From the author of The Hole and The Factory, a collection of strange and wonderful tales of humans, animals, and plantsCrabs scurrying over a landfill. Huge tadpoles writhing in a pond. A gecko stuck to the window. A sudden invasion of ants. Nature mysteriously creeps in and overruns the realm of humans in this stunning collection of stories.Hiroko Oyamada masterfully conveys the sense that seemingly stable and ordinary people are cracking...

**A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker · NPR · WBEZ’s Nerdette · The New York Public Library · Literary HubA New York Times Editors’ Choice“One of the most passionate cases I’ve ever read for female interiority, for women’s creative pulse and rich inner life.” ―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker“Always expect the unexpected when you’re not expecting.” ―Sloane CrosleyA woman in Tokyo avoids harassment at work by perpe...

**A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR · Marie Claire“A taut and compelling depiction of loneliness and obsession.” --Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train“[It] will keep you firmly in its grip.” --Oyinkan Braithwaite, bestselling author of My Sister, the Serial Killer“The love child of Eugene Ionesco and Patricia Highsmith.” --Kelly Link, bestselling author of Get in TroubleA bestse...

With the wisdom and heart that charmed readers of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a magical novel in which eleven souls get the chance to return to the loved ones they left behind in a most unusual way.What if you could come back after death to watch over a a beloved, your soul occupying an object special to them—a treasured mug, a mother's hearing aid, a diary, or even a jungle gym, climbed by the younger sister you will never meet?Eleven recently deceased pe...

In the first book of an exquisite and sensuous award-winning series, a reclusive ex-bookseller is hired to work under a highly unusual but gifted perfumer, who creates custom-made fragrances for complicated—and sometimes dangerous—clients.After leaving her job as a bookseller, Ichika Wakamiya is living a lethargic life. Unemployed, indifferent, and all too comfortable in the darkness of her bedroom, days pass, but nothing seems to change. Until one day, Ichika spot...

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018An unforgettable collection of stories from “the most carnally direct and the most lucidly intelligent woman writing in Japan” (Kenzaburo Oe)Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories introduces a startlingly original voice. Winner of Japan’s top literary prizes for fiction (among them the Akutagawa, the Tanizaki, the Noma, and the Yomiuri), Taeko Kono writes with a strange beauty, pinpricked with s...

Akutagawa Prize-winning stories about unsettling loss and romance from one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary writers—for fans of Haruki Murakami and Banana YoshimotoIn a dreamlike adventure, one woman travels through an apparently unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, mist-monsters and villainous monkeys; a sister mourns her invisible brother whom only she can still see, while the rest of her family welcome his would-be wife into their home; and an acci...

Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease that mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves. Left untreated, it can cause progressive and permanent disability. But a diagnosis of leprosy can have consequences that go far beyond the disease's physical manifestations. The age-old stigma associated with leprosy can result in severe social discrimination that robs people of opportunities in life and condemns them to society's margins. This book is the most detailed account yet of Yohei Sasakawa...

**A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR · Marie Claire“A taut and compelling depiction of loneliness and obsession.” --Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train“[It] will keep you firmly in its grip.” --Oyinkan Braithwaite, bestselling author of My Sister, the Serial Killer“The love child of Eugene Ionesco and Patricia Highsmith.” --Kelly Link, bestselling author of Get in TroubleA bestse...

**A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker · NPR · WBEZ’s Nerdette · The New York Public Library · Literary HubA New York Times Editors’ Choice“One of the most passionate cases I’ve ever read for female interiority, for women’s creative pulse and rich inner life.” ―Katy Waldman, The New Yorker“Always expect the unexpected when you’re not expecting.” ―Sloane CrosleyA woman in Tokyo avoids harassment at work by perpe...

"A novel about the truths—some wonderful, some terrible—that children know and adults do not.” —Time Magazine“They say you cannot go home again, and that is as true as a knife . . .”A man returns to the site of his childhood home where, years before, he knew a girl named Lettie Hempstock who showed him the most marvelous, dangerous, and outrageous things, but when he gets there he learns that nothing is as he remembered.Wondrous, imaginativ...

An old loner and his misfit dog spend a year on the road in this acclaimed Irish novel of "singing prose [and] two unlikely Beckettian wanderers" ( The Guardian, UK).It is springtime, and an isolated man shunned by his village has forged a connection with the one-eyed dog he's taken into his tightly shuttered life. But as their friendship grows, their small seaside community becomes suspicious. And when an accident is misconstrued as menace, this pair of o...