Portraits In White by Kaori Lai

About the book: After the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang imposed authoritarian rule on Taiwan in the name of anticommunism. 

The White Terror, as martial law and state repression were known, would last for decades, casting a pall of uncertainty and fear over Taiwanese society - and its legacies still haunt Taiwan today. 

The book is composed of three novellas, each telling the story of an ordinary person. Mr Ch’ing-chih, a schoolteacher, keeps his head down and avoids harming others despite pressure to do intelligence work. Ms Wen-hui, an old woman who had served as a housekeeper for elites of different backgrounds since the Japanese occupation, faces death alone in the digital age. Ms Casey, discriminated against for not being of mainlander descent, moves to Europe and must navigate the politics of diaspora. 

Even if only alluded to obliquely, the White Terror always hovers in the background, shaping the characters’ experiences and inner worlds. 

Elegantly written and keenly observed, Kaori Lai's Portraits in White provides a panoramic view of the ways authoritarianism seeps into daily life and explores everyday life under the White Terror, illuminating how the violence of martial law pervades even the most mundane moments.

Portraits in White is translated from the Mandarin by Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt.

About the author: Kaori Lai is an acclaimed Taiwanese writer, now based in Berlin, who has received numerous honours including the Taiwan Literature Award and the Taipei International Book Exhibition Prize. Her previous works include the novel Afterwards, the short story collection Island, and essays on Taiwanese history and culture.

About the translators: Sylvia Li-chun Lin is a former professor at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film (Columbia, 2007).

Howard Goldblatt is the translator of more than sixty works in Chinese, including the novels of Nobel laureate Mo Yan, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Lin and Goldblatt have collaboratively translated nearly two dozen books by writers from China and Taiwan, including Notes of a Desolate Man by Chu T’ien-wen (Columbia, 1999).

Rating: 5/5

Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

About the book: Homeseeking is an epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years (from WWII to 2008) as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen, it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighbourhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking (2025) follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.

Homecoming is a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, a Book of the Month December Pick, a Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick, a Roxane Gay Book Club Pick, an Amazon Editor's Pick and an Apple Books Best of the Month. It is recommended by New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburg Post-Gazette, People, Vogue, Oprah Daily, Harper's Bazaar, Today.com, LA Times, Book Riot, LitHub, Bookbub, Debutiful, Kirkus Reviews, Readers Digest, Goodreads, Bookshop, Electric Lit, theSkimm, Chicago Review of Books and more.

About the author: Karissa Chen is a Fulbright fellow, