Louise Heal Kawai

A boy goes to the supermarket almost every day, just so he can look at the face of the woman who sells sandwiches. She is beautiful to him, and he calls her "Ms Ice Sandwich", and endlessly draws her portrait. When the boy's friend hears about this hesitant adoration, suddenly everything changes. His visits to Ms Ice Sandwich stop, and with them the last hopes of his childhood.

"The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff overlooking icy seas at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place for the millionaire Kozaburo Hamamoto to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself - a disorienting maze of sloping floors and strangely situated staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny lifesize dolls. When a man is found dead in one of the mansion's rooms, murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances,...

"Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he has inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. However, one day, a talking cat named Tiger appears and asks Rintaro to save books with him. Of course, "ask" is putting it politely -- Tiger is demanding Rintaro's help. The world is full of lonely books, left unread and unloved, and only Tiger and Rintaro can liberate them from their neglectful owners. And...

"A master crime writer . . . Seicho Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."—The New York Times Book Review
"A stellar psychological thriller with a surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the book's complex characterizations.Readers will agree that Matsumoto (1909–1992) deserves his reputation as Japan's Georges Simenon.-Publishers Weekly.
While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives...

A Town & Country “Best Classic Murder Mystery Books of All Time”

Japan’s Agatha Christie introduces the beloved Detective Kindaichi in this 1930s classic locked room mystery—now translated into English for the first time!
In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip...