The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
Author: Jan-Philipp Sendker
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012-01-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590514645

A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present. When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

A Well-tempered Heart

A Well-tempered Heart
Author: Jan-Philipp Sendker
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590516400

The sequel to the international best-selling novel The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. Almost ten years have passed since Julia Win came back from Burma, her father’s native country. Though she is a successful Manhattan lawyer, her private life is at a crossroads; her boyfriend has recently left her and she is, despite her wealth, unhappy with her professional life. Julia is lost and exhausted. One day, in the middle of an important business meeting, she hears a stranger’s voice in her head that causes her to leave the office without explanation. In the following days, her crisis only deepens. Not only does the female voice refuse to disappear, but it starts to ask questions Julia has been trying to avoid. Why do you live alone? To whom do you feel close? What do you want in life? Interwoven with Julia’s story is that of a Burmese woman named Nu Nu who finds her world turned upside down when Burma goes to war and calls on her two young sons to be child soldiers. This spirited sequel, like The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, explores the most inspiring and passionate terrain: the human heart.

The Heart Remembers

The Heart Remembers
Author: Jan-Philipp Sendker
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 159051842X

The highly anticipated final book in the internationally bestselling The Art of Hearing Heartbeats trilogy, a moving story about love’s power to transcend distances and heal seemingly irreparable wounds. Twelve-year-old Ko Bo Bo lives with his uncle U Ba in Kalaw, a town in Burma. An unusually perceptive child, Bo Bo can read people’s emotions in their eyes. This acute sensitivity only makes his unconventional home life more difficult: His father comes to visit him once a year, and he can hardly remember his mother, who, for unclear reasons, keeps herself away from her son. Everything changes when Bo Bo discovers the story of his parents’ great love, which threatens to break down in the whirlwind of political events, and of his mother’s mysterious sickness. Convinced that he can heal her and reunite their family, Bo Bo decides to set out in search of his parents. A gripping, heartwarming tale that takes the reader from Burma to New York and back, The Heart Remembers is a worthy conclusion to Jan-Philipp Sendker’s beloved series.

The Long Path to Wisdom

The Long Path to Wisdom
Author: Jan-Philipp Sendker
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1590519655

From the author of the internationally bestselling The Art of Hearing Heartbeats comes this charming collection of folktales that offer a window into Burma’s fascinating history and culture. Since 1995 Jan-Philipp Sendker has visited Myanmar (Burma) dozens of times, and while doing research for his novels The Art of Hearing Heartbeats and A Well-Tempered Heart, he encountered numerous folktales and fables. These moving stories speak to the rich mythology of the diverse peoples of Burma, the spirituality of humankind, and the profound social impact of Buddhist thought. Some are so strange he couldn’t classify them or identify a familiar moral, while others reminded him of the fairy tales of his childhood, except that here monkeys, tigers, elephants, and crocodiles inhabited the fantastic lands instead of hedgehogs, donkeys, or geese. Their morals resemble those of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen, illustrating how all cultures draw on a universal wisdom to create their myths. The Long Path to Wisdom’s evocative stories run the gamut of human emotions, from the familiar to the shocking, and are sure to delight fans of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats as well as those newly discovering the magic of Sendker’s incandescent writing.

The Language of Solitude

The Language of Solitude
Author: Jan-Philipp Sendker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-05-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1476793670

This translation first published in 2016 by Polygon under the title Dragon games.

Whispering Shadows

Whispering Shadows
Author: Jan-Philipp Sendker
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2016-02-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1476793654

American expat Paul Leibovitz is living as a recluse on an outlying island of Hong Kong when the murder of a distressed American woman's son brings him out of his shell.

Where the Heart Beats

Where the Heart Beats
Author: Kay Larson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2013-07-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0143123475

A “heroic” biography of John Cage and his “awakening through Zen Buddhism”—“a kind of love story” about a brilliant American pioneer of the creative arts who transformed himself and his culture (The New York Times) Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself—and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. “Remarkably researched, exquisitely written,” Where the Heart Beats weaves together “a great many threads of cultural history” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Allan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli were among those influenced by his ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching.’ Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.

How to Be an American Housewife

How to Be an American Housewife
Author: Margaret Dilloway
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-08-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 110118924X

A mother-daughter story about the strong pull of tradition, and the lure and cost of breaking free of it. When Shoko decided to marry an American GI and leave Japan, she had her parents' blessing, her brother's scorn, and a gift from her husband-a book on how to be a proper American housewife. As she crossed the ocean to America, Shoko also brought with her a secret she would need to keep her entire life... Half a century later, Shoko's plans to finally return to Japan and reconcile with her brother are derailed by illness. In her place, she sends her grown American daughter, Sue, a divorced single mother whose own life isn't what she hoped for. As Sue takes in Japan, with all its beauty and contradictions, she discovers another side to her mother and returns to America unexpectedly changed and irrevocably touched.

Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone
Author: Abraham Verghese
Publisher: Random House India
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2012-05-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8184001754

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

What Love Means to You People

What Love Means to You People
Author: Nancy Kay Shapiro
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2007-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429908769

A powerful debut about a young man whose denial of his past nearly destroys the new life he seeks Shaking off his hellish adolescence in a nowhere Nebraska town (and leaving a beloved younger sister to fend for herself in the same hostile environment), Seth McKenna escapes to make a new reality for himself as a struggling artist in Manhattan. When he falls hard for Jim Glaser, an alluring older man who is astonished to find in Seth the second love of his life, it seems simpler to gloss over his old life in Drinkwater and the history he used to have. Jim, who expected to remain alone forever, is happy to start over, too, and theirs becomes a tender, sexy romance. Although Seth seems to have successfully put his past behind him to become the man he wants to be---the kind of man Jim can cherish---his childhood rushes back unexpectedly and with a vengeance. When Seth's sister, Cassie, arrives in the city with significant secrets and plans of her own, Drinkwater's intractable demands force Seth to revisit his hidden past. What Jim learns about Seth's concealments threatens to destroy their new life together. An engrossing contemporary drama of family ties both imposed and chosen, What Love Means to You People presents an indelible, illuminating look at the survival of the human spirit through willful reinvention and the power of love. Advance Praise for What Love Means to You People "A powerful debut novel--smart, sexy, and highly readable. NancyKay Shapiro's characters are subtly observed and movingly human."--Regina McBride, author of The Marriage Bed "Profound and moving. Shapiro dares to reimagine suffering and takes us on a journey to love and back. Seth McKenna will get under your skin. I am touched."--Abha Dawesar, author of Babyji "NancyKay Shapiro's debut is a powerful and knowing look at what can happen to love when the past bubbles up into the present. Elegantly written, this is a moving and surprising novel that doesn't let you go."--Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women, The Music Lesson, and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear