*STARRED REVIEW Town was once a fish-farm village, but it’s now internationally known for the corporation that aggressively expanded it into a bustling city-state. Here, class stratification is impermeable. Su is a Citizen. Do-kyung is a Saha, an inconsequential resident of the crumbling Saha Estates who...
*STARRED REVIEW Prodigious National Book Award-winning, 1998 MacArthur “Genius” Charles Johnson is now in his 70s, having been repeatedly lauded in multiple genres. Perhaps not as well known is that Johnson began his literary career as a cartoonist (in high school!) – and never stopped drawing,...
*STARRED REVIEW Among the perennially relevant, permanently indisputable pioneers of the graphic genre is Art Spiegelman, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus remains a groundbreaking masterpiece. The provenance for that achievement is a 1972 three-page strip, included in this celebrated historical compilation, which was first published in 1978...
Kotaro Isaka has written dozens of award-winning, internationally bestselling novels and story collections. This, his third Anglophoned title, is notably narrated by versatile actor Adam Sims, who earnestly embodies former math teacher Suzuki, transformed by the senseless murder of his beloved wife. Her killer remains...
*STARRED REVIEW Sarayu (just Sara at her English university) has a scholarship so tight that she dreams of telling her benefactor how “an extra hundred pounds would make not the tiniest difference to his life but would transform [hers].” She finds comfort – not to mention...
*STARRED REVIEW French comics creator Fabien Toulmé’s stupendous trilogy concludes Hakim’s epic three-year odyssey from war-torn Syria to finally reaching safety in France. Hannah Chute returns to deftly translate the third volume. To remind audiences of previous events – though reading in order is a gratifying must...
PEN/Faulkner finalist Matthew Salesses, a transracial Korean adoptee, again distills his own experiences with race and (e)masculinity for laudable literary inspiration in The Sense of Wonder. His intricate novel spotlights three basketball players at different points of their careers – starting out, at the pinnacle,...
*STARRED REVIEW A faux pastor with a costume-shop collar and his not-yet wife; a mermaid with a silver guitar; a pill-popping, weak-hearted FBI agent who withstands gruesome torture; Sidney Poitier signing autographs for Russian soldiers ...
*STARRED REVIEW Eleanor Brown’s (The Weird Sisters) latest is certainly good, focusing on a “Very Special Family” of four siblings and their three sets of adoptive parents committed to keeping the children together through Sunday dinners, holidays, and now an all-family, two-week vacation. And here’s where...
*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...
*STARRED REVIEW Both debut author Tracy Dawson and Kendra Hoffman, a narrator we need to hear more from, share notable improv experience, making them a superb pairing to inform and delight. Dawson highlights dozens of trailblazing women who dressed as men to gain access and opportunity. She...
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...
