Yen Press announced on Monday the new imprint Avocado House for international authors in translation. Publisher and editor-in-chief JuYoun Lee is the creator and curator of Avocado House. The company aims to initially release 12 titles per year. The company opened a website for Avocado House.
Image courtesy of Yen Press
© Yen Press
The imprint’s first licenses include:
Image courtesy of Yen Press
© Keigo Higashino
Title: Laplace’s Witch
Author: Keigo Higashino
Translator: Stephen Paul
Release: October (print, digital, audio)
Summary: Two people die in hot-spring towns in different parts of Japan from hydrogen sulfide poisoning.
Investigating the case is geochemist Shusuke Aoe, who witnessed the same mysterious girl,
Madoka, at both crime scenes…
A science fiction mystery that challenges established norms of the genre, written by acclaimed
author Keigo Higashino!
Image courtesy of Yen Press
© Yūki Shasendō
Title: Sickness unto Love
Author: Yūki Shasendō
Translator: Michael Blaskowsky
Release: November (print, digital)
Summary: More than 150 deaths across Japan have been connected to Blue Morpho, a game that leads
people to take their own lives. The organizer of this terrible “game” is Kei Yorikawa, a seemingly
good-natured high school student. How did a girl like her become such a monster? This story is a
look back at the boy who changed her fate—her childhood friend, and her first kill.
Image courtesy of Yen Press
© Gyatei Murasaki
Title: 1,000 Words Left to Live
Author: Gyatei Murasaki
Translator: Matt Treyvaud
Release: December (print, digital, audio)
Summary: A collection of twenty-six shocking, awe-inducing short stories! A doctor tells a patient they can
speak only one thousand words before their life ends. Someone’s boyfriend turns into a can of
mackerel. A woman is in her sixth year of pregnancy. This mysterious world is full of laughter and
tears, and twists and turns sure to leave anyone reeling!
Title: The Curse Called Mother, the Prison Called Daughter
Author: Ayasa Itō
Release: 2027 (print, digital, audio)
Summary: On March 10, 2018, a corpse belonging to 58-year-old single mother Taeko Takasaki is found on a
riverbank in Shiga Prefecture. Her body is mutilated beyond recognition, with her head, arms, and
legs all severed, and investigators quickly home in on her 31-year-old daughter, Akari, as the
prime suspect. Details about their relationship slowly come to light, painting a picture of a
daughter pushed to the brink by a physically and emotionally abusive mother in desperate need for
control, culminating in a horrific crime described by Akari in two simple sentences: “The monster
is dead. Now I am free.”
What compelled this seemingly ordinary student to go down a road that would eventually lead to
her stabbing her own mother to death? This question drove one court reporter to pursue a lengthy
correspondence with Akari in order to uncover the tragic true story behind the murder.
Title: The Place of the Flamingo
Author: Haeyeon Jeong
Release: 2027 (print, digital, audio)
Summary: Junhoo is just an overworked teacher in a small town. As he watches the lake before him swallow
up the body of his lover, he can’t help but wonder, how did it come to this? He didn’t kill Dahyeon,
but he is guilty of another sin: sleeping with a student. And his desperation to hide this career-
ending crime has compelled him to cover up a murder. Now, as the prime suspect, how will he ever
prove his innocence? Not all is as it seems in this pulse-pounding thriller packed with shocking
twists that’ll keep you on your toes! Even the ending might just have you questioning everything
that came before…
Yen Press also has the Yen On imprint dedicated to light novels and other prose fiction.
Sources: Email correspondence, Publisher’s Weekly (Ed Nawotka)
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.
