Full AspenCat Catalog

"On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, besides which is lying a gun. From the moment Nishikawa makes the decision to take the gun, the world around him blurs. Knowing he possesses the gun brings an intoxicating sense of purpose to his dull university life. But Nishikawa's personal entanglements are becoming unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women, while...

"Yurika is a freelancer in the Tokyo underworld. She poses as a prostitute, carefully targeting potential Johns, selecting powerful and high-profile men. When she is alone with them, she drugs them and takes incriminating photos to sell for blackmail purposes. She knows very little about the organization she's working for, and is perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, as long as it means she doesn't have to reveal anything about her identity, either....

In many ways, Niles should be as American as apple pie: raised by missionary parents, taught to respect his elders and be an honorable and upright Christian citizen dreaming of the good life on the sun-blessed shores of California. But Niles is also Japanese: reared in the aesthetics of Shinto and educated in the dance halls and backroom poker gatherings of Tokyo's shady underworld to steal, trick and run for his life. As a gaijin, a foreigner --...

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems. At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both...

"An attack on a Japanese warship brings Japan and China to the brink of war. Meanwhile, top Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is sent on a mission to recover mysterious material from the wreckage of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. When Smith fails to return, CIA agent Randi Russell heads off on an unsanctioned mission to find him. She quickly discovers that the missing samples may be evidence that Japan, led by hawkish military chief of staff...

Two Japanese teenagers, Ryo and Yukiho, are irrevocably linked together as suspects during the search for the person who killed Ryo's father despite the case going cold twenty years ago.

A critical, crucial voice in modern Science Fiction, Jon Courtenay Grimwood delivers future noir of mind-bending realities and ever-changing possibilities. Iraqi war vet and part owner of an Irish pub in Tokyo, Kit Nouveau gave up on life a long time ago. But then his life is saved by a runaway, and Kit's past might be the only thing that can save him from impending disaster.

Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller envisions a nightmare scenario: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan--where it became a runaway best seller--Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a...

Alex Hunter, the American owner of a Japanese nightclub, helps a fellow American discover the truth about her real identity