Natsuo Kirino

Twenty-nine-year-old Riki is sick of her dead-end job, of struggling to get by ever since she moved to Tokyo from the country. So when someone offers her the chance to become a surrogate in return for a life-changing amount of money, it's hard to turn down. Retired ballet star Motoi and his wife, Yuko, have spent years trying to conceive. As Motoi grows increasingly desperate for a child, their last resort is surrogacy; a business transaction, plain and simple. But as they try to exert ever more control over Riki, their contract with her starts to slip through their fingers . . . Vibrating with the injustices of class and gender, tradition and power, Swallows is an acerbic vision of contemporary Japan, and of a young woman's fight to preserve her dignity - at any cost.

The highly anticipated new novel. When a young single woman in Tokyo decides she's ready to sell anything--even her womb--to escape the precarity of her life, an agency pairs her with a wealthy couple desperate to have a child. The match seems made in heaven. She even looks a little like the wife. But is anything ever that simple? Nothing has ever gone right for Riki. She left her boring hometown in Hokkaido, where she worked at a nursing home, for a better life in Tokyo. But as a temp in the big city she has no job security, and barely scrapes by. She eats the same old discount boiled egg for lunch every day, sometimes for dinner, too. Many of her peers have to take on a side hustle just to make ends meet. So when her friend discovers an agency offering a hefty sum for egg donation, both leap at the chance for an interview. Meanwhile, former ballet star Motoi Kusaoke and his wife, Yuko, have been trying to conceive for years. After trying what feels like every available option, it seems futile--until Motoi dives deep into his research and learns that, while surrogacy is technically illegal in Japan, there is a company that's found a loophole. Before long, everyone has an opinion on the matter: from Yuko's sex-obsessed, asexual best friend, to Motoi's controlling prima ballerina mother, and even the affable sex-worker-slash-therapist that Riki has been to a couple of times, after she accepted a down payment to be a surrogate. Acutely funny and addictively page-turning, Swallows pulls at the seams of society, reassessing our understanding of motherhood, self-worth, bodily autonomy, and class. What does it mean to be "in control"? And can money really buy happiness?

Twenty-nine-year-old Riki is sick of her dead-end job, of struggling to get by ever since she moved to Tokyo from the country. So when someone offers her the chance to become a surrogate in return for a life-changing amount of money, it's hard to turn down. But how much of herself will she be forced to give away? Retired ballet star Motoi and his wife, Yuko, have spent years trying to conceive. As Yuko begins to make peace with her childlessness, Motoi grows increasingly desperate for a child to whom he can pass on his elite genes. Their last resort is surrogacy; a business transaction, plain and simple. But as they try to exert ever more control over Riki, their contract with her starts to slip through their fingers . . . Vibrating with the injustices of class and gender, tradition and power, Swallows is an acerbic, witty vision of contemporary Japan, and of a young woman's fight to preserve her dignity - at any cost.

UNO DE LOS 100 MEJORES LIBROS DE MISTERIO Y SUSPENSO DE TODOS LOS TIEMPOS DE LA REVISTA TIME - Ganador del Gran Premio de Jap n de Novela Negra - Finalista del Premio EdgarLa reina japonesa del crimen. El lado oscuro de Jap n te dejar sin aliento. Masako, Kuniko, Yoshie y Yayoi trabajan en el turno nocturno de una f brica de comida preparada de los suburbios de Tokio. Todas tienen graves problemas tanto de dinero como familiares (maridos infieles, suegras discapacitadas o hijos imposibles) y se desenvuelven en una atm sfera hostil e inh spita. Una noche, Yayoi estrangula a su marido, Kenji, cansada de sus continuas agresiones f sicas. Masako, Kuniko y Yoshie la ayudar n a deshacerse del cuerpo. La polic a recela de ellas, pero no dispone de pruebas que las incriminen. En cambio, en su lista de sospechosos se halla Satake, el due o de un casino y un bar de alterne que Kenji frecuentaba. Mientras tanto, un prestamista vinculado a los yakuza las descubre y chantajea a las mujeres para que se ocupen de otros cad veres. ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - Winner of Japan's Grand Prix for Crime Fiction - Edgar Award FinalistThis mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot's ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society. At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds, and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath.

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - A special edition of Natsuo Kirino's award-winning, tension-filled literary mystery Out. Featuring an introduction by James Ellroy. This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot's ringleader but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society. At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds, and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Special Edition

On an island in the shape of a teardrop live two sisters. One is admired far and wide, the other lives in her shadow. One is the Oracle, the other is destined for the Underworld. But what will happen when she returns to the island? Based on the Japanese myth of Izanami and Izanagi, The Goddess Chronicle is a fantastical tour de force about ferocious love and bitter revenge. The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions. In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the graveyard shift at a factory. Burdened with heavy debts, alienated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives. A young mother among them finally cracks and strangles her philandering, gambling husband. She confesses her crime to her colleagues and unexpectedly, they agree to help. But then the dismembered body parts are discovered, the police start asking questions and more dangerous enemies begin to close in. OUT is a psychologically taut and unflinching foray into the darkest recesses of the human soul, an unsettling reminder that the desperate desire for freedom can make the most ordinary person do the unimaginable.

In a crowded Tokyo suburb, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer. When one of them, Toshi, discovers that her nextdoor neighbor has been brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor's son. But when he flees, taking Toshi's bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers that rise from within them as well as from the world around them. Psychologically intricate and astute, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before.

In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls drift through a hot smoggy August and tedious summer school classes. Then Toshi's next-door neighbour is found brutally murdered and the girls suspect Worm, the neighbour's son and a high school misfit.

Two prostitutes are murdered in Tokyo. Twenty years previously both women were educated at the same elite school for young ladies, and had seemingly promising futures ahead of them. Grotesque is a masterful and haunting thriller, a chilling exploration of women's secret lives in modern day Japan.

In the wake of the brutal murders of two Tokyo prostitutes, Yuriko and Kazue, Yuriko's older sister describes the three women's youth and education at a prestigious girls' high school, where a strict social hierarchy and rigid societal conventions determine the courses of their lives. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

A provocative compendium of photographs journeys inside the fantasy rooms of the Japanese love hotel, capturing an array of theme rooms, designed to be rented by the hour for amorous liaisons, that range from a simulated subway car to a religious bondage room.

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - Winner of Japan's Grand Prix for Crime Fiction - Edgar Award Finalist - Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino's award-winning literary mystery Out. This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot's ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society. At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds, and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath.

The body parts are discovered, the police start asking questions, but the women have far more dangerous enemies -a yakuza connected loan shark who discovers their secret and has a business proposition, and a ruthless nightclub owner the police are convinced is guilty of the murder.