Beijing, 1920. Ichi-jo Go, an eighteen-year-old Japanese painter living in China, is hired as a teacher of ink painting for Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, a fifteen-year-old boy confined to the Forbidden City. Puyi secretly plans to replace the Forbidden City's ink masterpieces with forgeries and sell the originals to fund the restoration of the Qing. When a eunuch is found dead in a locked room, a dragon painting is mysteriously altered, and another eunuch loses all emotional expression, the young painter and the boy emperor join forces to unravel each enigma. As they solve the mysteries together, an unlikely friendship blossoms across all barriers of rank and nationality.

A historical mystery that transcends rank and nationality. A painter and an emperor confront the riddles hidden within the Forbidden City.

In a provincial hot spring town, women have been disappearing one after another, and a local urban legend takes hold: a monster with a gaping hole in its face is abducting people and swallowing them into the void. Private detective Honoka Takanashi is hired to investigate the creature called "Anadura-sama," and begins to suspect a serial killer lurking behind the myth. Meanwhile, the actual perpetrator faces an unforeseen complication: the yakuza have learned of the crimes and intend to exploit the killer as a corpse-disposal service. A crime novel that blends horror urban legend with mystery, building to a shocking twist.

A monster with a hole where its face should be is stealing people away -- and behind the urban legend lurks a real killer.

A rookie detective at Koganei Police Station, Midori Bamba, investigates a theft at a video arcade while arresting two young women for a series of car break-ins. Meanwhile, corrupt detective Tadayuki Kamei leaks information about a raid on an illegal establishment. The story interweaves Midori's coming-of-age as a detective determined to protect the dignity of victimized women with Kamei's downfall into corruption, building to a dramatic intersection at the climax.

An enthusiastic rookie female detective and a world-weary veteran corrupt detective — a refreshing police procedural in which the trajectories of two contrasting investigators dramatically intersect at the climax.

Koharu Ichikura, a first-year university student aspiring to become a manga artist, works part-time at a bakery called Nostimo in Toyonaka, Osaka. One day, her best friend abruptly cancels plans they had made together, prompting Koharu to use her sharp powers of observation to uncover the truth. A linked collection of five cozy mysteries set in and around a neighborhood bakery, featuring no deaths and a warm, slice-of-life atmosphere.

Mysteries layered like croissants, as exciting as curry bread!

A 200-year-old skeleton excavated in the Himalayas. When Nanase Yu, a graduate student specializing in genetic anthropology, conducts a DNA analysis, the results completely match those of his sister Aju, who went missing four years ago. Just as he is about to consult his supervisor Professor Ishimizaki about this inexplicable finding, the professor is murdered. The ancient skeleton is stolen and a member of the excavation team is attacked. As Yu pursues the truth behind his sister's disappearance and the skeleton's DNA, he is drawn into a massive conspiracy involving religious groups and pharmaceutical companies that could shake the very foundations of human history.

The compelling mystery and storytelling stand head and shoulders above the rest.

The 23rd Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! Award Hidden Gem Selection. High school student Furukawa lives in the Nanakusa dormitory at Mikohama High School. Together with his curious and kind-hearted classmate Ninose, he encounters a series of everyday mysteries: an umbrella left at a laundromat after a typhoon, a club application signed by someone deceased, an ice-cream-wielding thief, and a time capsule hidden in the dormitory. As they solve these puzzles, Furukawa is gradually led to confront his own past in this coming-of-age mystery story collection.

An umbrella left at a laundromat after a typhoon -- through unraveling mysteries, Furukawa gradually confronts his own past.

Set in 16th-century Holy Roman Empire, former law professor Rosen encounters a witch trial while traveling. Convinced of the innocence of a girl named Ann accused of using sorcery to kill a watermill manager, Rosen challenges the witch trial with logic and legal reasoning. A legal mystery about the power of reason against superstition.

Prove the absence of a witch -- a 16th-century legal suspense where logic clashes with faith.

A grandfather with Lewy body dementia brilliantly solves the puzzles brought to him by his granddaughter. A winner of the 21st “This Mystery Is Amazing!” Award where everyday mysteries meet family warmth.

A grandfather with dementia becomes an armchair detective and delivers sharp deductions about impossible crimes.

Set in the forests of Congo, a primatology research team is drawn into a massacre after meeting a boy. A paperback grand-prize winner that unfolds as a panic-suspense story questioning the essence of humanity.

