In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, wh...more

A stranger arrives in the seemingly idyllic mountain town of Viscos and offers the villagers a devil's bargain: kill an innocent person in the next three days and the man will give the village a wealth in gold. The man, it turns out, is a former gun-runner whose family was murdered by the same guns he sold, and ever since, he has been obsessed with...more