Showing results by narrator "Akira Matsumoto" in All Categories

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions about the Ichiyanagis around the village. Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi family are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music - death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house.

The Inugami Curse is a fiendish, intricately plotted classic mystery starring the legendary Detective Kosuke Kindaichi. In 1940s Japan, the wealthy head of the Inugami clan dies, and his family eagerly await the reading of the will. But no sooner are its strange details revealed than a series of bizarre, gruesome murders begins. Detective Kindaichi must unravel the clan’s terrible secrets of forbidden liaisons, monstrous cruelty and hidden identities to find the murderer and lift the curse wreaking its bloody revenge on the Inugamis.

The scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi returns to solve another fiendish murder mystery. An old friend of Kindaichi’s invites the detective to visit the remote mountain village of Onikobe, the site of a 20-year-old unsolved murder case. But no sooner has Kindaichi in the village than a new series of murders strikes – several bodies are discovered staged in bizarre poses, and it soon becomes clear that the victims are being killed using methods that eerily echo the lyrics of an old local children’s song …

We've been at war with them for our entire existence, yet completely blind to their machinations. Etheric parasites are secretly infecting the world's population, feeding off the cosmic light of our spirit forms that connect us to higher dimensions. Our ancestors warned us about these dark, manipulative beings, known as Nagas and Archons. An inter-dimensional porthole incident in ancient Ur saw Earth sprinkled with deposits of a black liquid crystal goo, which is Archon consciousness made manifest. T

Amid the rubble of post-war Tokyo, inside the grand Tsubaki house, a once-noble family is in mourning. The old viscount Tsubaki – a brooding, troubled composer – has been found dead. When the family gather for a divination to conjure the spirit of their departed patriarch, death visits the house once more, and the brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi is called in to investigate. But before he can get to the truth, Kindaichi must uncover the Tsubakis' most disturbing secrets, while the gruesome murders continue ...

Japanese by birth but transplanted to Europe in adulthood, Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. Why do primulas bloom in snow? Do the trees really ‘talk’ to one another? What are the blackbirds saying today? And is there a mindful way to deal with an aphid infestation? From rising early to walk barefoot on the grass each morning, to afternoons and evenings spent sipping tea in her gazebo or watching fireflies as she recalls her childhood in Japan, Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation – and cultivation – of nature.

Tokyo, 1947. At the first post-war meeting of the Edo Tattoo Society, Kinue Nomura reveals her full-body snake tattoo to rapturous applause. Days later, she is gone. A dismembered corpse is discovered in the locked bathroom of her home, but her much-coveted body art is nowhere to be found. Kinue's horrified lover joins forces with the boy detective, Kyosuke Kamizu, to try to get to the bottom of the macabre crime, but similar deaths soon follow. Is someone being driven to murder by their lust for tattooed skin, and can they be stopped?

Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news—the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger—with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophesy, and to protect the three women if he can.

Nestled deep in the mist-shrouded mountains, The Village of Eight Graves takes its name from a bloody legend. In the 16th century, eight samurais, who had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure, were murdered by the inhabitants, bringing a terrible curse down upon their village. Centuries later, a mysterious young man named Tatsuya arrives in town, bringing a spate of deadly poisonings in his wake. The inimitably scruffy and brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi investigates.