haunting past, is on her way home on a March night when American bombers...

The Lady and the Monk

The Lady and the Monk
  • Author(s): Pico Iyer
  • Location(s): Kyoto
  • Era(s): Late 20th Century

The author spent a year in Japan in search of contemplation. Instead he found a land of contradictions, where the monks spent their evenings watching game shows. It was through his relationship with Sachiko, a Japanese lady who combined...

The North Light

The North Light
  • Author(s): Hideo Yokoyama, Louise Heal Kawai (Translator)
  • Location(s): Japan
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery
  • Era(s): Current

Minoru Aose is an architect whose greatest achievement is to have designed the Yoshino house, a prizewinning and much discussed private residence built in the shadow of Mount Asama. Aose has never been able to replicate this triumph and...

The Pine Islands

The Pine Islands
  • Author(s): Marion Poschmann
  • Location(s): Japan
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2019 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER When Gilbert Silvester wakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him, he flees – immediately, irrationally, inexplicably – for Japan. In Tokyo he discovers...

The Silent Dead

The Silent Dead
  • Author(s): Tetsuya Honda
  • Location(s): Tokyo
  • Genre(s): Crime, Thriller
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Twenty-seven-year-old Detective Reiko Himekawa has an impressive ability to solve crimes. When a gruesomely slaughtered body wrapped in plastic is discovered, Reiko soon uncovers eleven other murders with a similar ‘signature’ and a reference to something called ‘strawberry night’,...

The Tale Of Murasaki

The Tale Of Murasaki
  • Author(s): Liza Dalby
  • Location(s): Kyoto
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 11th Century

In a wonderful world shaped by beauty and poetry, ancient traditions and popular intrigue, a young woman at the centre of the eleventh-century Japanese imperial court observes the exotic world around her. Murasaki sees everything, the Emperor and Empress,...

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