In a dark alley in Oxford, Yohan finds his mentor Doha Kim stabbed. With moments left to live, Doha tells Yohan that he must go to the Soju Club and meet with Dr Ryu. These are the North Korean spymaster’s final instructions, which Yohan knows he must obey.
Author: Melanie Ho
When Clarissa FitzRoy arrives on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island in October 1836, the heiress is met with the salty spray of the ocean.
In Tokyo’s Himonya district lives Kaede’s grandfather, a former school principal with a love of mystery novels that he has passed down to his granddaughter.
The Sun family seems to have everything—a multi-squillion dollar empire, homes and compounds in prime California real estate and no shortage of power, influence, notoriety and fame. But the one thing access to the Sun family trust requires is the one thing the family doesn’t have: a male heir. But some members of the Sun clan have plans to change this and soon there is a race to see which grandchild can first produce a male heir.
For many Asian families, it might be difficult not to have a memory of ginseng. I remember my mother making tea from American ginseng and my violin teacher using it to infuse his vodka. But I can’t remember ever asking about it or even why it was continually referred to as “American” ginseng, rather than just ginseng.
Li Qingzhao (1084-1151 CE) is considered the greatest woman poet in Chinese history but, as translator Wendy Chen writes in her introduction, Li “remains relatively unknown in the West.” Chen, who first heard Li’s poetry as a child, is determined to help change this. The Magpie at Night is Chen’s translation of the Song-dynasty writer in a collection of poetry that feels both of its era but also carries a timeliness that renders Li’s poetry as accessible as it is moving.
A young boy cracks open the front door and peers outside. The dark shadows from the roof and the trees give a foreboding sense of something to come. Three umbrellas sit neatly in their holder, right by the door. The boy goes out to play.
Sunny Seki opens his new children’s book, Hokusai’s Daughter, with Hokusai, the famous painter and printmaker from the Edo period, walking alongside his young daughter.
Like many stories, Amy’s begins long before she was born. Amy is an “all-American” young woman from Hawaii, but author Sherri L Smith and illustrator Christine Norrie start their graphic novel Pearl in 1886 in Japan, where Amy’s sosōbo (great-grandmother) is a pearl diver from Okinawa.
In the opening short story of Ouyang Yu’s short story collection The White Cockatoo Flowers, the main character of the titular story asks himself: “If I were in China now, I would be…” The line sets the stage for a collection of stories that explore what it means to become Australian and the tensions of being part of —or between—multiple cultures.
You must be logged in to post a comment.