Miki and the Wishing Star

Miki and the Wishing Star
Author: Stephen Mackey
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Children's stories
ISBN: 9781444901368

Miki is back in this wintery tale of determination, friendship and hope. It's the three friends' birthday and they all make a special wish, but Penguin's wish leads him into dangerous territory.

Somewhere Among

Somewhere Among
Author: Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2016-04-26
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1481437887

In this beautiful and haunting debut novel in verse, called “a tender piece on connectedness” in a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, a Japanese-American girl struggles with the loneliness of being caught between two worlds when the tragedy of 9/11 strikes an ocean away. Eleven-year-old Ema has always been of two worlds—her father’s Japanese heritage and her mother’s life in America. She’s spent summers in California for as long as she can remember, but this year she and her mother are staying with her grandparents in Japan as they await the arrival of Ema’s baby sibling. Her mother’s pregnancy has been tricky, putting everyone on edge, but Ema’s heart is singing—finally, there will be someone else who will understand what it’s like to belong and not belong at the same time. But Ema’s good spirits are muffled by her grandmother who is cold, tightfisted, and quick to reprimand her for the slightest infraction. Then, when their stay is extended and Ema must go to a new school, her worries of not belonging grow. And when the tragedy of 9/11 strikes, Ema, her parents, and the world watch as the twin towers fall… As her mother grieves for her country across the ocean—threatening the safety of her pregnancy—and her beloved grandfather falls ill, Ema feels more helpless and hopeless than ever. And yet, surrounded by tragedy, Ema sees for the first time the tender side of her grandmother, and the reason for the penny-pinching and sternness make sense—her grandmother has been preparing so they could all survive the worst. Dipping and soaring, Somewhere Among is the story of one girl’s search for identity, a sense of peace, and the discovery that hope can indeed rise from the ashes of disaster.

Oakland Noir

Oakland Noir
Author: Jerry Thompson
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1617755583

“Wonderfully, in Akashic’s Oakland Noir, the stereotypes about the city suffer the fate of your average noir character—they die brutally.” —San Francisco Chronicle In the wake of San Francisco Noir, Los Angeles Noir, and Orange County Noir—all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series—comes the latest California installment, Oakland Noir. Masterfully curated by Jerry Thompson and Eddie Muller (the “Czar of Noir”), this volume will shock, titillate, provoke, and entertain. The diverse cast of talented contributors will not disappoint. Oakland Noir offers stories by Nick Petrulakis, Kim Addonizio, Keenan Norris, Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder, Katie Gilmartin, Dorothy Lazard, Harry Louis Williams II, Carolyn Alexander, Phil Canalin, Judy Juanita, Jamie DeWolf, Nayomi Munaweera, Mahmud Rahman, Tom McElravey, Joe Loya, and Eddie Muller. “From the Oakland hills to the heart of downtown, each story brings Oakland to life.” —San Jose Mercury News “Oakland is a natural for the series, with its shadowy crimes and disgruntled cops.” —Zoom Street Magazine “San Francisco’s grittier next-door neighbor gets her day in the sun in 16 new stories in this tightly curated entry in Akashic’s Noir series. The hardscrabble streets of Oakland offer crime aplenty . . . Thompson and Muller have taken such pains to choose stories highlighting Oakland’s diversity and history that the result is a volume rich in local culture as well as crime.” —Kirkus Reviews

I Love You So Mochi

I Love You So Mochi
Author: Sarah Kuhn
Publisher: Point
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1338608363

Kimi Nakamura loves fashion, and designing clothes, jewelry, and accessories for her friends, but her mother, a professional graphic designer with a long list of clients, wants her to be a serious artist, and is furious when she discovers Kimi has dropped her fine arts class; so Kimi is relieved to be able to visit her normally estranged grandparents in Kyoto during spring break--but what begins as an escape becomes a way to learn about her mother and her Japanese heritage, and to figure out how to move forward with her own life.

