For Jeni McFarland, who survived childhood sexual assault, talking about her trauma "was like a dam burst," she reveals in an interview with her publisher. "It was so cathartic writing about it that I couldn't stop." That horrific survival, further aggravated by being one of...
Although Chinua Achebe's pivotal Things Fall Apart is a staple on most Western students' reading lists as representative of modern African literature, Cyprian Ekwensi predates Achebe by four years as one of Nigeria's first writers publishing in English. Introduced in the U.K. in 1954, Ekwensi's debut...
June Hur's gripping debut re-creates the Joseon Dynasty, when Korea relied on brutality to contain the spread of foreign Catholicism. During this bloody time, 16-year-old Seol's irrepressible curiosity is about to become her best asset for solving crime ...
*STARRED REVIEW Ali Araghi begins his prodigious debut novel with a literal bang: once upon a time in an apple orchard, a returning soldier urges his rifle into his son's hands, forcing the boy to shoot him. The shocking tragedy renders 10-year-old Ahmad mute, and has...
Members Only, the first novel by Sameer Pandya (author of the story collection The Blind Writer), is as provocative as it is comedic. In a horribly misguided attempt to bond with the first people of color since his own admission into a suburban Los Angeles tennis...
Despite Daisy's carefully prepared "Things to do with Yeh-yeh" list, her goal during the week of her grandfather's visit is something far more challenging: "I have to make him smile before he leaves!" In creating Daisy and her Grandpa Grumps, Katrina Moore (One Hug) explores multi-generational,...
In her provocative, intense debut novel, The Royal Abduls, Ramiza Shamoun Koya introduces the extended members of a fractured family four years after the horrors of 9/11. Each is attempting to deal with ongoing anti-Muslim challenges, from microaggressions to outright civil rights abuses. Despite a shared...
Three decades after the Exxon Valdez ran aground on March 24, 1989, in Alaska's Prince William Sound, author Jonah Winter (Thurgood) and his author/illustrator mother, Jeanette Winter (Malala/Iqbal), present the environmental catastrophe in a straightforward manner ideal for younger audiences. With a similar display of transparency...
Ivansk Street, Number 1933, in Kirovka, Ukraine, seems be an exact address, but the town council's clerk insists "that building does not exist." Constructed last year, "someone seemed to have forgotten to connect it to the district furnace," but plenty of people already live there....
Two years after the original 1968 publication in Japan of Life for Sale, which opens immediately with a young man's failed attempt to die, Yukio Mishima (Star) led an unsuccessful military coup d'etat that ended with his highly publicized, gruesomely violent ritual suicide. Just 45...
Prolifically published in his native Farsi, Amir Ahmadi Arian makes his English-language debut with Then the Fish Swallowed Him, a disturbingly irresistible novel exposing the invalidity of truth and lies under a despotic regime. Growing up in a volatile, politically fractured society and losing both parents...
The delightfully adventurous Jasmine Green series makes its Stateside debut with the adorable A Piglet Called Truffle. Spirited Jasmine is a veritable animal expert thanks to her farmer father, her veterinarian mother, and all the inhabitants (including, ahem, her two siblings) that thrive on the...
Fan Fiction, 50 Years Later Almost two decades have passed since Linda Sue Park became the first Korean American – and only the second Asian American – to win the Newbery Medal, in 2002 for A Single Shard. She's since published dozens of titles (Gondra's Treasure; Forest of...
In 1991, prolific Jamaican poet and Coretta Scott King Honor author James Berry (A Thief in the Village) wrote "A Story About Afiya," an exquisite celebration of the simple magic of childhood. Lantana Publishing, founded "because all children deserve to see themselves in the books...
Bestselling Korean author Mi-ae Seo uses her screenwriting chops in The Only Child, a tautly plotted creepfest that already feels celluloid-ready. Making her English-language debut, Seo delves into the minds of those on opposite sides of the law. The incarcerated serial killer Yi Byeongdo, who...
The title originates in poet Jamila Osman's essay, "A Map of Lost Things": "A map is only one story," writes the Canadian-born daughter of Somali immigrants who now lives in Portland, Ore. "It is not the most important story. The most important story is the...
After decades of glimpsing autobiographical hints in his always intriguing, often surreal novels and short stories, Anglophone audiences get access to Yan Lianke's real life. Haunted by the passing of the men in his father's generation, Yan – one of China's most awarded, lauded authors...
Flowing words by Carole Lindstrom and lush art by Michaela Goade appear in immaculate synchronicity on every page of We Are Water Protectors. A young girl, instructed by her wise Nokomis – grandmother – acts as the story's guide, creating a beckoning entry for even...
Already an internationally recognized, award-winning art historian and filmmaker, Nana Oforiatta Ayim makes her literary debut with The God Child, a compelling and ambitious novel. Through narrative jumps in time and place, as well as jarring disruptions in multiple languages (most notably, untranslated Twi and...
Yes, it's almost two inches thick and more than 400 pages, but that shouldn't deter readers from procuring this book promptly. Chan Ho-Kei's second thriller available in the U.S., Second Sister, is virtually irresistible, with twisty-turny, didn't-see-that-coming manipulations guaranteed to keep readers wide awake into...
