Banana Yoshimoto

Michael Emmerich

Banana Yoshimoto's novels of young life in Japan have made her an international sensation. Goodbye Tsugumi is an offbeat story of a deep and complicated friendship between two female cousins that ranks among her best work. Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled, and occasionally cruel. Now Maria's father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a "normal" family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi's inner strength and the real possibility of losing her. Goodbye Tsugumi is a beguiling, resonant novel from one of the world's finest young writers.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Virginia

Goodbye Tsugumi

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Jon Krakauer

Ventures among Men and Mountains

Explores the adventure and risks that compel climbers to face the challenges of such peaks as Denali, K2, Everest, and the Eiger.

Eiger Dreams

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Ian Buruma

1853-1964

In a single short book as elegant as it is wise, Ian Buruma makes sense of the most fateful span of Japan’s history, the period that saw as dramatic a transformation as any country has ever known. In the course of little more than a hundred years from the day Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in his black ships, this insular, preindustrial realm mutated into an expansive military dictatorship that essentially supplanted the British, French, Dutch, and American empires in Asia before plunging to utter ruin, eventually emerging under American tutelage as a pseudo-Western-style democracy and economic dynamo. What explains the seismic changes that thrust this small island nation so violently onto the world stage? In part, Ian Buruma argues, the story is one of a newly united nation that felt it must play catch-up to the established Western powers, just as Germany and Italy did, a process that involved, in addition to outward colonial expansion, internal cultural consolidation and the manufacturing of a shared heritage. But Japan has always been both particularly open to the importation of good ideas and particularly prickly about keeping their influence quarantined, a bipolar disorder that would have dramatic consequences and that continues to this day. If one book is to be read in order to understand why the Japanese seem so impossibly strange to many Americans, Inventing Japan is surely it.

Inventing Japan

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Pat F. Garrett

William H. Bonney, born in November of 1859, began his criminal career early. At the age of twelve, Billy stabbed a man in a bar fight, then spent his teenage years stealing and gambling. At seventeen he committed his first murder and earned the nickname "Billy the Kid" from the news reporters who followed his exploits and helped his reputation reach epic heights. Here, Pat F. Garrett, the Sheriff of Lincoln County, does his best to tell us the incredible story of the kid who became a coldblooded outlaw. Written just eight months after he shot Billy in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in 1881—a happenstance meeting at the home of Pete Maxwell—Garrett takes us through Billy's earliest days in New York, his move west, adventures in Mexico, and Billy's repeated arrests and escapes—all of which led to the Kid's eventual death. More than 100 years after the death of Billy the Kid, the popular legends surrounding his life show no sign of dissipating. Complete with a new foreword for this edition, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid is both a tribute and an exposé from the man who took him down.

The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid

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Nora Okja Keller

Nora Okja Keller, the acclaimed author of Comfort Woman, tells the shocking story of a group of young people abandoned after the Korean War. At the center of the tale are two teenage girls--Hyun Jin and Sookie, a teenage prostitute kept by an American soldier--who form a makeshift family with Lobetto, a lost boy who scrapes together a living running errands and pimping for neighborhood girls. Both horrifying and moving, Fox Girl at once reveals another layer of war's human detritus and the fierce love between a mother and daughter.

Fox Girl

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Daniel Nieh

A Novel

"Propulsive. . . . Highly enjoyable. . . . It sets up a sequel, one that I very much look forward to reading." --The New York Times Book Review

A fresh, smart, and fast-paced revenge thriller about a college basketball player who discovers shocking truths about his family in the wake of his father's murder



Victor Li is devastated by his father's murder, and shocked by a confessional letter he finds among his father's things. In it, his father admits that he was never just a restaurateur--in fact he was part of a vast international crime syndicate that formed during China's leanest communist years.

Victor travels to Beijing, where he navigates his father's secret criminal life, confronting decades-old grudges, violent spats, and a shocking new enterprise that the organization wants to undertake. Standing up against it is likely what got his father killed, but Victor remains undeterred. He enlists his growing network of allies and friends to finish what his father started, no matter the costs.

Beijing Payback

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Yoko Tawada

Margaret Mitsutani

Yoko Tawada's new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays what Rivka Galchen has called her "brilliant, shimmering, magnificent strangeness"

The Emissary

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Michael Dylan Foster

History

Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore

A lively excursion into Japanese folklore and its ever-expanding influence on global popular culture through the concept of yokai.



Monsters, ghosts, fantastic beings, and supernatural phenomena of all sorts haunt the folklore and popular culture of Japan. Broadly labeled yokai, these creatures come in infinite shapes and sizes, from tengu mountain goblins and kappa water spirits to shape-shifting foxes and long-tongued ceiling-lickers. Currently popular in anime, manga, film, and computer games, many yokai originated in local legends, folktales, and regional ghost stories.



Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages. In this delightful and accessible narrative, readers will explore the roles played by these mysterious beings within Japanese culture and will also learn of their abundance and variety through detailed entries, some with original illustrations, on more than fifty individual creatures. The Book of Yokai invites readers to examine how people create, transmit, and collect folklore, and how they make sense of the mysteries in the world around them. By exploring yokai as a concept, we can better understand broader processes of tradition, innovation, storytelling, and individual and communal creativity.

 

The Book of Yokai

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Chinua Achebe

THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.

Things Fall Apart

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Thomas Pynchon

The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.

The Crying of Lot 49

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Nghi Vo

An Instant National Bestseller!
An Indie Next Pick!
A B&N Reads April Pick!

A Most Anticipated in 2021 Pick for Oprah Magazine | USA Today | Buzzfeed | Greatist | BookPage | PopSugar | Bustle | The Nerd Daily | Goodreads | Literary Hub | Ms. Magazine | Library Journal | Culturess | Book Riot | Parade Magazine | Kirkus | The Week | Book Bub | OverDrive | The Portalist | Publishers Weekly

A Best of Summer Pick for TIME Magazine | CNN | Book Riot | The Daily Beast | Lambda Literary | The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Goodreads | Bustle | Veranda Magazine | The Week | Bookish | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Den of Geek | LGBTQ Reads | Pittsburgh City Paper | Bookstr | Tatler HK

A Best of 2021 Pick for NPR

"A vibrant and queer reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age classic. . . . I was captivated from the first sentence."--NPR

"A sumptuous, decadent read."--The New York Times

"Vo has crafted a retelling that, in many ways, surpasses the original."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society--she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo's debut novel, The Chosen and the Beautiful, reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.

The Chosen and the Beautiful

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Linda Meeker

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)





TikTok and viral video star Grey (@greyandmama) says "Thank you, Mama!" to healthy foods in this picture book that teaches gratitude, manners, and the joy of sharing meals with those we love.

We all want to raise happy eaters who enjoy trying new foods, mealtimes with family, and being thankful. That's why so many parents love Linda Meeker's charming videos of her son Grey saying "Thank you, Mama!" With colorful illustrations that capture a child's daily snacks and mealtimes, Thank You, Mama will delight parents and kids alike as it follows a little boy exploring different foods--from vegetables to sushi--and trying to pick his favorite.

This playful picture book for 3- to 7-year-olds

 * encourages children to try new foods and become happy, healthy eaters
 * honors the bond between parent and child
 * models respect, manners, and thankfulness
 * builds vocabulary and prereading skills with colorful food illustrations paired with words for each item

This debut children's book from TikTok and Instagram stars Grey and Mama (@greyandmama, 7M followers) is the perfect story for

 * Parents and grandparents who want to instill good habits and gratitude from a young age
 * Any family eager to celebrate the love of food and family that develops over shared meals
 * Baby showers, birthdays, holiday gift giving, or to a little one scared to try new foods

This cheerful story about an adorable, curious, and kind child will have your kids saying "thank you"--and maybe even giving those peas a chance!

Thank You, Mama!

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Joseph Kelly

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

This comprehensive Seagull Reader: Literature reader includes the full contents of the three separate Seagull Reader: Plays, Poems, and Stories readers, in one portable volume. Ideal for introductory courses, The Seagull Readers offer a compact and affordable alternative to larger anthologies. Each volume includes a broad selection of the most commonly taught classic and contemporary works, as well as a thorough introduction to each genre, author biographies, and concise explanatory annotations. --W.W. Norton & Company.

Seagull Reader

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Aesop

A collection of charming and enduring stories that convey morals to young and old alike.

