The unmissable new novel of friendship and dangerous obsession from Asako Yuzuki, the award-winning author of the global bestselling sensation Butter. Eriko really wouldn't mind being savaged, if it was her best friend doing the savaging … Eriko's life appears perfect – devoted parents, spotless apartment and a job in the seafood division of one of Japan's largest trading companies. Her latest project, to reintroduce the controversial Nile perch fish into the Japanese market, is characteristically ambitious. But beneath her flawless surface she is wracked by loneliness. Eriko becomes fascinated with a popular blog written by a housewife, Shoko. Shoko’s posts about eating convenience store food and her untidy home are the opposite of the typical Japanese housewife’s manicured lifestyle. When Eriko tracks Shoko down at her favourite restaurant and befriends her, Shoko is at first charmed by her new companion. But as Eriko’s obsession with Shoko deepens, her increasingly possessive behaviour starts to raise suspicion. As Eriko’s carefully laid plans begin to unravel, how far will she go to hold on to the best friend that she’s ever had? Beautifully translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is a thrilling and unsettling story of the line between friendship and dangerous obsession. A delicious exploration of food, loneliness and womanhood in contemporary Japan, Hooked brings together all the ingredients for which Asako Yuzuki is so adored.

After a rough tumble and maybe-serious head injury, a disillusioned trans poet falls for a charming corporate lawyer in a love story that grapples with the explosive ghosts of relationships past, romantic and familial, from the Lambda Award-nominated author of Bellies, Nicola Dinan “Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.” Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. With a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued with a deep dissatisfaction during what should be the best years of her life. After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent, a corporate lawyer and hobby baker, whose trad friendship group may as well speak a foreign language, and whose Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. This uncharted territory may have rough terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she’d long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage from his gap year in Thailand a decade prior: an explosive entanglement with a mysterious, gorgeous traveler. Voice-driven, warm, and poignant, Disappoint Me is an exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bourgeois domesticity that asks if we are defined by our worst mistakes.

Most people fear Death. But Samarra feels safest by his side. Grief is drowning Samarra’s mind. Her sister’s death was too sudden, too senseless. No one will even speak of the night she died, leaving Samarra silenced and alone. That is, until she comes face-to-face with Death himself. With piercing white eyes, a sharp grin, and a voice that sedates her fractured mind, Death is more comforting than anything she has ever known. He quiets her grief, whispers truths about her sister’s final moments, and tempts her with the vengeance she craves. But he vanishes as suddenly as he appeared. Alone in her chaotic life, Samarra is suffocating. Her mother is absent, her friendships are crumbling, and violent thugs are hunting her. She doesn’t know if Death was real or a hallucination of her unraveling mind. All she knows is that she needs to feel his peace again. And she’ll do whatever it takes to bring him back.

An important queer voice from East Asia’s millennial generation Cho Norie, twenty-seven and originally from Taiwan, is working an office job in Tokyo. While her colleagues worry about the economy, life-insurance policies, marriage, and children, she is forced to keep her unconventional life hidden—including her sexuality and the violent attack that prompted her move to Japan. There is also her unusual fascination with death: she knows from personal experience how devastating death can be, but for her it is also creative fuel. Solo Dance depicts the painful coming of age of a gay person in Taiwan and corporate Japan. This striking debut is an intimate and powerful account of a search for hope after trauma.

Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs. But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity--and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death. Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki--near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire's greatest threat. Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she's ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be--not even Deka herself. The start of a bold and immersive West African-inspired, feminist fantasy series for fans of Children of Blood and Bone and Black Panther. In this world, girls are outcasts by blood and warriors by choice.

Published in 1942 by French author Albert Camus, The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."

Set in the fall of 1980, isolated mute Alice comes upon a startling discovery that her father may be a serial killer... A sharp read for lovers of true crime and Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll.Born mute, Alice has never known a normal life. Kept from the outside world by her cruel mother and overbearing father, her only friend is her neighbour Hailey with whom she communicates through sign language. When Alice’s father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Alice listens to his feverish drug-induced ramblings. And then, in his final days, he reveals something Alice never expected. He confesses to murdering several women.Shocked and disbelieving, Alice confides in Hailey. Together, they vow to find the truth and decide to journey her father’s old routes as a travelling salesman. A pattern begins to emerge, connecting him to various missing women, before the pair discovers the real reason why Alice lost her ability to speak. And how she is at the centre of her father’s crimes…