Modern Japanese Short Stories is a remarkable collection of Japanese stories from the pioneers of contemporary Japanese literature. This volume's twenty-five stories by as many authors display a wide range of style and subject matter--offering a revealing picture of modern Japanese culture and society. The stories in this anthology include: "Tattoo" by Junichiro Tanizaki--a large spider tattooed on the back of a young woman results in unexpected changes "Autumn Mountain" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa--vivid memories of a beautiful painting leads a man to wonder if the it ever actually existed "The Priest and His Love" by Yukio Mishima--a Buddhist priest finds his path to enlightenment challenged after falling in love "The Moon on the Water" by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata--a young woman who cared for her ailing first husband through most of their marriage regrets remarrying after his death Featuring a new foreword by Japanese literary scholar Seiji Lippit and striking woodcut illustrations by Masakazu Kuwata, the stories are translated by the editor, Ivan Morris, and Edward Seidensticker, George Saito, and Geoffery Sargent. This collection of short stories shows why Japanese literature is so highly valued today--it teaches not only about Japan, but about the human condition and the possibilities of art.

When Manhattan social worker Anita Servi stumbles over the body of an elderly woman outside her apartment, she recognizes her as Lillian, the homeless person who spent occasional nights in the hallway. Though Lillian's death is ruled accidental, Anita digs deeper into the death and Lillian's murky past, making some stunning discoveries. As she uncovers the shocking answers, the killer emerges, determined to make sure Anita takes the truth to her grave.

Manhattan social worker Anita Servi never had any reason to suspect that her husband, Benno, was cheating. The police, however, have no problem accusing him of murder when the couple's loyal baby-sitter, Ellen Chapman, is found stabbed to death with one of his screwdrivers. Torn between believing in Benno, and the circumstantial evidence stacked against him, Anita is determined to get to the truth.

Frederick Busch has built a reputation as a master storyteller, a magician with words, and a writer who deserves to be a household name. In his new novel, Girls, he once again treats readers to the "ice-clear, dagger-sharp" (Seattle Times) writing he's become known for and a story that's deeply affecting, terrifying, and tragic. Jack is a security officer at an upstate New York college. When 14-year-old Janice Tanner vanishes from a neighboring town, he reluctantly becomes involved in the search as a favor to a friend of the girl's parents. A suicidal young woman, a teenage runaway, and two more missing girls make it impossible for Jack to drive resurfacing memories of his own daughter's death from his mind. In the course of the investigation, as he comes to confront Janice's murderer, Jack comes to realize just how dangerous it is to be a girl: "I wondered if girls had been kidnapped, murdered, preyed upon for years. Maybe it was the times, and therefore everything human and otherwise from when we began might not be at fault." Girls is a novel that is both a thriller and a stylistic wonder, and, like its protagonist, is tender and tough at the same time.

[Read by Mark Peckham] This was cold-blooded murder! The Syndicate - led by gangster Larry Cutter - are trying to take over Iroquois. They want the town, its mayor and police chief in their pocket. So they kill chief Andy Saxon and one of his top men. Then they move in to clean up. But they had reckoned without with the chief's son, Lieutenant Ted Saxon. And to stop him, they will have to frame him with his own father's murder! Suspended from the force, facing trial, the whole town against him, how could Ted hope to beat Cutter's hands?

Disc jockey Tutter King has it made. Every time he spins a platter on The King s Session, gold comes TV earnings, returns on his secret holdings in recording companies the old payola that some bright young men think only their rightful due. Tutter is a gay young man-around-town who has the world dancing to his tune. He is also involved in some hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright. And then the roof starts to cave Senate investigating committees; the angry emergence of the wife who Lola never knew existed; the canceling of his network contract. Poor Tutter, it looks like he is going to lose everything even his life!"

Book by Queen, Ellery

The Copper Frame This was cold-blooded murder! The Syndicate - led by gangster Larry Cutter - is trying to take over Iroquois. They want the town, mayor, and police chief in their pocket. So they kill chief Andy Saxon and one of his top men. Then they move into clean up. But they hadn't reckoned on the chief's son, Lieutenant Ted Saxon. And to stop him, they will have to frame him with his own father's murder! Suspended from the force, facing trial, the whole town against him, how could Ted hope to beat Cutter's hands? A Room to Die In How could a man have been murdered when he was found alone in his study, a gun in his hand, and the door locked from the inside? It had to be suicide, the police figured. Although there was no suicide note, there was a letter proving conclusively that Roland Nelson, over the last several months, was being blackmailed. But to his daughter, Ann, whom he had seen only spasmodically since he had left her mother when Ann was a baby, there were unanswered questions. She was convinced that her father could never have killed himself. Before she found the answers, two people were brutally garroted with a wire, one of them in her own apartment.

If you're Toussaint Moore, a private investigator from New York City, and a Negro, framed in your own city for a white man's murder, you are going to find it tricky sledding in a small Ohio town, close to the Kentucky border. But the small town was where Moore felt he had to be, to try to find proof for the police that he was innocent of the killing. Moore's problems had started in New York, when the publicity woman from a television show called You-Detective! came to ask him to shadow a man. The idea of the show was that the viewers were given information about a wanted man, and the first viewer to find the man and report him to the police won a reward. In short, it was a combination adventure and give-away show. Ed Lacy has written his most unusual story-a very exciting one, and one which handles with exceptional insight a Negro's experiences in a large northern city and a small, bordering-on-the-South town.

Paul Dogolov, divorced Vietnam War hero and novelist, teaches a writing class in a maximum security prison. Convinced that one of his students, serving a life sentence for brutal murder, is innocent, he sets out to find the real killer. The search leads him to a remote, dust-blasted California desert town and a scorpion's nest of bizarre and vicious characters. The result is a tale of intrigue, corruption, and savage humor, in which Dogolov, through his encounter with the horrific, yet wildly comic, Fat Lady of the title, learns about terror, degradation, and ultimately, love in a funhouse-mirror world where illusion is reality, reality, a chimera. "David Scott Milton is certainly one of the most talented, uncompromising prose writers of his generation, and The Fat Lady Sings is perhaps his best and also most appealing novel." — Peter Bogdanovich

An unidentifiable body is found in an Indianapolis park, deliberately arranged so that police know it's not just a random crime. Former cop Frank Behr, now a P.I. with no cases, no money and no options, finds himself chasing down the disappearance of a wayward young woman who's been missing for months in a futile attempt to collect a reward. With assistance from his few remaining contacts on the force, Behr follows the tenuous thread of his case into the world of small-time prostitution-and discovers a possible connection to the body in the park. When another murder victim turns up, it's clear there's a serial killer at work, but this predator seems to be invisible, camouflaged by his perfectly normal-looking life. Behr's relentless quest for the missing girl and his parallel pursuit of the killer become entangled with the official police investigation. Ultimately, Behr's obsession with the truth will lead him into the darkest places, and force him to make an unavoidable and devastating decision.

"Celebrating 50 years of Hard Case Crime! Okay, not really. But what if, instead of having been founded 50 books ago, Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago, by a rascal out to make a quick buck off the popularity of pulp fiction? Such a fellow might make a few enemies -- especially after publishing a supposed non-fiction account of a heist at a Mob-run nightclub, actually penned by an 18-year-old showgirl with dreams of writing for The New Yorker. With both the cops and the crooks after them, our heroes are about to learn that reading and writing pulp novels is a lot more fun than living them..." --

Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine is the toast of Moscow society, a beautiful actress in an infamous theatre troupe.Her love life is as colourful as the parts she plays. She is the estranged wife of a descendant of Genghis Khan. And her ex-husband has threatened to kill anyone who courts her.He appears to be making good on his promise.Fandorin is contacted by concerned friend - the widowed wife of Chekhov - who asks him to investigate an alarming incident involving Eliza. But when he watches Eliza on stage for the first time, he falls desperately in love . . . Can he solve the case - and win over Eliza - without attracting the attentions of the murderer he is trying to find?

After UCLA coed Abigail Hunter disappears without a trace from a Caribbean cruise ship on which she and her parents and older brother are vacationing during spring break, her father, millionaire shipping magnate George Hunter, desperate for news of his daughter, hires Dan Grail, a Beverly Hills private eye to investigate her disappearance and offers a huge reward if he is successful in bringing her home successfully. Hoping to get a lead as to her whereabouts, Grail books passage on the same cruise ship from which the girl disappeared. His efforts are unsuccessful at first, but he does pick up some strong clues during the voyage. After some harrowing near-death experiences, he winds up in New York City, where he sees a girl who looks suspiciously like Abbey on a porn site on his computer. Her working name is Tulip. This gives him the idea that she might be in Amsterdam, Holland, which is notorious for its wide-open red light district and pornographic film industry. Eventually he tracks Abbey down, but finding her and rescuing her from the porn studio where she is being held captive nearly leads to his own demise.

Jack Faith, world-renowned superstar entertainer, would stoop to anything—even murder—to prevent an unauthorized biography about him and his adulterous romantic escapades with countless beautiful Hollywood starlets (sometimes underaged) from being published. How he gets caught by his own nefarious schemes and exposed as the charlatan he is, is the story of not only his life, but at the same time gives the reader an inside peek at what the real Hollywood is like.

So I'm a Heel It's just a lucky break the way Ed Hawkins gets a look at that police blotter that tips him off on the arrest-and-release of his rich neighbor, Otto Weylin, for molesting a minor. Nobody ever gave Hawkins a break, and he doesn't intend to give Weylin a break either. He figures that Weylin is good for ten grand to keep this little bit of information out of the papers, and maybe he's right. But why all of a sudden is his 10-year-old son becoming so friendly with Weylin? What is the secret that Weylin's sex-starved wife keeps hinting at? The blackmail scheme is rapidly backfiring and Hawkins can't trust anyone, even his own wife--and now his own boy has gone missing Flint Flint took a bullet in the lung during that last job, a hole that just won't seem to plug itself. But hired killers don't get to retire, and Flint is called out to Colorado for one more job. A rancher named Mr. Good wants his competition removed, and he's got a pretty plan how to get away with it. So Flint rides out and meets the local sheriff, a man so fat he spends all his time in his office--should be easy to work around. He meets his victim, Thomason, a poor but honest man, who naively hires him on the spot. And then he meets Thomason's wife, Cora, who seems....very friendly--but is she all that she seems? And can Mr. Good really be trusted? This is supposed to be Flint's last job, but it's funny how a simple plan can soon get so complicated. The Big Out Brick Palmer, catcher for the Blues, gets a call after the game. His kid brother Johnny is in trouble again. Johnny is the brilliant one, the one who's going to be a doctor, but he's forged Brick's name on a $10,000 Syndicate debt. So Brick does what he has to do, he pays off the Syndicate punk, then busts his nose. Randy York of the Herald sees the payoff and reveals the meeting in his column the next day. Unable to rat out his brother, Brick is thrown out of the league. All he can do is play for one of the outlaw leagues. So he and wife Cathy move to Montreal and try to start over. But they're all out to get him--the fans and players for selling out, the Umps for dirtying the game. They're all out for blood. But for the Syndicate punk it's personal--he plans to make it murder.

The sweeping new saga of strong heroines and family secrets from the bestselling author of The Paris Model. While searching for her lost sister, art historian Wren Summers takes on the glittering world of New York's auction houses. A missing girl, a hidden masterpiece, and the search for the truth 1965: After escaping from anti-war turmoil and the suffocating weight of family expectations, a beautiful young couple embrace a life free of materialism and tradition by a sapphire lake in Italy. But the past does not always let go so easily ... 1987: When talented art historian Wren Summers lands her dream job at the Sydney Art Museum, it seems she can finally leave her wildly unconventional background behind - until a treacherous act threatens everything she has strived for. The revelation of a monstrous family secret sees Wren head to New York, compelled to find the missing girl who holds the key to this shocking mystery - and to make a fresh start in the glittering realm of international art auctions. As she struggles to fulfil her quest, can she navigate this new, high-stakes world of swirling temptation, romance and deceit, danger and betrayal, while staying true to what she knows is right? Praise for Alexandra Joel: 'A mesmerising storyteller' The Australian 'Exceptional research and great storytelling ... She has that rare flair for drawing the reader into sumptuous worlds from glamorous bygone eras' Better Reading

