Author: Ryu Murakami File Type: epub From Publishers WeeklyIn this short, tense and brutally eloquent thriller from Japanese author Murakami (In the Miso Soup), Kawashima Masayuki, a young urban professional, faces the terrible fear he will stab his baby daughter, Rie, just as he once stabbed the stripper he lived with when he was 19. He decides killing a young prostitute will alleviate the building pressure inside him and protect both Rie and his sweet wife, Yoko. He plans everything meticulously, but what he doesnt bargain for is that his intended victim, Sanada Chiaki, an s&m worker, is as disturbed as he is. During their appointment, Chiaki experiences a Nightmare episode that results in a twisted game of cat-and-mouse. Murakami doesnt waste a word or a movement in this near-haiku of a tale thats breathless with anxiety and fraught with pain. (Apr.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistKawashima survived a hideously abusive childhood and, as isnt unusual in such cases, bears the scars. Voices in his head, accompanied by garish images, urge him to re-create his stabbing, when a teenager, of the stripper who was his brutal mother. Because only voices and images from the external world could neutralize those from inside, Kawashimas greatest fear is not of death but of blindness and deafness. When fantasies of stabbing his infant daughter as she sleeps in her crib start to dominate his consciousness, he lies to his unsuspecting wife, takes a hotel room, and meticulously plots to murder an S&M prostitute--who is petite, so he can more easily overcome her. Certainly not for the squeamish or faint-hearted, Piercing blends a cold-blooded true-crime ambience and unexpected, almost antic humor as best-laid plans go horribly awry when an equally scarred (shes a compulsive cutter) abuse survivor turned S&M prostitute enters the action. Oddly and thoroughly compelling as well as chilling, and neither black comedy nor horror, this is a strangely entertaining novel. Whitney Scott American Library Association. lt

Author: Joyce Carol Oates File Type: epub New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates returns with an incendiary novel that illuminates the tragic impact of sexual violence, racism, brutality, and power on innocent lives and probes the persistence of stereotypes, the nature of revenge, the complexities of truth, and our insatiable hunger for sensationalism.When a fourteen-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades. In this magisterial work of fiction, Joyce Carol Oates explores the uneasy fault lines in a racially troubled society. In such a tense, charged atmosphere, Oates reveals that there must always be a sacrificeof innocence, truth, trust, and, ultimately, of lives. Unfolding in a succession of multiracial voices, in a community transfixed by this alleged crime and the spectacle unfolding around it, this profound novel exposes whatand whothe sacrifice actually is, and what consequences these kind of events hold for us all.Working at the height of her powers, Oates offers a sympathetic portrait of the young girl and her mother, and challenges our expectations and beliefs about our society, our biases, and ourselves. As the chorus of its voicesfrom the police to the media to the victim and her familyreaches a crescendo, The Sacrifice offers a shocking new understanding of power and oppression, innocence and guilt, truth and sensationalism, justice and retribution.A chilling exploration of complex social, political, and moral themesthe enduring trauma of the past, modern racial and class tensions, the power of secrets, and the primal decisions we all make to protect those we loveThe Sacrifice is a major work of fiction from one of our most revered literary masters.