What is a human being? A high-energy challenge to the question of humanity’s essence.

A young man working for a local hero company pursues the truth behind a string of murders committed by someone dressed like the Machiderman suit. A hidden-gem winner in the “This Mystery Is Amazing!” lineup that blends hero culture and crime suspense.

The killer wears a hero suit that had once been shelved.

A strange will pulls attorney Reiko Kenmochi into a huge inheritance dispute. With a forceful heroine and brisk dialogue, this legal mystery keeps the pages turning.

"My entire fortune goes to the person who killed me."

Set in a Japan split into multiple administrative zones after annexation by a neighboring country, the novel follows Yuka and intelligence officer Saiga as they flee from a kidnapping plot. It is a near-future action mystery with a distinctly dystopian edge.

A chase races across a divided Japan.

A Yakuza underling, the family running an auto-parts shop, and a girl tied to a religious group intersect around a single kidnapping case. The novel combines ensemble drama and a con-game structure in an abduction mystery.

Separate threads finally connect in a sweetly unsettling way.

A rookie reporter at the Yomiuri Shimbun’s social affairs desk investigates abnormal crow behavior and the possibility of bird flu. The novel turns a contemporary newsroom perspective into a bio-suspense mystery.

The crows attack. The reporter gives chase.

Makabe Ten, a misanthropic forensic pathologist, confronts the darkness surrounding child abuse cases and then a hanging corpse case that echoes his own past. The novel explores both forensic science and the psychology of family trauma.

A man who has spent his life looking at corpses is forced to face family darkness.

After giving up on becoming a botanist, a young man named Taiki meets Aoba, a girl who can hear the voices of plants, at a flower shop called Driad. Together they face memories tied to a sacred tree and the mysteries of the land. The novel has a quiet, gentle tone.

The voices of plants begin to speak of lost memories.

A company that has made side hustles mandatory becomes the scene of a presidential murder, and the head of the side-business promotion department teams up with a customer support manager to deal with the crisis. It is a corporate comedy mystery built around workplace dynamics.

Both work and crime keep multiplying like side jobs.

The protagonist, Watanabe, can distinguish genuine paper from fakes and teams up with model maker Doi to investigate a case tied to paper and scale models. The appeal lies in how expertise about paper and craftsmanship becomes integral to the shape of the mystery itself.

The paper already knows the truth behind the case.

During a school festival, a strangled body is found in a haunted house, and the case is narrowed down through careful reconstruction of the timeline. This is a logical school-set mystery focused on the instant when a ghost act turns into a real murder.

When did the ghost on stage become a real corpse?

At Yurigahara High School, a first-year student named Yuriko is drawn into a series of disturbing events tied to the school legend of the "Yuriko-sama." The novel blends urban legend, horror, and murder into a tense school mystery.

Only one girl can become Yuriko-sama. If there are two, one must disappear.

An introverted writer and his childhood friend travel through Kyushu tracing a new theory that connects kappa legends with hidden Christian history. The novel gradually turns local folklore and memory into a larger historical mystery.

The secret behind a kappa’s hand overturns historical common sense.

The story begins with an attack on an elementary school in Osaka and follows a police officer named Natsuki as he investigates unnatural murders caused by an invisible giant paper dog. It is a dark horror-suspense novel centered on events beyond scientific explanation.

An invisible monster is devouring the city.

An art suspense novel about a reclusive contemporary artist, the death of a gallerist, and the fate of a masterpiece worth over 600 million yen.

A new kind of art-market suspense.

A financial suspense novel set in Kanazawa, where a stock-trading genius known as the 'Black Venus' draws a former banker into a high-stakes battle.

A genius who turns psychology into profit.

A baseball mystery in which a writer interviews people connected to a legendary pitcher who died amid match-fixing rumors.

A dark cloud over baseball.

A bittersweet romance mystery in which a young man falls in love with Hana, the girl who suddenly appears at his apartment, only to discover hidden secrets.

A sweet romance with an unexpected plan.

A dark twist mystery about a high school girl who plans a mass murder after surviving abuse at the hands of her stepfather.

A high school girl plans mass murder.

A school mystery centered on the clash between Maki, who reigns as the classroom queen, and Erika, the transfer student who threatens her position.

The queen never comes back.

A suspense novel in which a popular singer wakes up with no memory and discovers that the world believes she has died.

Why is my death on the news?

