"This novel is a romp," Abigail Hing Wen promises (and delivers!) about Loveboat, Taipei. The Loveboat, she explains in her opening note to readers, is the popular name for Chien Tan, a real-life Taiwanese summer language program aimed at diasporic teens, with a reputation for...
What should have been a serendipitous event – a lavish birthday celebration for three generations in 1973 – turns horrific, leaving 17 family and friends dead. Decades after the tragedy, The Aosawa Murders might be a closed case, but award-winning Japanese novelist Riku Onda has plenty...
Cycles of violence dominate the graphic novel Two Dead – whether at home or on so-called enemy territory. Traumatized by a World War II friendly-fire fatality, Sergeant Gideon Kemp returns stateside, eschews his law degree, and begins his police career in 1946 in his hometown...
Boratin is "back at zero" since his unsuccessful suicide has landed him in a hospital bed instead of Istanbul's Bosphorus Strait. He's broken a rib but lost his memory. Strangers – even though they aren't – assure him he's "a brilliant singer and songwriter" for...
Readers have an easy choice here: to read this resonating six-chapter collection as an entertaining, albeit sobering, manga about the middle-aged life of a seeming slacker, or approach it as a prominent, pivotal example of 20th-century graphic literary history. Originally published as a magazine serial...
For readers in search of a tautly streamlined, deeply resonating, contemporary family story, Big Familia by Tomas Moniz (Bellies and Buffalos) won't disappoint. In this short novel, Juan Gutiérrez is a longtime Berkeley resident, the amicably divorced father to high school senior Stella and a self-described Chicano...
Kacen Callender, who identifies as queer, trans POC, wrote the Stonewall and Lambda winner Hurricane Child as Kheryn Callender; they debuted their name change in May 2019 with the announcement of the sale of their upcoming transgender YA novel Felix Ever After. Callender's second middle-grade title, King and the...
Since comparisons to Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians seem unavoidable, here's what might be familiar: yes, crazy, rich, Asian characters populate Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties. Differences, however, immediately overshadow superficial similarities, most obviously from the very first sentence: "When your sister murders three hundred people,...
Growing up in the Philippines, Candy Gourlay (Tall Story) "wondered why all the books she'd ever loved didn't resemble her steamy, tropical home in Manila." As she explains in her author bio, it took years as a journalist and author for Gourlay, who now lives...
In the "track changes" function of a word processing program, the "all markup" option preserves all deletions, additions, rewrites for the life of the document – although the last editor ultimately chooses what to accept and reject in the final version. Palestinian Israeli Sayed Kashua,...
As British artist and author Ian Beck explains in his afterword, he first visited London's Tate Gallery "as a callow art student." He discovered then his favorite painting in the collection: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent. In a verdant Cotswolds garden, two...
The town of Africville exists, designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. The small coastal community on the edge of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was home to black residents since the early 1800s, the majority with southern U.S. and Caribbean origins. Narrative magazine assistant editor Jeffrey...
No one else but Lottie knows a shark is "hiding in the swimming pool." The teacher and other kids don't notice because the shark wants to eat only Lottie – which means every Saturday, Lottie spends her swimming class safely on deck. And then Walter...
Born on the same day during a freak September blizzard in Tennessee, Eric and Morgan – and their families – "became friends for life." The shared birthday anchors them through life's most dramatic changes: Morgan's mother dies and Morgan's father shuts down, while Eric's once-perfect...
Two brothers. Two narrators. Two type fonts: serif for "The Older Brother" chapters; sans serif for "The Younger Brother." Their family has shrunk as Mahir Guven's debut, Older Brother, begins: "...
Amy Sarig King’s (Me and Marvin Gardens) second middle-grade title explores especially mature subjects – infidelity, parental missteps, mental illness, genetic inheritance, violent triggers – with effective, age-appropriate awareness. On January 18, 2019, "everything changed" in the Johanson home. While 12-year-old Liberty and her nine-year-old...
When London-based, U.S.-raised food writer Jennifer Joyce began traveling in Asia in the 1990s, she "discovered the staggering deliciousness of authentic Asian cooking," she writes in the introduction to My Asian Kitchen. She presents an antidote to the "limited ...
According to a 2014 shocking reveal by creator Sanrio Japan, Hello Kitty isn't actually feline, she's a British child. Nevertheless, "this culture of anthropomorphic kitties is one of the reasons feline fever has taken so many forms," including – a Japanese historical first! – cat-owners...
The retired-detective-turned-Santería-priest Padrino gets a second chance to play savior in Teresa Dovalpage's continuing Havana Mystery series. She mines familiar territory from book one, Death Comes in Through the Kitchen (2018), using another bathroom murder to intertwine the lives of U.S. visitors with Cuban locals. Two decades...
Being a child in the adult world presents all sorts of challenges, but size is perhaps the most obvious, immediate hurdle. For young Soe-In, the "once upon a time"-hero in Hanna Cha's delightful debut picture book, Tiny Feet Between the Mountains, her smallness even determined...
