Joyful, tender, and strangely relatable . . . With sharp, playful prose, Veldman tells a story in equal parts searing intelligence and madcap sweetness. Simply brilliant.' Jenny Mustard

This is a story of girl meets printer.

A customer service assistant spends her long workdays printing letters. Her one friend is the printer and, in the dark confines of her office, she begins to open up to him, talking about her fears, her past, her hopes and dreams.

To her, it seems like a beautiful friendsh...

A tale of passion and romance between a Japanese schoolteacher and a doglike man, from the prize-winning author of The Last Children of Tokyo

Mitsuko, a schoolteacher at the Kitamura school, inspires both rumour and curiosity in the parents of her students because of her unconventional manner - not least when she tells the children the fable of a princess whose hand in marriage is promised to a dog she is intimate with. And when a young man with sharp canine teeth turns up at the schoolteache...

There's a book written for every one of us...

Carl may be 72 years old, but he's young at heart. Every night he goes door-to-door delivering books by hand to his loyal customers. He knows their every desire and preference, carefully selecting the perfect story for each person.

One evening as he makes his rounds, nine-year-old Schascha appears. Loud and precocious, she insists on accompanying him - and even tries to teach him a thing or two about books.

When Carl's job at the bookstore is thre...

If you could speak to someone you've lost, one last time, what would you tell them?

Steam rises from the bowls of simmered fat greenling, rice and miso soup on the table in

front of Kotoko.

She has taken the train from Tokyo to reach the Chibineko Kitchen, a restaurant perched

by the sea in Chiba Prefecture. Still reeling from the sudden death of her brother, she has

heard that the food served there can reunite you with a lost loved one for one last time.

Hardly daring to believe it can be tr...