A PKO mystery set in a South Sudan camp, where a near-retirement warrant officer and a young sergeant investigate a string of thefts and missing ammunition.

Forty-two rifle rounds vanished from a locked space.

A historical mystery in which an ex-OL living between Edo and the present day uses modern science to solve crimes.

Scientific detection in Edo, with a double life.

A black-comedy action mystery in which assassins compete over the murder of a mayoral candidate.

The assassins' mayoral election begins.

A police mystery in which Ayaka Goma, nicknamed the 'calculator woman' for her obsession with numbers, is put in charge of a bank hostage crisis.

A special order lands on the calculator woman.

A social thriller in which a man protesting youth burdens and fiscal deficits becomes entangled in the kidnapping of a former prime minister's grandson and a ransom demand of one quadrillion yen.

The demand: a rewrite of the national debt, or one quadrillion yen.

An impossible-crime mystery in which a present-day boy's death appears linked to a case from 16 years earlier, challenging a seemingly airtight alibi.

Was the killer already in prison?

A thief mystery in which four childhood friends, now split between the police and burglary, reunite in their hometown and pursue the truth behind a death.

Even a thief can solve a mystery.

A large-scale panic thriller in which a defense officer and an infectious-disease expert investigate the total death of a drilling base off Hokkaido.

Everyone is dead. The cause is unknown.

A humor mystery in which a shut-in young man lands a job in a secret society and discovers how its odd assignments connect to real crimes.

The job offer came from a secret society.

A survival mystery set on a remote island, where selected women compete for the role of an IT tycoon's bride.

There is no loser revival in this marriage hunt.

A psychometric mystery in which a high school girl who can read residual thoughts teams up with a psychologist to solve a series of kidnappings.

Listen to the voice left at the crime scene.

A lawyer-narrator confronts a mother-and-child murder case and a medical malpractice case while questioning the uneasy relationship between the courts and prosecutors in this courtroom mystery.

A lawyer-detective cuts through the collusion between law and prosecution.

A middle-school boy decides to sue his father in civil court after suspecting him of killing the family dog, pursuing the truth behind a family rupture.

A boy takes his own father to court.

Set in Kyoto's coffee shop Talleyran, this linked mystery follows barista Misa Kirima as she solves everyday mysteries with sharp observation.

A barista whose hobby is solving mysteries.

In a mountain village in Aomori, a voyeuristic detective with compulsive peeking tendencies tackles a series of murders at the snowbound Kagome-so inn.

A detective who cannot help but peek.

A psycho-suspense novel about a serial killer called 'Mori no Kuma-san' who publicly targets villains exposed on the internet.

A killer arrives while singing a nursery rhyme.

A school mystery in which a school nurse and an art teacher investigate the culprit behind a grotesque murder painting displayed in a high school hallway.

Leave the school case to the nurse.

A manga artist who keeps speaking with her brother in a vegetative state is pulled into a distortion of reality after a mysterious phone call. It is a debut novel with unsettling mechanics hidden under a quiet surface.

The more she asks, the more reality bends.

A graduate student in organic chemistry loses his special ability when he falls in love and ends up at the mercy of a being who calls itself a death god. It is a light romantic mystery that layers chemistry, love, and puzzle-solving.

A death god reaches out to a science-minded man who has fallen in love.

A protagonist’s life begins to go off course after he takes in an abandoned child, leading to ostracism and bullying. It is a work that foregrounds raw violence and the feeling of escape.

A child he takes in upends his life.

A girl badly scarred in a fire vows to return and become a pianist. It is a music mystery where passion for performance intersects with a string of unsettling events.

Beyond Debussy’s melodies, the shadow of a case creeps in.

A man who sells pachislot strategy information on the industry’s dark side gets caught up in dangerous code-breaking and a case involving hidden sales money. It is a crime novel about small-time bad actors.

Illegal ROMs and coded clues expose a dangerous money trail.

Shukichi, who works in Honjo-Fukagawa, teams up with the fox spirit Osaki to investigate a missing girl and a murder case. It is the first entry in a series that blends yokai-period drama with genuine mystery solving.

Osaki and Shukichi run through the darkness of Edo.

The story follows an eerie urban legend in which anyone targeted by a killer dies in an accident within 24 hours. It is a mystery where lightness and danger coexist, even down to the infamous banana peel.

A man targeted by a grim reaper cannot escape the 24-hour countdown to an accidental death.

