*STARRED REVIEW That this story starts with “CHAPTER 20” will likely make readers pause to wonder if an earlier volume might have been missed. But worry not, and read on. A half-dozen pages later shows “CHAPTER 19,” revealing the narrative is moving in reverse. For 37 years,...
Emi Yagi’s first novel, which won Japan’s Dazai Osamu Prize for the best debut fiction, is a brilliant exposé of discontented contemporary womanhood. Shibata’s professional life has been plagued by men – from sexual harassment at her last job to sexist roles at her current....
Once upon a time, they seemed to be an ideal family: parents Hank and Karen Liu Brighton; their biracial daughters Morgan and Riley. They owned a small organic grocery store in Eugene, Oregon, then expanded into a globally sourced luxury goods empire called Kaleidoscope. First, Morgan...
Indie publisher Tuttle showcases Filipino creator Arnold Arre, whose The Mythology Class (another Tuttle title) was the first comic to win the Philippine National Book Award. Renowned for his fantasy works, Arre describes Halina Filipina as a “no-frills relationship story” in an afterword describing the...
Jennifer J. Chow inaugurates her L.A. Night Market Mysteries (after the Winston Wong and Sassy Cat/Mimi Lee series), which turns two cousins into unlikely sleuths. Yale Yee is still mourning her mother’s death. She quit her family’s dim sum restaurant and found solace in a...
Claribel A. Ortega (Witchlings) writes buoying books inspired by her Dominican heritage. She empathically takes on the timeless challenges of "good" and "bad" hair in Frizzy, gloriously depicted by debut illustrator Rose Bousamra. Going to the salon every Sunday is "without fail" the "worst part of the week"...
Sonali Dev concludes her Jane Austen-inspired Rajes series, narrated once more by Soneela Nankani, who ensures familiar continuity throughout the quartet. Interestingly, as if Emma wasn’t mainstream enough, Dev includes a snarky summary early on: “Emma is an overindulged, albeit well-meaning, brat who is looking for...
Former actor turned award-winning writer Kevin Chen's Ghost Town is certainly cinematic, populated with unforgettable characters – living, dead, and in between. Welcome to Yongjing, "a rural backwater in central Taiwan," just as Ghost Month looms. The Chen clan is about to experience an unexpected reunion,...
*STARRED REVIEW Yeong-shin Ma’s dazzling 2020 English debut, Moms, won the 2021 Harvey Award for Best International Book and has recently been picked up for a TV series. Fortuitously paired again with award-winning Korean Canadian translator Janet Hong, Ma’s spectacular latest import arrives in brilliant full...
Melbourne author Jamie Marina Lau was the same age as her 24-year-old protagonist when Gunk Baby, her second novel, was published in Australia in 2021. Following the success of Lau's 2018 debut, Pink Mountain on Locust Island, which was shortlisted for Australia's Stella Prize, Gunk Baby arrives Stateside...
Debut Canadian author Sadé Smith and illustrator Ken Daley celebrate their shared Caribbean heritage in the vibrant Granny's Kitchen. "Shelly-Ann lived on the beautiful island of Jamaica" with her Granny, who is quite the chef. Whenever Shelly-Ann asks Granny for something to eat, Granny replies with...
"Prodigy" comes to mind when examining Rin Usami's brief (thus far) but astounding literary trajectory. Her 2019 debut novel, Kaka, made her the youngest recipient of the prestigious Yukio Mishima Prize. Her intriguing follow-up, Idol, Burning, published in 2020 when Usami was just 21, garnered the...
*STARRED REVIEW Eduardo Halfon (Mourning; Monastery) has published a dozen books in Spanish; four are currently available in English translations. Seeming to challenge his substantial output, Halfon explained in a 2015 comment to Shelf Awareness, "I'm only writing one book, and everything I publish along the way is just...
Get ready for more delectable death. After the "rather dark places" both Mia P. Manansala and her protagonist, Lila Macapagal, endured in Homicide and Halo-Halo – the second novel in the Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery series – Manansala (Arsenic and Adobo) opens Blackmail and Bibingka with reassurance, writing...
*STARRED REVIEW Winter in Sokcho, the extraordinary first novel, gorgeously translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, by French Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin, won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The two reunite for The Pachinko Parlor, in which Dusapin's remarkably intricate and lean prose reveals...
David Bowles continues his eloquent, autobiographical narration of the "border kid" experience in They Call Her Fregona, a captivating novel-in-verse companion to his 2019 Pura Belpré Honor book, They Call Me Güero. Joanna Padilla, the titular fregona, is a "tough girl," first introduced in Güero. After Joanna saved Güero from...
*STARRED REVIEW Not a smidge of disrespect is intended toward the printed page, but with such an electrifying full-cast production available, audio readers are guaranteed an enthralling delight here. With a flair for the unexpected, Margarita Montimore’s (Oona Out of Order, 2020) latest provides compelling content...
*STARRED REVIEW Six of the eight stories in Ling Ma's debut short story collection, Bliss Montage, have already appeared in the usual prestigious publications (the New Yorker, Granta, the Atlantic). "They can just read them for free somewhere else?" a skeptical mother remarks to her about-to-be-published daughter over lunch in...
Emmy-nominated Navajo/Diné filmmaker Ramona Emerson jumps genres with her fiction debut, a chilling mystery starring Rita Todacheene (who just might be getting a bookish series of her own). Charley Flyte, with a similar Native/Indigenous background (Oglala Lakota and Mohawk), empathically ciphers a considerable cast –...
*STARRED REVIEW Opinionated, peanut gallery-esque ghosts soothsay from Maple Street Cemetery in Evanston, New Hampshire. Former professor Clive’s feline hallucinations had him permanently removed from his classroom in the middle of a term; these days, Clive spends most of this time with (dead) Ernest Harold Baynes...
