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'A mystery, a love story and a fascinating encounter with a different culture, Yuki Means Happiness is an outstanding novel' John Boyne Diana is young and uneasy in a new relationship when she leaves America and moves halfway around the world to Tokyo seeking adventure. In Japan she takes a job as a nanny to two-year-old Yuki Yoshimura and sets about adapting to a routine of English practice, ballet and swimming lessons, and Japanese cooking. But as Diana becomes increasingly attached to Yuki she also becomes aware that everything in the Yoshimura household isn't as it first seemed. Before long, she must ask herself if she is brave enough to put everything on the line for the child under her care, confronting her own demons at every step of the way. Yuki Means Happiness is a rich and powerfully illuminating portrait of the intense relationship between a young woman and her small charge, as well as one woman's journey to discover her true self.
It's November in Massachusetts. Leo Coffin is making a birthday cake for his wife, Liv, due home soon from a trip to Norway, when a stranger comes to the door claiming to be Liv's half-brother, Morten. Too polite to make the stranger wait until Liv is home before letting him in, Leo unleashes a troubling, fascinating force into his quiet life. When Liv returns, unable to separate fact from fiction, Leo is forced to live with mystery upon mystery, as well as a secret he's been keeping himself. Can his marriage survive the fiction? Can it survive the truth?
Advancement in telecommunications has drastically changed the way that people communicate, particularly in a professional capacity. The onslaught of e-mail, text and even instant messaging has given people other means with which to communicate with one another, but in doing, the art of personal, verbal and face-to-face communication is being lost, resulting in miscommunication and broken personal and professional relationships.
Travel to Indonesia, Singapore, Japan and Sri Lanka with Alison Lester's challenging, charming characters as they grapple with a sense of dislocation and the nagging possibility of betrayal that accompanies new beginnings.The title story, Locked Out, offers an unsparing look at the life of an American wife and mother living in Tokyo, who is confronted by her first grey hairs and who suspects her executive husband of having an affair with his sleek Japanese assistant. Bill's Bones chronicles a middle-aged Australian lady's return to the Indonesian Club Med resort where her husband, Bill, drowned after an argument the year before. In Really Trying to Get Somewhere, a pair of jaded, eight-years-married travel agents go on a junket to Sri Lanka and fare rather badly. Unable to summon the enthusiasm for a meaningful connection with each other, they drink to excess at parties and horse races. Alison Lester writes evocatively about the many facets of being far from home or uncomfortable where home is. Factor in the honest and amusing dialogue, and Lester's graceful prose, and the result is a very genuine collection of stories that will appeal to seasoned and armchair travellers alike.
From much-loved author and illustrator Alison Lester come these new and exciting animal books designed especially for 0-3 year olds. Little babies will respond to the rhythm of the text and the simple, colourful images, while toddlers will love joining in to make their own animal noises.
This is the first English-language biography of the relentlessly ambitious and incomparably talented printer Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). Born to a printing family in the small foothill town of Saluzzo, he left his comfortable life to travel to Rome in 1758 where he served as an apprentice of Cardinal Spinelli at the Propaganda Fide press. There, under the sponsorship of Ruggieri, he learned all aspects of the printing craft. Even then, his real talent lay in type design and punchcutting, especially of the exotic foreign alphabets needed by the papal office to spread the faith. His life changed when at age 28 he was invited by the Duke of Parma to abandon Rome for that very French city t...
Adam Grant, the bestselling author of Give and Take, teams with his wife, Allison, to share the lighthearted tale of a gift in search of a giver--a classic in the making and the perfect conversation starter about thoughtfulness. This delightful book--one of Amazon's 2019 Holiday Gift Picks and Most Anticipated Books--is designed to start conversations with kids about generosity. In the tradition of Goodnight Gorilla, the words are intentionally spare. The book is meant to be read interactively, with adults posing questions so kids can guess what's happening (and why). Praised by both parents and teachers for sparking imagination and eliciting discussion, the story can be interpreted differen...
ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW YORK TIMES ISTANBUL READING LIST RUNCIMAN AWARD SHORTLIST ERIC HOFFER AWARD FINALIST & HONORABLE MENTION DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD LONGLIST WNBA GREAT GROUP READ SELECTION At the neighborhood café where pastry chef Kosmas, charming widower Fanis, and other Rum—Greek Orthodox Christian—friends meet regularly for afternoon tea, American-born Daphne arrives with her elderly aunt. Daphne unsettles hearts, provokes jealousies, and stirs up memories of the 1955 Istanbul pogrom, forcing Kosmas and Fanis to confront their painful history in order to risk new beginnings. A shrewd and humorous tale, A Recipe for Daphne invites the reader into the kitchens, loves, and secret lives of Istanbul's most ancient community.
A book that “speak[s] volumes about our need for connection—human, feline or otherwise” (The San Francisco Chronicle), The Travelling Cat Chronicles is a life-affirming anthem to kindness and self-sacrifice that shows how the smallest things can provide the greatest joy—the perfect gift for cat lovers and travellers! We take journeys to explore exotic new places and to return to the comforts of home, to visit old acquaintances and to make new friends. But the most important journey is the one that shows us how to follow our hearts... An instant international bestseller and indie bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptiv...
This entertaining and endlessly surprising book takes us on an exploration into every aspect of Japanese society from the most public to the most intimate. A series of meticulous investigations gradually uncovers the multi-faceted nature of a country and people who are even more extraordinary than they seem. Our journey encompasses religion, ritual, martial arts, manners, eating, drinking, hot baths, geishas, family, home, singing, wrestling, dancing, performing, clans, education, aspiration, sexes, generations, race, crime, gangs, terror, war, kindness, cruelty, money, art, imperialism, emperor, countryside, city, politics, government, law and a language that varies according to whom you are speaking. Clear-sighted, persistent, affectionate, unsentimental and honest - Alan Macfarlane shows us Japan as it has never been seen before.