Aesop was a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece around 620-564 BCE. No writings by him exist (if they ever existed at all), yet numerous stories and tales have been credited to him and have been shared through oral tradition throughout the world.  Many of these use animals as the main characters to convey deeper meanings and morals that have become ingrained in our cultural--and personal--belief systems. For example, in "The Goatherd and the Goat" we learn that there is no use trying to hide what can't be hidden. In "The Ass and the Purchaser" we find that people are known by the company they keep. In "The Boys and the Frogs," one person's pleasure may be another person's pain. "The Dogs and the Fox" show how easy it is to kick a man when he's down. And misery loves company, as we see in "The Fox Without a Tail." Aesop's Fables has been one of the world's most charming collections of stories that have influenced thousands of other literary works.

 

About the Word Cloud Classics series:

Classic works of literature with a clean, modern aesthetic! Perfect for both old and new literature fans, the Word Cloud Classics series from Canterbury Classics provides a chic and inexpensive introduction to timeless tales. With a higher production value, including heat burnished covers and foil stamping, these eye-catching, easy-to-hold editions are the perfect gift for students and fans of literature everywhere.

Aesop's Fables

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John Keats

George Gordon Byron

Percy Bysshe. Shelley

William Wordsworth

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

William Blake

Feelings come alive through the words of the Romantic poets.

Romanticism gained traction in the late 1700s as writers moved away from the intellectualism of the Enlightenment and toward more emotional and natural themes. The major works of the movement's six most famous poets--William Wordsworth, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and William Blake--are represented in this handsome Word Cloud Classics volume, The Romantic Poets. One of the largest and most influential artistic movements in history, Romanticism valued intuition and pastoralism, and its themes are well represented in the verse of its stars.

The Romantic Poets

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Samantha King Holmes

For fans of r.h. Sin comes a new voice, Samantha King's raw, relatable poetry both celebrates love and mourns the human "curse to feel." Her verse transports readers to the most private reaches of love and longing. Born to Love, Cursed to Feel is about love--the good, the bad, and the confusing. It touches on morals and how when emotions are involved it's not as black and white. The poetry is frequently written in a narrative manner that evocatively pulls you in and makes you feel. This book is about falling in love, bad decisions, and ultimately growth. The essence of it all is to show that no matter how far one falls all the mistakes don't have to be what defines them.

Born to Love, Cursed to Feel

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Ruta Sepetys

From New York Times and international bestseller Ruta Sepetys comes a story of loss and of fear -- and ultimately, of survival. Now in a revolutionary new mini format, this read is more portable than ever.

Carnegie Medal winner Ruta Sepetys's debut is now available as a Penguin Mini edition. Complete and unabridged, the book's revolutionary landscape design and ultra-thin paper makes it easy to hold in one hand without sacrificing readability. Perfectly sized to slip into a pocket or bag, Penguin Minis are ideal for reading on the go.

"Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both." --The Washington Post

  *  A New York Times bestseller
  *  A New York Times notable book
  *  An international bestseller
  *  A Carnegie Medal nominee
  *  A William C. Morris Award finalist

Fifteen-year-old Lina is a Lithuanian girl living an ordinary life -- until Soviet officers invade her home and tear her family apart. Separated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her young brother make their way to a Siberian work camp, where they are forced to fight for their lives. Lina finds solace in her art, documenting these events by drawing. Risking everything, she imbeds clues in her drawings of their location and secretly passes them along, hoping her drawings will make their way to her father's prison camp. But will strength, love, and hope be enough for Lina and her family to survive?
     A moving and haunting novel perfect for readers of The Book Thief.

Praise for Between Shades of Gray:

"Superlative. A hefty emotional punch." --The New York Times Book Review

"Heart-wrenching . . . an eye-opening reimagination of a very real tragedy written with grace and heart." --The Los Angeles Times

"At once a suspenseful, drama-packed survival story, a romance, and an intricately researched work of historial fiction." --The Wall Street Journal

* "Beautifully written and deeply felt . . . An important book that deserves the widest possible readership." --Booklist, starred review

Penguin Minis: Between Shades of Gray

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Semra Haksever

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Guidance to All of Life's Questions from Your Higher Self

A fun, magical guide by expert witch Semra Haksever, that will help you to navigate whatever life throws at you. Incorporates spells, rituals, manifestations and more.

