Bookstore Browsing: Sunday Salon

 At the bookstore

 Book Display at the store 

Chairs and a cat on the Toshikazu Kawaguchi book covers; cats only on books by T. Shigematsu and Syou Ishida. The Japanese are certainly fond of cats. I bought Before Your Memory Fades, the most recent in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Kawaguchi.

How many of these have you read, if any?

 On a poetry binge, I couldn't resist this new collection or its colorful cover.

The New Yorker started as a weekly in the mid-1920s, and is now published forty-seven times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Poems, cartoons, satire, and essays are included in each weekly. 

I like that there are many short and shorter poems on various subjects in the collection. makes for easy reading.

And  I had to get a thriller too

The House Guest by Hank Philippi Ryan, published 2023 by Forge Books.

Description: Alyssa Macallan is terrified when she’s dumped by her wealthy and powerful husband. She begins to suspect her toxic and manipulative soon-to-be-ex is scheming to ruin her—leaving her alone and penniless. And when the FBI shows up at her door, Alyssa knows she really needs a friend.

And then she gets a seductive new friend, one who’s running from a dangerous relationship of her own. 

Alyssa offers Bree Lorrance the safety of her guest house, and the two become confidantes and schemers. 

Currently reading/almost finished

I am enjoying the descriptions of the canals in the watery neighborhood of Venice, California, where The Water Lies (October 2025; NetGalley) takes place.

In this mystery, a heavily pregnant woman, Tessa, tries to find the link between Gigi, a woman she just met at a local cafe, and her toddler son who seemed to recognize her. 

When Gigi turns up drowned in the canal in front of her house, Tessa becomes unnerved and bent on finding out how her son was connected to Gigi, calling her by her name in the cafe. 

Enter Gigi's mom, Barb, also determined to find out how or why her daughter drowned in a shallow canal even though she had been a swim champion in school.

The two women, Tessa and Barb, work together, and so far there are so many twists and turns in the plot that I can't wait to find out what really happened. 

 

What are you reading this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves 

Asian American/Pacific Island (Hawaiian) Authors

 

Asian American Authors - Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month

April 1, 2025; Simon & Schuster, NetGalley

Boat Baby: A Memoir by Vicky Nguyen is a memoir about the author and her family's harrowing trip from communist Vietnam in the mid-1970s to safety.  Traveling by boat, the group is attacked by pirates on the ocean, but manage to reach the refugee camps in Malaysia before being sponsored to come to America. 

April 10, 2025; independently published

In a brief biography, NBC News anchor and correspondent Vicky Nguyen also tells the story of her unlikely journey from refugee to award winning reporter and an NBC news anchor.

May 6, 2025; Norton & Company, NetGalley

The Wanderer's Curse: A Memoir by Jennifer Hope Choi, 

Description: An immigrant Korean mother runs off to Alaska, sparking a greater season of wandering. Could her daughter be destined for the same?

This probing memoir follows Choi through her many former homes, from a crumbling Chinatown tenement to a haunted museum in Georgia. 

The memoir is an electric mother-daughter story, exploring ideas of belonging, self-determination, and possibility, leaving readers to wonder what we take with us generation to generation, what we wish we could leave behind, and how we move on.

Jennifer Hope Choi is also an award nominated senior editor at Bon Appetit. 

May 20, 2025; Thomas and Mercer, NetGalley

Kaua'i Storm: a Ranger Makalani Pahukula Mystery by Tori Eldridge 

Genre: mystery, set in Kaua'i

Description: Returning to Kaua‘i after ten years as a national park ranger in Oregon, ranger Makalani Pahukula finds her family divided and their way of life at risk. But when hunters find a dead body in the Keālia Forest Reserve, Makalani fears something ominous is at play, and her search for her cousins is a mystery she must solve.

Tori Eldridge is the bestselling author of the Lily Wong mystery thrillers as well as a two-time Anthony Award nominee, Lefty and Macavity Awards finalist, and winner of the 2021 Crimson Scribe Award for Best Book of the Year.

Born and raised in Honolulu—of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Norwegian descent—she lived in New York and Los Angeles before settling in Portland, Oregon. She holds a 5th degree black belt in To-Shin Do ninja martial arts.

Have you read any books for AAPI Heritage Month? 

What are you reading, watching, or listening to this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: May Books on My List

 May Books on My List

Autobiography/Memoir

Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange by Katie Goh, May 6, 2025; Tin House, NetGalley

Genre: memoir, nonfiction, nature

Description: 

Katie Goh follows the complicated history of the orange from east-to-west and west-to-east, from a luxury item of kings and  emperors, to a common everyday fruit.  

Growing up queer in a Chinese-Malaysian-Irish household in the north of Ireland, Katie felt herself at odds with the culture and politics. She visited her ancestral home in Longyan, China and travels to Malaysia to understand her roots, to flesh out contradictions, unpeel the layers of personhood. A reflection on identity through the cipher of the orange. 

This unusual memoir is one I'm looking forward to reading.

Mystery Novel

Detective Aunty by Uzma Jaluluddin, May 6, 2025, Harper Perennial, NetGalley

Genre: cozy mystery, adult fiction, set in Toronto

Description:

Kauser Khan returns to Toronto to clear her daughter, Sana, of the murder of a landlord. With the help of old friends and her teenage granddaughter, Kausar investigates to uncover the truth behind the murders that have been occurring there.

General Adult Fiction

My Friends by Fredrik Backman, May 6, 2025; Simon and Schuster, NetGalley

Genre: adult fiction, contemporary, set in Sweden

Description: 

A funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.  One of the boys hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life.

Louisa years later finds three tiny figures painted in the corner of a world famous painting she has been put in charge of, and sets out to find the story behind it.

What are you reading, watching, or listening to this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

   

Basically Blue: Book Covers

 Women's fiction

March 5, 2024; Putnam, NetGalleyA hilariously offbeat and tender comedy about one bipolar woman’s messy search for love at a seaside wedding where no one can stay afloat.

Is she falling in love, or falling apart?

July 15, 2025; Avon and Harper Voyager, NetGalley

Genre: women's fiction, contemporary fiction

Eliza moves to a small Midwestern town after her engagement falls apart. She buys a lake house, sight unseen, and finds that her friendly neighbors are hiding a marvelous secret, which will impact her life.

General fiction/adult

June 3, 2025; Berkley, NetGalley

A perfectly cozy voyage with the charming and relatable passengers—including one dashing dachshund—whose lives intersect and affect each other on a mountain trip on Japan’s most romantic railway lines, from international bestselling author Hiro Arikawa.

July 15, 2025: Henry Holt, NetGalley

A refreshingly irreverent novel about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience, by the acclaimed writer Hannah Pittard

And now for a mystery/thriller

June 3, 2025; Severn House, NetGalley

 Four friends are meeting at a beautiful Cape Cod beach house for a long overdue reunion. 

It’s been twenty years since Mori, Avery, Remi and Calista last saw each other. As they reconnect on Cape Cod to celebrate Calista’s fortieth birthday, each one hides a painful and devastating secret. But before the trip is over, one of them will wind up dead.

What's your favorite color for a book cover?