Lev is born in the midst of a terrorist attack. Etgar’s father gets cancer. The threat of constant war looms over their home and permeates daily life.What emerges from this dark reality is a series of sublimely absurd ruminations on everything from Etgar’s three-year-old son’s impending military service to the terrorist mind-set behind Angry Birds. There’s Lev’s insistence that he is a cat, releasing him from any human responsibilities or rules. Etgar’s siblings, all very different people who have chosen radically divergent paths in life, come together after his father’s shivah to experience the grief and love that tie a family together forever. This wise, witty memoir—Etgar’s first non-fiction book, and told in his inimitable style—is full of wonder and life and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humor.

    And then she moves to London on a whim to pursue an interior design course, where she meets and falls passionately in love wi th Jagdish Sachdev - he of the compassionate heart and matchless brains. But Jag leaves her, citing irreconcilable differences between their families. Sohana returns home to the news that the business empire her grandfather had built over the years will wind up either in the hands of the highest bidder or with the grandson (but of course) who shows the most mettle. As her brothers race to inherit the business, Sohana is wooed, and her ethics and loyalties tested. In this first instalment of Kavita Daswani's trilogy, with secrets tumbling out and dramas unfolding all around her, Sohana must make up her mind about what and who she is in the scheme of things. About the Author: Kavita Daswani Kavita Daswani is currently a fashion correspondent for CNN International, CNBC Asia, and Women's Wear Daily. She has written for the Los Angeles Times and the International Herald Tribune among many other publications and has been the fashion editor of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons. She has authored the best-selling books For Matrimonial Purposes, The Village Bride of Beverly Hills, Indie Girl and Salaam, Paris. Her books have been published in seventeen langu

    Every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here too. . . but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the highest aspiration he can imagine for a Chinatown denizen. Or is it?After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he's ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family, and what that means for him, in today's America.Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.

    Venturing beyond the farm to sell them in town, though, is out of the question. People would stare at the birthmark on her cheek, and she’s dealt with enough teasing in her life. As a beekeeper, Adam Fisher knows how blessed he is to live next door to the Grabers’ greenhouses and fields. But when his father is injured, Adam has to take a job at the local mill. How will he manage the honey harvest? Adam and Belinda make a deal: if she tends his hives, he’ll sell her flowers in town. Belinda’s sure that her growing feelings for Adam could never be returned. Meanwhile, Adam can’t help but notice how his shy neighbor charms the bees…or is he the one being charmed? Because his last courtship ended badly, Adam tells himself this arrangement is strictly business, even if Belinda is sweet as honey. This uplifting Amish romance includes a free Hallmark original recipe.

    Larissa Lai interweaves three narrative voices and their attendant cultures: an elusive fox growing toward wisdom and her 1000 birthday, the ninth-century Taoist poet/nun Yu Hsuan-Chi (a real person executed in China for murder), and the oddly named Artemis, a young Asian-American woman living in contemporary Vancouver.With beautiful and enchanting prose, and a sure narrative hand, Lai combines Chinese mythology, the sexual politics of medieval China, and modern-day Vancouver to masterfully revise the myth of the Fox (a figure who can inhibit women’s bodies in order to cause mischief).

    His mother was forced into having an abortion, though seven months pregnant, because she was carrying the child of an enemy of the state. After desperate prayer, the night before she was due to go into hospital for the operation, she miraculously gave birth. Isaac met his father for the first time at the age of four. Brother Yun was constantly on the run, and his mother had to work to feed the family, so his grandmother cared for him. One day his mother was also arrested. Isaac and his sister were swiftly taken to another town by local Christians, where they registered at a school under false names. The family finally managed to flee to Burma, Thailand and ultimately Germany. As he grew up, what should Isaac do? Isaac's mother had prayed that God would not call her son to be an evangelist - but his father had dedicated him to God. Isaac, now in his twenties, has embraced the call to be a pastor.

    Married to his high school sweetheart and one of the winningest quarterbacks in the history of college football, he was the number one NFL draft pick. But on the night of the draft, he plummeted from the pinnacle of esteem. Falsely accused of a heinous crime with irrefutable evidence, it seemed in an instant all was lost -- his reputation, his career, his freedom, and most devastatingly, the love of his life. Having served his sentence and never played a down of professional football, Matthew leaves prison with one goal -- to find his wife, Audrey, whom no one has seen since the trial. He returns to an unwelcoming reception from his Gardi, Georgia, hometown to learn that Audrey has taken shelter from the media with the nuns at a Catholic school. There she has discovered a young man with the talent to achieve the football career Matthew should have had. All he needs is the right coach. Although helping the boy means Matthew violates the conditions of his release and -- if discovered -- reincarceration for life, he'll take the chance with hope of winning back Audrey's love.