“Moses Wine is a force to reckon with and to read with pleasure.” —Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times Book Review “A fun detective novel you just don’t get enough of anymore...there is a certain style reminiscent of those 1950s Mickey Spillane novels when men were men and private investigators were ‘private dicks’...definitely recommended reading.” —West Coast Review of Books With a new introduction by Roger L. Simon A guided tour of the People’s Republic, Aunt Sonya had said: U.S.-China Friendship Study Tour Number Five, arranged by the China Friendship Society, an organization in which she was involved. Why not get away from it all? Moses Wine figured. At least it would get him away from personal injury cases, murder investigations, and the insistent feeling that boredom and alienation were about to become his constant companions in his middle age. But China has a way of springing surprises, and soon California's hippest ex-radical detective is chasing down the priceless Han Dynasty Peking Duck, falling for a gorgeous dragon lady in a Mao suit—and fighting for his life across a vast, mysterious land he barely knows...

Caring and compassionate, LAPD homicide detective Jessica Drake isn't about to write off the death of an elderly man found dead in a secluded area of Rancho Park as simply a heart attack. The nonresident guest at an old age home was in vigorous health, with plenty of friends...and suddenly he's mysteriously dead. Jessie suspects foul playIn search of what caused the old gentleman's death, Jessie combs the records of local retirement homes and prods the memories of the residents. She discovers that the victim was the only person in his family to come out of the concentration camps alive--and his demise is just one of a number of mysterious deaths among camp survivors. The possible connection to the Holocaust is a particularly heart-wrenching irony to Jessie, who has just recently learned of her own link to the historic atrocity. Now she's just determined to follow a twisted trail of decades-old deceit to catch a killer...and spare the survivors of the death camps from the treachery of a modern-day maniac.Caring and compassionate, LAPD homicide detective Jessica Drake isn't about to write off the death of an elderly man found dead in a secluded area of Rancho Park as simply a heart attack. The nonresident guest at an old age home was in vigorous health, with plenty of friends...and suddenly he's mysteriously dead. Jessie suspects foul play. In search of what caused the old gentleman's death, Jessie combs the records of local retirement homes and prods the memories of the residents. She discovers that the victim was the only person in his family to come out of the concentration camps alive--and his demise is just one of a number of mysterious deaths among camp survivors. The possibleconnection to the Holocaust is a particularly heart-wrenching irony to Jessie, who has just recently learned of her own link to the historic atrocity. Now she's determined to follow a twisted trail of decades-old deceit to catch a killer...and spare the survivors of the death camps from the treachery of a modern-day maniac.Caring and compassionate, LAPD homicide detective Jessica Drake isn't about to write off the death of an elderly man found dead in a secluded area of Rancho Park as simply a heart attack. The nonresident guest at an old age home was in vigorous health, with plenty of friends...and suddenly he's mysteriously dead. Jessie suspects foul play. In search of what caused the old gentleman's death, Jessie combs the records of local retirement homes and prods the memories of the residents. She discovers that the victim was the only person in his family to come out of the concentration camps alive--and his demise is just one of a number of mysterious deaths among camp survivors. The possible connection to the Holocaust is a particularly heart-wrenching irony to Jessie, who has just recently learned of her own link to the historic atrocity. Now she's determined to follow a twisted trail of decades-old deceit to catch a killer...and spare the survivors of the death camps from the treachery of a modern-day maniac.

Jack Cooper is an unhappy man-mind, body, and spirit. He has lost his longstanding job to the economy, his mother to illness, and his wife to her secret lover. All in the blink of an eye. Beaten, broken and crippled by tragedy, Jack withdraws into total isolation, narrowing his life down to the simplest routines to block out the pain. His day begins with a strenuous workout at the Bethesda Health Club, his oasis. There, his mind and body can be free. His day ends in his tiny apartment, where he escapes from reality with his books until he can lose himself in sleep. Rinse and repeat. That is until he meets the enigmatic Mike Parrish. Parrish has no official identification. He was stolen from the hospital as a newborn and passed around from household to household. To the government and the world at large, he does not exist. He is an anonymous drifter but also the first person who breaks through Cooper's emotional confinement. Cooper finds solace in his friendship with Parrish, a man who understands his plight and is sympathetic to his pain. But then Parrish suddenly disappears, leaving Cooper to search for a virtually invisible man. As he looks for clues as intangible as ghosts and chases down leads as fleeting as shadows, his search leads him back to the one place he called his refuge: the Bethesda Health Club. How much can be taken from a man before he has nothing to lose?