Stories of the secret underground Cold War–era Soviet music subculture that distributed forbidden music on used hospital x-rays.During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock 'n' roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray f...

The ultimate no-nonsense guide to painting realistic, captivating water, from still lakes and crashing waves to water droplets.

Even if you have never picked up a paintbrush before, professional watercolour teacher and artist Stephen Coates will show you how to paint lakes and rivers in watercolour using just three brushes, three colours, a plastic palette and a watercolour pad.Using just red, blue and yellow paint Stephen shows you how to paint nine realistic watercolour scenes. There is no off-putting colour theory or long-winded mixing information, just a practical absolute beginner'Äôs course that shows...

Many watercolour artists are disappointed with the results of their endeavours because their attempts at painting do not always turn out as intended. However, the majority of mistakes are caused by the incorrect use of paint rather than artistic inability.The Watercolour Enigma is based on a practical course by artist Stephen Coates, and is designed to take the student through a process of learning rarely seen in other practical art books. By examining the basic science of...

A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable.The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no ...

The second book by prize-winning Japanese novelist Fuminori Nakamura to be available in English translation, a follow-up to 2012's critically acclaimed The Thief—another fantastically creepy, electric literary thriller that explores the limits of human depravity—and the powerful human instinct to resist evil.When Fumihiro Kuki is eleven years old, his elderly, enigmatic father calls him into his study for a meeting. "I created you to be a cancer on the world," his father t...

The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections … but he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an eas...

Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity.A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from its bizarre and grisly details to the nature of the man behind the crime. The suspect, a world-renowned photographer name...

What transforms a person into a killer? Could it be something as small as a suggestion?Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life.With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime. Delving relentlessly into the darkestcorners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans shar...

From the author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning The Devotion of Suspect X comes the next novel featuring "Detective Galileo."The Devotion of Suspect X was a hit with critics and readers alike. The first major English language publication from the most popular bestselling writer in Japan, it was acclaimed as "stunning," "brilliant," and "ingenious." Now physics professor Manabu Yukawa—Detective Galileo—returns in a new case of imp...

Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist -- and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police.A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists.Lom has been chosen because he is an ou...

Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop's vacation: "Kaminsky's Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written" (The San Diego Union-Tribune).Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and recuperation after her surgery, reading American crime novels, and gazing at the Black Sea, the Moscow cop is reasonably content—even if his superiors did insist that...