High school students who love rooftops gather and take on incidents happening at school and in the city. It is a brisk ensemble mystery that blends youthful energy with puzzle-solving.

Four members of the rooftop club dive into the city’s mysteries.

Through dialogues between a young man with synesthesia and a clinical psychologist, the story approaches the truth behind a girl’s death. It is a debut novel where quiet narration accumulates into strong unease and mystery.

A young man who can see emotions as colors brings the truth of a girl’s death to the surface.

A children’s poisoning case from 30 years ago is revisited through testimony and the memories of those involved. It is a crime suspense story where past guilt and present scrutiny intersect.

The 30-year-old case keeps changing shape as testimony is traced.

While following the disappearance of a spiritual writer, strange wounds and testimony from psychics connect into a deeper world of fate and entanglement. It blends urban legend with suspense.

Beyond the missing writer, ghosts and fate intersect.

A chef in Kobe meets a critic with extraordinary taste and gets pulled into a plot that shakes the gourmet world. It is an unusual mystery where culinary flair and criminal intrigue coexist.

Behind gourmet culture, a dangerous plan begins to move.

A series of mysterious deaths in a northern prison triggers a story in which modern events overlap with the history of Hokkaido’s Meiji-era development, widening the circle of a curse. It is a richly textured historical-fantasy horror novel.

Deaths bound by chains echo the darkness of the Meiji era.

A girl who lost her mother in an accident becomes entangled in an unsettling series of events with her father and a woman named Mizuno. It is a suspense novel suffused with loss and flight.

Night begins with no way out, while the shadow of one hundred million yen hangs over everyone.

A major event begins in which participants must infiltrate a laboratory protected by the latest security systems and complete a mission within a time limit. It is a suspense novel that foregrounds the excitement of an intrusion game.

Break into an impregnable laboratory and win 100 million yen.

In freezing Hokkaido, a giant bear that failed to hibernate attacks people. It is an animal-panic novel about the terror of an isolated research forest.

In a forest at minus 40 degrees, a giant bear corners human beings.

A candidate and a former detective investigate the truth behind schemes and sabotage surrounding a by-election. It is a suspense novel about the heat and intrigue of an election race.

Behind the vote count, motives and schemes quietly intertwine.

Doctors and bureaucrats work to uncover the truth behind unexplained intraoperative deaths in a cardiac surgery team. It is a medical mystery that balances realism in the hospital setting with the pleasures of detection.

Behind the glory of the Batista procedure lies another face.

A murder clown appears at a class reunion on a remote island and attacks the attendees one after another. It is a survival horror story that fully exploits the unease of an isolated island.

The reunion turns into an island of terror when a murder clown bursts in.

A former detective searching for his missing daughter plunges into a darkness tied to past bullying and a corporate scandal. It is a dark, emotionally charged novel that faces the abyss head-on.

The more he searches for his daughter, the deeper he moves into the darkness.

A left-handed pitcher fighting alone inside a popular pro baseball team gets caught up in a bizarre blackmail case. It is sports noir where team culture collides with personal pride.

Off the mound, the team’s darkness closes in quietly.

A surrogate mother steps into crime to save her abused son, and the story develops into a zero-ransom kidnapping plot. It is a thrilling crime novel that exposes social distortions.

No ransom, five hundred million yen to be taken.

A man who sells slot-machine “tips” is dragged into dangerous money and tangled relationships on the dark side of the pachislot industry. It is a pachislot noir that mixes lightness with a cold undercurrent.

A man selling fake strategies falls into the world of illegal ROMs and dark money.

A girl with a brain injury and a young man whose path as a pianist was cut short meet at a mountain clinic and experience a mysterious four-day event. It is a moving fantasy about healing and renewal.

At a mountain clinic, a miracle begins quietly over four days.

Set in a near-future prison facility, this is an escape drama about running toward freedom from a world said to be impossible to escape. Violence and oppression force impossible choices on the characters.

If they flee, it will be freedom or blindness.

To uncover the truth behind his father’s sudden death, the protagonist goes undercover at a seaside club. Diving, corporate scandal, and rumors of regenerative medicine intertwine in a suspense novel.

On the Shonan coast, the truth behind his father’s death gradually surfaces.

Two college women trapped in a mountain hot spring resort try to escape with nothing but their mobile phones. It is a horror-suspense story driven by confinement and momentum.

All they can rely on is a phone. Can they escape the mountain village alive?