People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (2012)

Subtitled: The True Story of a Young Woman who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up.  If you aren't sold already, just based on that awesome title and subtitle, here's what the book is about:  In 2000, a young British woman named Lucie Blackman was working as a hostess in a club in Tokyo when she disappears completely.  I mean, completely.

This true crime novel is fascinating on a number of levels.  First of all, it's got great literary credentials as Richard Lloyd Parry was the Asia editor of the Times of London.  Parry explores the 'water trade' and the complex hostess and hospitality culture in Japanese society.  He gets in depth with the complex relationships between Lucie's parents and family and friends.  He also provides an interesting look at the Japanese criminal process, and how very different it is from the American process.  And the book is just flat out suspenseful and gripping.  It's one of the best true crime books I've ever read.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979)

Written in the mid-1970s and set in contemporary times, Kindred is about Dana, a black woman in her 20s who is mysteriously pulled back in time to the antebellum South to keep saving the life of a man she eventually finds out is one of her ancestors.  Dana keeps getting pulled back and forth in time--sometimes alone, sometimes with her white husband--and her life keeps intertwining with that of her ancestor and the slaves he keeps on his plantation. 

Provides a fascinating look at the lives of slaves, as well as life for any black person in the antebellum South.  In addition, it's a very interesting look at the relationship between Dana and her husband and their life in the 1970s.  Although it sounds a bit grueling, it's also compulsively readable and amazingly well told.

In the edition I read, there was a fascinating critical essay by Robert Crossley that provided more context.  Despite being so much of its time period, the novel itself does not seem dated at all.  It's still a fascinating novel with a lot to say.