Nagi Hayakawa is facing an impossible choice. With only a few years left to live, should she marry the man she loves? Desperate for advice from her mother, who died years ago, she reserves a table at the Chibineko Kitchen. When she takes her first bite of the miso-marinated tofu and rice, the resident kitten…
Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire
“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization—and therefore force—is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another,…
Below Zero by Ali Hazelwood
“Caring what others think is a lot of work, and—with a handful of exceptions—I’m not a huge fan of work.” Hannah’s got a bad feeling about this. Not only has the NASA aerospace engineer found herself injured and stranded at a remote Arctic research station—but the one person willing to undertake the hazardous rescue mission…
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.“ In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a…
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
“Who gets to be an American? What does an American look like?” Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day,…
Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne
“Run away with me. You like tea. I like books. Care to open a shop and forget the world exists?” All Reyna and Kianthe want is to open a bookshop that serves tea. Worn wooden floors, plants on every table, firelight drifting between the rafters… all complemented by love and good company. Thing is, Reyna…
Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones by Priyanka Mattoo
“There is a Kashmiri phrase, chhari daud te mahe adij, “bird milk and mosquito bones,” used when someone is describing things so rare and precious that the listener should question their very existence. It comes to mind whenever I think about that little treasury of items we gathered.” Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden…
The Wolf and His King by Finn Longman
‘I wish I had — I wish I had longer. I wish I could let go of these desire, because they are doing me no good, and I wish he was mine so that I didn’t have to.’ Bisclavret is cursed: to live his life in exile; to take a wolf’s shape involuntarily; to lie…
Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
“Always remember, although the unimaginative see life as a thread stretched from one point to another, birth to death, a life truly lived is a glorious tangle. One is never lost. And if one is lucky, one is never found, either.” Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but…
When They Burned the Butterfly by Wen-Yi Lee
Singapore, 1972: Newly independent, a city of immigrants grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters are the last conduits of the gods their ancestors brought with them, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place where magic has not been assimilated and legislated away. Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never…
The Great Book Wyrm 