Carrying a photograph of the man she is to marry but has yet to meet, young Hana Omiya arrives in San Francisco, California, in 1917, one of several hundred Japanese “picture brides” whose arranged marriages brought them to America in the early 1900s. Her story is intertwined with others: her husband, Taro Takeda, an Oakland shopkeeper; Kiku and her husband Henry, who reject demeaning city work to become farmers; Dr. Kaneda, a respected community leader who is destroyed by the adopted land he l...
In her “compact gem of a collection” (Globe & Mail), Carrianne Leung enlivens a singular group of characters sharing a shiny new subdivision in 1970s Toronto. Marilyn greets new neighbors with fresh-baked cookies before she starts stealing from them. Stay-at-home-wife Francesca believes passion is just one yard away, only in the arms of another man. And Darren doesn’t understand why his mother insists he keep his head down, even though he gets good grades like his white friends. When a series of...
Beginning in Saigon during the Vietnam War and ending in present day New York, Catinat Boulevard tells the story of two friends Mai and Mai Ly. While Mai flirts with American GIs in rowdy bars along Catinat Boulevard, Mai Ly joins the communist resistance in the jungle. The story also follows Nat, Mai's half Vietnamese-half African-American son abandoned in a Saigon orphanage.
This novel gives a first-person perspective of adolescence in Shanghai in the 1950s and 60s, a time of upheaval and daily drama in the live of even the most ordinary of people. Through the perspective of our young narrator, we can observe the social reality of the time, impacted by the enormous tide of political changes.We follow our narrator as he navigates the difficulties anyone might face in growing up: shifting loyalties among friends, conflicts with teacher and other significant adults in...
Ming, born in a bleak outpost of Sichuan province, finds an unexpected glimpse of the world beyond when she meets a talking monkey with golden eyes and supernatural abilities—the immortal Monkey King, with whom Ming’s destiny is inextricably intertwined. Determined to become a writer, Ming finds her way to New York, but to make ends meet she goes to work for a crime ring and returns to China on the lam. Hope arrives in the form of her American friend Zoe. Together, they travel to the village of...
Ru: In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Thuy's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried along on an unforgettable journey from a palatial residence in Saigon to a crowded and muddy Malaysian refugee camp, and onward to a new life in Quebec. There, the young gi...
From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,” says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign” wife. Some years into their marriage, the...
To win the God of War’s favour was wise – to fall in love with him would ruin me 'Lush, deeply romantic, and endlessly enchanting. Sue Lynn Tan is a master of both fable-like whimsy and epic, sweeping adventure' —Ava Reid, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning 'Treacherously beautiful and dazzlingly romantic. This book will steal your breath and your heart!' —Steph...
From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, a powerful, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.'Haunting and powerful' Madeline Miller'Brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true' Andrew Sean Greer'I tore through this' Raven Leilani, author of Luster At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her...
Search History oscillates between a wild cyberdog chase and lunch-date monologues as Eugene Lim deconstructs grieving and storytelling with uncanny juxtapositions and subversive satire. Frank Exit is dead—or is he? While eavesdropping on two women discussing a dog-sitting gig over lunch, a bereft friend comes to a shocking realization: Frank has been reincarnated as a dog! This epiphany launches a series of adventures—interlaced with digressions about AI-generated fiction, virtual reality, As...
Pangs of Love and Other Writings (Classics of Asian American Literature)
by David Wong Louie
An apprentice sushi chef and a mysterious blue-eyed woman share a bottle of wine inside a climate-controlled otter tank. The Great Wall of China grumbles as workers forego construction to watch an imperial game of baseball. A young woman tries to imagine a future unsullied by her family’s history of untimely death.First issued in 1991, Pangs of Love introduced David Wong Louie’s bold storytelling. The son of Chinese immigrants, he centered his stories around characters who are in conflict with t...
Longlisted for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction An extraordinary debut collection of short stories by a three-time Pushcart Prize winner following Chinese women in both China and the United States who turn to signs and languages as they cross the alien landscapes of migration and motherhood. "The most common word in Chinese, perhaps, a ubiquitous syllable people utter and hear all the time, which is supposed to mean good. But what is hao in this world, where good book...
White Lotus meets The Guest List in international bestselling author S. C. Lalli’s next thrilling novel, where two business moguls were set to be married in the biggest event of the year—until they’re both found murdered the day before the wedding—and a social outsider must unravel the mystery before her own hidden agenda is revealed. The wedding of Radhika Singh and Raj Joshi, a weeklong affair at a luxury resort in Cabo, isn’t just going to be the event of the season—it will also mark the uni...
In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn’t the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. The writer, traumatized by the violent death of her mother when she was a child, lives alone with her dog and s...
Winner of the Sakutaro Hagiwara Prize and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize Caught between two cultures, award-winning author Hiromi Ito tackles subjects like aging, death, and suffering with dark humor, illuminating the bittersweet joys of being alive. The first novel to appear in English by award-winning author Hiromi Ito explores the absurdities, complexities, and challenges experienced by a woman caring for her two families: her husband and daughters in California and her aging parents in Japan. As...
'Truly delicious . . . it's everything I want a book to be' DAISY BUCHANAN'A hugely fun tale' I PAPER'Salacious and addictive, every page left me giggling with glee' ANNIE LORD'Wickedly delectable' NEW YORK TIMES'Crazy Rich Asians meets Saltburn' PLUM SYKES'A plot with more twists than an Elsa Peretti for Tiffany corkscrew' FINANCIAL TIMES‘Juicy, salacious and a whole lot of fun . . . an absolute must for your summer reads this year’ GLAMOURNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAMAZON.COM'S BEST BOOKS OF THE...
Wedding Woes (Winston Wong Cozy Mystery, #3)
by Jennifer J. Chow and J J Chow