Yakuza My Brother

Yakuza, My Brother is a story based on true events. Raz, an Israeli scholar, befriends Yuki, a young, intelligent, well-educated but marginal man. Yuki disappears one day under mysterious circumstances, apparently because of his involvement with the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime syndicate. Raz is perplexed. Along with his scholarly interest in Japan, he embarks on a personal quest to find and perhaps save his young friend. He knows the trail to Yuki leads through the Yakuza. He finally manages to penetrate one of the most important crime families by employing some uncommon methods. While pursuing his scholarly interest in the Yakuza, Raz never forgets Yuki, his lost friend. Ultimately, after dramatic and harrowing travels around East Asia, he finds a man who might be Yuki. But then again, he might not

For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom from “one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century” (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker) All eyes are on Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions. Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,” this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?

Japan today is haunted by the ghosts its spectacular modernity has generated. Deep anxieties about the potential loss of national identity and continuity disturb many in Japan, despite widespread insistence that it has remained culturally intact. In this provocative conjoining of ethnography, history, and cultural criticism, Marilyn Ivy discloses these anxieties—and the attempts to contain them—as she tracks what she calls the vanishing: marginalized events, sites, and cultural practices suspended at moments of impending disappearance. Ivy shows how a fascination with cultural margins accompanied the emergence of Japan as a modern nation-state. This fascination culminated in the early twentieth-century establishment of Japanese folklore studies and its attempts to record the spectral, sometimes violent, narratives of those margins. She then traces the obsession with the vanishing through a range of contemporary reconfigurations: efforts by remote communities to promote themselves as nostalgic sites of authenticity, storytelling practices as signs of premodern presence, mass travel campaigns, recallings of the dead by blind mediums, and itinerant, kabuki-inspired populist theater.

Lawrence Block, in Keller by a Nose," asks what obsession holds more hazards than betting on the ponies. The answer will surprise you...Max Allan Collins's "That Kind of Nag" proves that it's bad to play the wrong horse, but worse to pick the wrong woman..."The Great, the Good and the Not-So-Good" by H.R.F. Keating warns against old English ladies at the racecourse...Joyce Carol Oates shows how a young woman teams to trust a prize stallion more than her violent lover in "Meadowlands"...and Scott Wolven's "Pinwheel" offers a Japanese lesson in flying horses and honor among thieves."--BOOK JACKET.

In a dark and dangerous world... Yuli, an assassin, finds himself uncontrollably drawn to Ren Hirokazu, a notorious criminal and murderer. Despite the obedience collar that forces him to carry out orders for the powerful Yakuza organization, Yuli cannot resist the allure of Ren's dangerous charm. He kills for pay, accepting the poison that keeps him delirious as a necessary evil. But when a mysterious discovery leads him to defect and become a hunted traitor, Yuli's world is turned upside down. Hunted by the Yakuza and other powerful enemies, Yuli has nowhere left to turn until Ren offers him a way out, a chance for freedom. But at what cost? As they navigate a world filled with danger, secrets, and betrayal, their forbidden love becomes a liability. Will they survive and trust each other enough to make it out alive? Or will their enemies destroy them? Warning: this a dark MM romance, gay sci-fi romance, mm cyberpunk romance, mm enemies to lovers romance which includes gore, violence, mentions of sexual abuse, dystopia, short story, novella, mm sci-fi fantasy, mm possessive romance, mm second chance romance with a HEA ending.

Two brothers at war. A spy in the ranks. And one last effort at peace… Connor and Liam survived the deadly fire that nearly claimed them and their men, but there’s still danger at every turn. Someone wants their war to come to an end—and that someone doesn’t seem to care who dies in the process. And as for the war on our home front? Connor wants me. I want him. But our marriage is a never-ending standoff, both of us too proud to admit that the one thing that could make us truly happy is the one thing we already have. As I struggle to give him the heir he so badly wants, every night we spend together in bed brings us closer to admitting that truth—that there’s love here, whether he wants it or not. The war for the Boston Kings is speeding towards a climax, and every plan that we made—me, my father, my husband—all seem to be for nothing. If Connor is going to take back the legacy he returned to claim, he’ll have to make a choice—and risk burning it all to the ground. I never meant to fall for my husband. But as the fires of conflict threaten us all, there are only two questions left to answer. Will the man I married be the man I love? And when the ashes settle—who will sit on the Irish Throne? Irish Throne is book six in the Irish King series. The series is complete. The reading order is as follows: Irish Savior, Irish Promise, Irish Vow, Irish Betrayal, Irish Princess, Irish Throne.