Summer Reads

Set in 1970s Japan, this tender and poetic novel about a young, single mother struggling to find her place in the world is an early triumph by a modern Japanese master.Alone at dawn, in the heat of midsummer, a young woman named Takiko Odaka departs on...

From Shion Miura, award-winning author of The Easy Life in Kamusari, comes a spirit-lifting novel about tradition, first love, and ancient lore in a Japanese mountain village.   It’s been a year since Yuki Hirano left home—or more precisely, was booted...

(Available after June 30th, 2022)From the author of The Aosawa Murders, one of the NYT Notable Books of 2020. The WSJ commented: “Part psychological thriller, part murder mystery—it is audacious in conception and brilliant in execution.”    Set in Tokyo...

(Available after June 30th, 2022)A powerful novel about the LGBTQ rights movement and gay love in Japan and Taiwan, from the most important queer voice of East Asia's millennial generation.   Cho Norie, twenty-seven and originally from Taiwan, is working...

“A surprise from the author of Chocolat,” New York Times bestselling author Joanne M. Harris, “this pacy adult fantasy is narrated by Loki, the Norse god of fire and mischief” (Vogue).This novel is a brilliant first-person narrative of the rise and fall...

One of the greatest European historical epic comics ever written continues.Family TiesSigurd returns home to Iceland to face the horrible Halfdan, but a father and a king can only be as good as his word—a blessing he refuses to bestow to Sigurd without a...

Meet one of Japan's most popular characters of all time-Kitaro, the One-Eyed Monster BoyThe Birth of Kitaro collects seven of Shigeru Mizuki's early, and beloved, Kitaro stories, making them available for the first time in English, in an all-new,...

Brit-pop meets Japanese folklore as Shigeru Mizuki summons equal parts humour, spookiness, and sheer absurdityKitaro the Vampire Slayer is the fifth volume in Shigeru Mizuki’s bizarre stories about a yokai boy and his entourage of otherworldly friends...

"Kitaro is a fun, eerie romp into Japan's supernatural world." --School Library Journal, YALSA Great Graphic Novel for TeensThe second in a seven-volume series of the best of Shigeru Mizuki's Kitaro comics, designed with a kid-friendly format and price...

Kitaro faces off against a swamp monster, a paper screen come to life, and an army of mythical raccoon dogsKitaro and the Great Tanuki War features adventures of Shigeru Mizuki’s beloved yokai boy. In the epic title story, Kitaro battles the tanuki, a...

More bizarre and hilarious adventures with everyone’s favorite one-eyed boy!In the fourth installment of Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro series readers meet a whole new cast of yokai monsters, including a giant Cyclops, the villainous Blackbeard, and a malefic...

The spooky yokai boy Kitaro is back for his sixth book, and this time he has a pile of monsters to beat   Featuring seven stories by Japan’s beloved monster master Shigeru Mizuki, Kitaro’s Yokai Battles features some of Kitaro’s strangest foes...

The final showdown for the legendary yokai!In the seventh volume of Shigeru Mizuki’s defining series, our beloved hero Kitaro stands accused of exposing the secret yokai world on television. He is put on trial for crimes against yokai. Witnesses are...

A lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture through the concept of yokai.Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan...

Ninja Attack! introduces dozens of unforgettable real-life ninja straight out of the annals of Japanese history—many of whom are all but unknown outside their home country.Ninja masters. Solo assassins and operatives. Femme fatales as deadly as they were...

Yokai Attack! is a nightmare-inducing one-stop guide to Japan's traditional monsters and creepy-crawlies.Yokai are ethereal sorts of beings, like ghosts, nearly always encountered at night; everyone has their own take on how they might look in real life...

An adorable new yuri manga for fans of Kase-san and Yamada and Bloom Into You. One day, high school girl Himari sees a girl, Yori, sing in a band, and it awakens feelings she doesn't understand... but Yori does!After Aki confesses that she...

Sometimes you find what you yearn for...When her dad gets a job overseas, Konatsu Amano has to leave the Tokyo life she’s always known and relocate to a small seaside town to stay with her aunt. The move also means starting a new school surrounded by...

(Available after May 30th, 2022) Hannah Arendt's authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi SS leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in the New Yorker in 1963. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of...

Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad's shorter fiction, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations...