Books about Snakeskin from Amazon.com

From Summer of the Big Bachi to Gasa-Gasa Girl, Naomi Hirahara’s acclaimed novels have featured one of mystery fiction’s most unique heroes: Mas Arai, a curmudgeonly L.A. gardener, Hiroshima survivor, and inveterate gambler.

Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly raised when the winner, a friend of Mas’s pal G. I. Hasuike, is found stabbed to death just days later. The last thing Mas wants to do is stick his nose in someone else’s business, but at G.I.’s prodding he reluctantly agrees to follow the trail of a battered snakeskin shamisen (a traditional Okinawan musical instrument) left at the scene of the crime…and suddenly finds himself caught up in a dark mystery that reaches from the islands of Okinawa to the streets of L.A.–a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder..
Price: $6.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Moyra Donaldson's voice is a woman's voice--mother, daughter, wife, lover--tinged at times with anticipation, at times with regret. But always, the poet seeks the essence of life in the moment. In the title poem, she captures the wonder of emerging sexuality, as a girl finds her mother's forbidden shoes and feels "Something/you've never felt before./These shoes are live and dangerous A thoroughly modern poet, she does not avoid traditional forms, and she finds her imagery and metaphors, as those before her have, scattered in the harsh yet beautiful terrain of Ireland, her native land..
Price: $4.79 [Notify me when price goes down.]