Revenge, By Yoko Ogawa

Always eerie, often erotic, full of living ghosts and uncanny visitations, Yoko Ogawa's terse and spooky fiction folds Japan's supernatural tradition into her idiosyncratic brand of Asian Gothic.

Translated by Stephen Snyder, these 11 linked tales, with images that repeat as in classical verse, offer a typically unsettling taster of her work.

From a chance meeting with a bereaved mother in a bakery to a children's concert that leads to a gory climax, the refined, even deadpan surfaces yield to dread and panic. Under cool, spare prose, monsters lurk.