    Highly recommended." —Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard, Hold the Enlightenment and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh"After over a decade in the country, Hopkins knows and loves his subject dearly—that much is obvious—and his vivid portrait projects that love from every page." —Jann Wenner, editor and founder of Rolling Stone Magazine"A loving expose of everything that's wonderful about Thailand, and much that isn't. Should be required reading for all newcomers." —Joe Cummings, author of the Lonely Planet Thailand GuideWriter Jerry Hopkins came to Thailand for a visit in the 1980s, and ended up a permanent resident with a temporary visa—a big, white farang haunting the bars and back alleys of Bangkok. His essays explore the mystery and mayhem of "The Land of Smiles" to hilarious—and sometimes disturbing—effect. Travel with him to a place where whisky is rum, water buffaloes are gay, insects are dinner, dildos are lucky charms, and your wildest adolescent fantasies can come true (for a nominal fee).

    Every genre and style, from the celebrated No plays to the poetry and novels of the seventeenth century, find a place in this book. An introduction by Donald Keene places the selections in their proper historical context, allowing the readers to enjoy the book both as literature and as a guide to the cultural history of Japan. Selections include “Man’yoshu” or “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves” from the ancient period; “Kokinshu” or “Collection of Ancient and Modern Poetry,” “The Tosa Diary” of Ki No Tsurayuki, “Yugao” from “Tales of Genji” of Murasaki Shikibu, and “The Pillow Book” of Sei Shonagon from the Heian Period; “The Tale of the Heike” from the Kamakura Period; Plan of the No Stage, “Birds of Sorrow” of Seami Motokiyo, and “Three Poets at Minase” from the Muromachi Period; and Sections from Basho, including “The Narrow Road of Oku,” “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, and Waka and haiku of the Tokugawa Period.

    Gazingnowhere in particular, the slenderThunderer surrounded by thunder,Fire zigzag in his grasp, labeled "SpiritOf Communication"---unhistorical,Pure, the merciless messenger.--from "A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties"Innovative, engaging poems from a leading American poet.Stone wheel that sharpens the blade that mows the grain,Wheel of the sunflower turning, wheel that turnsThe spiral press that squeezes the oil expressedFrom shale or olives. Particles that turn mudOn the potter's wheel that spins to form the vesselThat holds the oil that drips to cool the blade.--from "Biography"Jersey Rain takes up a central American subject: the emotional power of inventions, devices, and homemade imaginings -- from the alphabet and the lyre through the steel drum and piano to the record player, digital computer, and television. Formally innovative and highly readable poems like "ABC," "Ode to Meaning," "To Television," and "The Green Piano" meditate a life guided by the quick, artful tinkerer-god Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger, and trickster of heaven.Tiptoe on the globe. Gazingnowhere in particular, the slenderThunderer surrounded by thunder,Fire zigzag in his grasp, labeled "SpiritOf Communication"---unhistorical,Pure, the merciless messenger.--from "A Phonebook Cover Hermes of the Nineteen-forties"Jersey Rain -- at once complex and aboveboard -- marks a new, strong, lyrical stage of Robert Pinsky's work. Assembled here are poems -- some of the finest of his career -- that together compose a sweeping and embattled meditation on the themes of a life guided by Hermes: deity of music and deception, escort of the dead, inventor of instruments, brilliant messenger and trickster of heaven.

    Miyazawa Kenji: Selections collects a wide range of his poetry and provides an excellent introduction to his life and work. Miyazawa was a teacher of agriculture by profession and largely unknown as a poet until after his death. Since then his work has increasingly attracted a devoted following, especially among ecologists, Buddhists, and the literary avant-garde. This volume includes poems translated by Gary Snyder, who was the first to translate a substantial body of Miyazawa’s work into English. Hiroaki Sato’s own superb translations, many never before published, demonstrate his deep familiarity with Miyazawa’s poetry. His remarkable introduction considers the poet’s significance and suggests ways for contemporary readers to approach his work. It further places developments in Japanese poetry into a global context during the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition the book features a Foreword by the poet Geoffrey O’Brien and essays by Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael O’Brien.

    A shipboard wager leads to an unlikely friendship that spans seven decades as Hong Kong endures the savagery of the Japanese occupation, emerging as a crossroads of international finance and the nexus of a world of warlords, drug runners, and Chinese triads.

    airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill. As the passengers stepped from the airplanes, exhausted, hungry and distraught after being held on board for nearly 24 hours while security checked all of the baggage, they were greeted with a feast prepared by the townspeople. Local bus drivers who had been on strike came off the picket lines to transport the passengers to the various shelters set up in local schools and churches. Linens and toiletries were bought and donated. A middle school provided showers, as well as access to computers, email, and televisions, allowing the passengers to stay in touch with family and follow the news.Over the course of those four days, many of the passengers developed friendships with Gander residents that they expect to last a lifetime. As a show of thanks, scholarship funds for the children of Gander have been formed and donations have been made to provide new computers for the schools. This book recounts the inspiring story of the residents of Gander, Canada, whose acts of kindness have touched the lives of thousands of people and been an example of humanity and goodwill.

    But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.

    He draws inspiration from censored histories, subsumed myths and invokes imagined voices from the exiled, demanding of the reader to witness the ubiquitous ideological fictions that surround us.This is one of the most dissonant and penetrating voices in Singapore poetry.A History of Amnesia is listed in the notable books list by the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Award (administered by University of San Francisco).