Japanese Fiction Thrillers

In the Chizurui family mansion, a haunting presence casts a shadow over its residents. By night, an eerie figure, clad in a sinister Hannya mask is seen roaming around the house. An amateur murder mystery writer, Akimitsu Takagi, is sent to investigate—but his investigation takes a harrowing turn as tragedy strikes. Within the confines of a locked study, the head of the family is found dead, with only an ominous Hannya mask lying on the floor by his side and the lingering scent of jasmine in the air.

Kai Bimore never imagined that sneaking a legendary sword through Narita Airport would plunge him into Tokyo’s vicious underworld. Once a criminal with a dark past and a heart still loyal to his family's warrior legacy, Kai now finds himself pitted against the ruthless Ice Kuroda and her deadly empire. As high-stakes alliances fracture and secrets of the ancient Honjo Masamune reveal unprecedented power, every choice he makes could spark a violent revolution or seal his doom. The narrative centers on high-stakes criminal underworld conflicts in modern Tokyo—with rival clans, lethal ...

A gripping tale of survival and an epic love story in which a husband and wife, separated by the only battle of World War II to take place on American soil, fight to reunite in Alaska's starkly beautiful Aleutian Islands. Following the death of his younger brother in Europe, journalist John Easley is determined to find meaning in his loss. Leaving behind his beloved wife, Helen, after an argument they both regret, he heads north from Seattle to investigate the Japanese invasion of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, a story censored by the U.S. government.

The winter of 1578, four years prior to the Honno-ji Incident. Araki Murashige has betrayed his ally Oda Nobunaga and holed himself up in Arioka Castle—but a string of unsettling incidents within the castle walls has him at his wit’s end. The desperate warlord’s only hope for solving these mysteries is imprisoned in the castle’s dungeon: a man named Kuroda Kanbei, one of Oda’s most gifted strategists. When all the conflict and intrigue come to a close, what will these two men have gained…and lost?

In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don't intend to produce. As the resumes pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama's attention - Yamasaki Asami - a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. But she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be.

Japanese literary sensation Fuminori Nakamura’s latest novel is as a dark look into human psyche - what turns someone into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion?

Ousted by a rival cartel, a brutal drug lord flees Mexico to the distant East. An unwanted child commits a terrible deed and is locked away for years. A Japanese heart surgeon is shunned by the medical community and turns to working as an illegal organ broker. Three lives become entangled in threads of flesh and are plunged deep into a world of blood and bone. Together, they carve out a new criminal empire, but how long can a dynasty last? Destiny is not for mortals to decide. It is cast by the Night and Wind. It is cast by Tezcatlipoca.

Ken Hideyoshi is the new guy in Halawa Correctional Institute. He’s tough looking, a hard case. His cellmate is Cal—the mute tattoo artist of the prison who murdered his own wife. Ken, already inked with a gang symbol and a Japanese emblem, eventually asks Cal to create an elaborate tattoo on his back, in kanji script, of Musashi’s Book of the Void.

When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue leads him to a compound in the heart of Tokyo, with a group that seems to be a cult led by a charismatic guru. Narazaki plunges into the secretive world of the cult, ready to expose himself to any of the guru's brainwashing tactics if it means he can learn the truth about Ryoko. But the cult isn't what he expected, and he has no idea of the bubbling violence beneath its surface.

In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Standing on the cold beach, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks and the empty juice bottle speak clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Justaro, 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.

In Hillbilly Hollow, even the dead want the last word...When an eccentric local artist meets an untimely end during the annual Flower Festival, Emma gets pulled into two cases at once. First, the murder investigation. Second, the hunt for a dangerous burglar who has the whole town on edge. After all-brawn-and-no-brains Sheriff Tucker declares the death an accident, Emma's search for the killer hits a dead end... until a vengeful ghost comes calling. Can Emma decipher the mad ramblings of the disgruntled spirit?

Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case which terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines the circumstances of this watershed episode in modern Japanese history and brings into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. As the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are brought to light, the stakes rise, and some of the professionals we have watched try to fight their way through this crisis will lose everything—some even their lives.

Almost every afternoon, the Woman in the Purple Skirt sits on the same park bench, where she eats a cream bun while the local children make a game of trying to get her attention. Unbeknownst to her, she is being watched—by the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, who is always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes, what she eats, whom she speaks to.

Detective Kyochiro Kaga of the Tokyo Police Department has just been transferred to a new precinct in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. Newly arrived, but with a great deal of experience, Kaga is promptly assigned to the team investigating the murder of a woman. But the more he investigates, the greater number of potential suspects emerges. It isn’t long before it seems nearly all the people living and working in the business district of Nihonbashi have a motive for murder.

A ghostly visit from her former landlady draws Emma away from sleepy little Hillbilly Hollow to investigate a murder in the big city. But what seems like a straightforward case soon becomes entangled with an event from Emma's past and a personal quest for justice. With the attractive but bungling Sheriff Tucker at her side, will Emma be tempted by the chance to avenge an old wrong?

ある日、ホームズとワトソンが散歩から帰ると、一台のブルーム型馬車が戸口に停まっていた。トリヴェリアンと名乗る開業医は、自分を開業させてくれた患者兼同居人ブレッシントンに起こっためずらしい出来事を語り始めた。ブレッシントンの部屋に何者かが侵入した痕跡が見つかった。怯えるブレッシントンのためにトレベリアン医師はホームズに事件の真相解明を依頼してきたのである。調査に乗り出すホームズ。ところがその翌朝、ブレシントンが首つり死体で発見される。ホームズは事件現場のほんのわずかな微細な痕跡から、事件当夜、起こった事を克明に演繹してみせる!声優ナレーター・佐々木健、改訳・大久保ゆうのコンビでお届けする、ホームズオーディオブックシリーズ第8弾!

"I just killed him...I just saved the world." Elizabeth Wayne escapes Ohio’s gray fog for Tokyo’s neon haze, hoping to outrun chronic depression and reinvent herself. As an English teacher, she treads polite classrooms by day. By night, she’s entangled in a CIA–North Korea conspiracy to silence a global pop icon. Racing Shinjuku’s shadowed backstreets, Elizabeth uncovers phantom footsteps, whispered voices, and memories bleeding into waking nightmares. Fusing mind‑bending suspense, unconventional plot twists, and a vibrant Japan setting, TALKING CURE delivers razor‑sharp ...

事故か、自殺か、殺人か――。母の手記と娘の回想が交錯し、浮かび上がる事件の真相とは。圧倒的に新しい、母娘ミステリー!

Suzuki is just an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. When he discovers the criminal gang responsible, he leaves behind his life as a maths teacher and joins them, looking for a chance to take his revenge. What he doesn't realise is that he's about to get drawn into a web of unusual professional assassins, each with their own agenda.

The Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles. Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?