Instant Magic Oracle

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National Geographic

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

365 Days of Compassion

Lead your best year yet through 365 days of kindness. With enriching quotes from celebrated luminaries and striking National Geographic photography, each page of this moving book will inspire you to live with sincerity, compassion, and benevolence. Each month, you'll practice virtues like patience, respect, and generosity that will focus your mind and heart, creating fulfillment and contentment. Both inviting and motivating, Daily Kindness invites you to reflect on life's big and small moments, providing a way to embrace new ideas--and enrich your life every day of the year.

Daily Kindness

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Yasunari Kawabata

Edward G. Seidensticker

The power of love and illusion shape the lives of a young geisha and a rich Tokyo dilettante

Snow Country

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Katherine Applegate

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The One and Only Ivan, the One and Only Bob

Discover the unforgettable world of best friends Ivan and Bob in this gorgeous illustrated paperback box set, including the Newbery Medal-winning The One and Only Ivan and its bestselling sequel, The One and Only Bob! Ivan is an easy-going gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. Mostly, he thinks about art. Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home--and his own art--through new eyes. When Ruby arrives, change comes with her, and it's up to Ivan to make it a change for the better. Continuing the story of these friends in The One and Only Bob, Bob sets out on a dangerous journey in search of his long-lost sister with the help of Ivan and Ruby. As a hurricane approaches and time is running out, Bob finds courage he never knew he had and learns the true meaning of friendship and family. The One and Only Ivan is a modern classic that has enchanted readers for over a decade. The winner of the Newbery Medal and a #1 New York Times bestseller, the book was deemed "extraordinary" by Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books and "a must-have" by School Library Journal in starred reviews. And its sequel, The One and Only Bob, debuted at #1 on multiple bestseller lists, including the New York Times list, and was called "pitch-perfect" by Kirkus Reviews and "delightfully heartfelt and adventurous" by School Library Journal in starred reviews. In the tradition of timeless stories like Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, Katherine Applegate blends humor and poignancy to create an unforgettable story of friendship, art, and hope. The One and Only Ivan and The One and Only Bob feature first-person narrative; author's use of literary devices (personification, imagery); and story elements (plot, character development, perspective). These acclaimed middle grade novels are an excellent choice for tween readers in grades 5 to 8, for independent reading, homeschooling, and sharing in the classroom.

Ivan and Friends Paperback 2-Book Box Set

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Anouar Benmalek

Joanna Kilmartin

A breathless story of love and survival in war-torn Algeria-past and present
The devil has entered our country, and his footprints are everywhere.

Nine-year-old Jallal is old enough to know that his life in Algeria is precarious at best. Having run away from home, he survives by selling peanuts and single cigarettes on the street. The proposal by the elderly Swiss woman named Anna is shocking and preposterous: go to the mountains with her, as a translator, so she can find her lost lover from decades ago and pray over the graves of their murdered children.

Anna and Jallal's journey is wrought with danger and unspeakable tragedy. It was under similar circumstances that Anna first met the Arab Nasreddine. Ousted from the traveling circus where she performed as a trapeze artist, she had little choice but to accept Nasreddine's dangerous offer to live with him in a makeshift tent. But it was here, amid poverty, racism, and terrifyingly random violence, that they fell in love.

A best seller in France,The Lovers of Algeria is an unflinchingly candid story about a country where terrorism and government corruption are commonplace. As Anna and Nasreddine, beaten by time and memory, circle each other in Algeria, Anouar Benmalek shows with heart-wrenching detail that love can endure even the most inhuman conditions.

A Lannan Translation Series Selection

The Lovers of Algeria

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Chol-Hwan Kang

Pierre Rigoulot

Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

North Korea is today one of the last bastions of hard-line Communism. Its leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party regime, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this record of one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to an ongoing sorrowful chapter of modern history. New edition with a new preface by the author.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

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Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey's The Echo Wife is a non-stop thrill ride of lies, betrayal, and identity, perfect for fans of Big Little Lies and Killing Eve. Evelyn Caldwell’s husband Nathan has been having an affair — with Evelyn Caldwell. Or, to be exact, with Martine, a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn’s own award-winning research. But that wasn’t even the worst part. When they said all happy families are alike, I don’t think this is what they meant...

The Echo Wife

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The Bookwyrm

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