The Toho Studios Story

The Toho Studios Story
Author: Stuart Galbraith
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2008-05-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1461673747

Since its inception in 1933, Toho Co., Ltd., Japan's most famous movie production company and distributor, has produced and/or distributed some of the most notable films ever to come out of Asia, including Seven Samurai, Godzilla, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Kwaidan, Woman in the Dunes, Ran, Shall We Dance?, Ringu, and Spirited Away. While the western world often defines Toho by its iconic classics, which include the Godzilla franchise and many of the greatest films of the legendary director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune, these pictures represent but a tiny fraction of Toho's rich history. The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography provides a complete picture of every Toho feature the Japanese studio produced and released—as well as foreign films that it distributed—during its first 75 years. Presented chronologically, each entry in the filmography includes, where applicable, the original Japanese title, a direct translation of that title, the film's international, U.S. release, and alternate titles; production credits, including each film's producers, director, screenwriters, cinematographers, art directors, and composers, among others; casts with character names; production companies, technical specs, running times, and release dates; U.S. release data including distributor, whether the film was released subtitled or dubbed, and alternate versions; domestic and international awards; and plot synopses.

Suicide: Dream Baby Dream, A New York City Story

Suicide: Dream Baby Dream, A New York City Story
Author: Kris Needs
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2015-10-12
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1783235357

“We were living through the realities of war and bringing the war onto the stage... Everybody hated us, man” Alan Vega Born out of the city's vibrant artistic underground as a counter-cultural performance art statement, opposing the war by mirroring its turmoil, Suicide became the most terrifyingly iconoclastic band in history, and also one of the most influential. By the time the punk scene they're usually associated with came out of CBGBs in the mid-seventies, Suicide had already been causing havoc in New York’s clubs for several years. Working closely with the author, Rev and Vega explain the influences and events which led to the birth of Suicide and their early struggles. They invoke another world and era, peppered with smoky jazz clubs, Iggy Pop in his new-born Stooge persona and even suffer an attack from beat guru Allen Ginsberg. Along with interviewing major figures in the Suicide story, the author reaches back into 40 years chronicling and interviewing major players in New York’s musical history, including Blondie, Jayne County, James Chance and the New York Dolls. While the city changes around them, it all adds up to the definitive account of the lives and times of this unique duo.

Miki and the Moon Blossom

Miki and the Moon Blossom
Author: Stephen Mackey
Publisher: Hachette Children's
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-12-06
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780340950678

One moonlit night, a seed grows and lifts Miki's house high into the air to a strange new world full of exotic creatures and plants. Polar Bear and Penguin set off on a journey to rescue their friend, only to find themselves trapped when a great storm comes. Will the friends make it back home again?

Another Life

Another Life
Author: Robert Haller
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 198252605X

Laura: a teenage girl struggling to fit into her small, sleepy town in upstate New York, slowly drifting away from reality and into the secret life she inhabits online. Paul: a twentysomething wannabe rock star, back home from New York City, broke and jobless, living with his mother. April: a math teacher with two kids, running her church’s vacation Bible school, discontent with another summer planning crafts and regurgitating verses. Ben: a boy stuck at VBS, still adjusting to the presence of his foster brother, DeShawn, a quiet, brooding kid from Brooklyn. Over the course of one summer, these characters’ paths will collide in surprising, often hilarious ways. Encompassing questions of identity, religion, race, and family, Another Life is an absorbing and thought-provoking debut about the line we all walk between desire and responsibility.

Skeleton King

Skeleton King
Author: Charity B.
Publisher:
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2020-06-12
Genre:
ISBN:

In this town, I'm free from shameA place where everyone knows my nameGlamorizing corpses to feed a needThat's why they call me Skeleton KingThey all worship me, but they don't know the real meAll they see is my painted faceTruth is, I'm terrified, all the hope inside me diedDeath and cold will forever be my morbid fateThen she showed me something moreSomehow stealing death's allureTrigger Warning: This book contains many triggers and this warning should be taken seriously. The sexual and graphically depicted scenes in this novel are not for the squeamish and will be disturbing for some readers.