What do a traumatic brain injury, the imperial family of Japan, and a puzzle have in common? If you’re Mike Brink, a man whose football injury left him a savant in the world of patterns and mathematics, the answer is easy: the myth of the Puzzle Box of Japan. For Danielle Trussoni, this is the jumping off point for her new novel, The Puzzle Box, a fiendish thriller that made me ... Read More...
What’s Left of Me is Yours
Sumiko’s mother, Rina, died in a car accident when she was a child. Her parents were divorced, her father not a part of her life, so she went to live with her beloved grandfather. Now, twenty years later, as What’s Left of Me is Yours opens, she receives a call about a man from her mother’s past. This call unleashes the flood that overtakes her life, sweeping away her memories ... Read More...
Convenience Store Woman: A Novel
Japan is known as having a culture that prizes social conformity and adherence to societal values. In such a country, what would it be like to be a young woman whose nature keeps her from understanding these unspoken guidelines? For Keiko Furukuro, the narrator of Convenience Store Woman, it is not difficult. For everyone around her, especially her family, it is an ongoing ... Read More...
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
Imagine, if you can, your entire life changing in a flash. Literally, and by ‘flash’ I mean a blinding light the force and magnitude of an atomic bomb. This is what happens to Amaterasu Takahashi in Jackie Copleton’s new novel A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding. She and her family live in Nagasaki and on August 9, 1945 instead of meeting her daughter at a nearby ... Read More...
The Gods of Heavenly Punishment
There are numerous novels about World War II and the events leading up to it but TheThe Gods of Heavenly Punishment: A Novel comes from a perspective not often seen—that of life in Japan in the late 1930s. Author Jennifer Cody Epstein intermingles the lives of disparate characters that come together and move apart against the backdrop of war. Anton Reynolds is an American ... Read More...
