Please enjoy these titles our staff selected in honor of Lunar New Year.
Fiction | Nonfiction
Lola Treasure Gold can't figure out her life. She's broke, she's unemployed, she's back in her childhood home, a crumbling cottage in the Hollywood Hills. Worse-unspeakably worse-one of her closest friends has just died. So nobody is more surprised than Lola when a jackpot falls in her lap: she stars in a Very Viral Video, opening a surprising path for her to become a self-help guru. With the encouragement of her other best friend, Celi-still alive, thank god-Lola embraces the public interest in her perceived message. But is she a scammer or a sage?
When Elizabeth Chen's ever-hustling realtor mother finally sells the beloved if derelict community center down the block, the new owners don't look like typical New York City buyers. Brendan Lee and Darcy Wong are good Chinese boys with Hong Kong money. Clean-cut and charismatic, they say they are committed to cleaning up the neighborhood. To Elizabeth, that only means one thing: Darcy is looking to give the center an uptown makeover. Elizabeth is determined to fight for community over profit, even if it means confronting the arrogant, uptight man every chance she gets.
When AJ moves to Seattle in the early aughts, he's ready to reinvent himself as a gay Asian man--but his dreams hit reality fast with no friends, no job, and an apartment so far out, "not even lesbians live there." Then a spilled drink at a bar introduces him to K, a glamorous drag queen; John, a shy gamer; and Steven, a reckless flirt. AJ's "Boy Luck Club" helps him find love, pride, and belonging--until a brutal attack tests everything they know about friendship and family. Meticulously observed and gorgeously illustrated, Gaysians is a fierce, funny, and tender story of queer resilience and self-discovery.
Follows the aftermath of a young boy's shocking death during a violent student uprising as told from the perspectives of the event's victims and their loved ones.
Julie is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-year-old whose only retirement plan is dying early. She's been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she'll work the most gruesome gigs, exorcize the nastiest demons, and make deals with the cruelest gods to claw her way to the top. But nothing can prepare her for the toughest job yet: when her best friend, Sarah, shows up at her door in need of help.... Julie is desperate for a quick fix to break the dead-end grind and save her friend. But her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts Sarah - and the entire world - directly in the path of annihilation.
From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a haunting novel about the long-unacknowledged demons that are passed down through four generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past. ...Threaded with the myths of the Asian diaspora and set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down exposes the grief, loss, and fear we all carry, but desperately wish we could forget.
Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells 'small' fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences. Even if it's a lonely life, it's better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they're joined by a baker with a 'knead' for adventure, and--of course--a slightly magical cat.
Miss Chloe Fong... told her childhood sweetheart that he could talk to her once he planned to be serious. He disappeared that very night. Except now he's back. Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, has returned to the tiny village he once visited with the hope of wooing Chloe. ... All he has to do is convince Chloe to make room for a mischievous trickster in her life, then disclose that in all the years they've known each other, he's failed to mention his real name, his title... and the minor fact that he owns her entire village. Only one thing can go wrong: Everything.
.A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family's eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family's clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice.
Set in the post-martial-law era of 1990s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university.
Influencer Meredith Lee didn't teach Aspen Palmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon as Aspen became big. So can anyone really blame Mer for doing a little stalking? Nothing serious, more like Stalking Lite. Then Mer gets lucky: she finds one of Aspen's kids' iPads and swipes it. Now she has access to everything: the family calendar and Aspen's social media accounts. Would anyone else be able to resist tweaking things a little here and there, showing up in Aspen's place for meetings with potential sponsors? Mer's only taking back what she deserves--what should have been hers.
In New Orleans, three daughters of a former beauty queen and Vietnamese refugee obsessed with zodiac signs are trying to go about their modern lives, but begin to encounter strange glimpses of long-buried secrets from their ancestors.
The Cleric Chih accompanies a beautiful young bride to her wedding to the aging ruler of a crumbling estate situated at the crossroads of dead empires. The bride's party is welcomed with elaborate courtesies and extravagant banquets, but between the frightened servants and the cryptic warnings of the lord's mad son, they quickly realize that something is haunting the shadowed halls. As Chih and the bride-to-be explore empty rooms and desolate courtyards, they are drawn into the mystery of what became of Lord Guo's previous wives and the dark history of Do Cao itself. But as the wedding night draws to its close, Chih will learn at their peril that not all monsters are to be found in the shadows; some monsters hide in plain sight.
Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice... When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.
In a mysterious town hidden in our collective subconscious there's a department store that sells dreams. Day and night, visitors both human and animal shuffle in to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor specializes in a specific type of dream: childhood memories, food dreams, ice skating, dreams of stardom. Flying dreams are almost always sold out. Some seek dreams of loved ones who have died.
Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang's achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature.
Sarah Ahn's viral food videos of her and her mom have captivated millions of viewers with their behind-the-scenes look at Korean cooking and multigenerational home life. This collaboration is now a must-have cookbook blending the emotional intimacy of Crying in H Mart with practical culinary advice from Nam Soon's lifetime of kitchen experience. The recipes are framed by mother-daughter conversations that are funny, profound, and universally relatable-plus all the food is backed by the recipe-testing power of America's Test Kitchen.
Hsiao-Ching Chou (Chinese Soul Food) brings her on-ramp approach to Chinese cooking full circle with fresh, uncomplicated home cooking for celebrations typical of the Chinese American experience. Master dumplings, scallion pancakes, and more to contribute to 'tuan yuan' (the act of coming together) that define family meals in these 75 tried-and-true recipes anyone can tackle.
As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship.
Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, a first-generation Taiwanese American who has a 'zine and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become best friends...And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking. ... Determined to hold on to all that was left of his best friend, ... Hua turned to writing.
During the Cultural Revolution in China in the mid-1960s, a French diplomat falls in love with a singer in the Beijing Opera, not knowing that the object of his affection is a man. Interwoven with allusions to the Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly", a story of love and betrayal unfolds.
A successful young social media director at a publishing house chronicles her ten years of psychiatric treatment for depression and she fought back against the harmful behaviors that kept her locked in a cycle of self-abuse.
Wrestling with the question of who she is throughout, a Myanmar millennial, in these irreverent yet vulnerable essays, takes on romantic relationships whose futures are determined by different passports, switching accents in taxis, and other challenges of what it means to be a Myanmar woman today.
A book about the author's quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore during one Lunar Calendar year, as a way to connect food and family with her sense of home.
In essays that range from using fashion to present as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease, Wang's analytical eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative.
Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future.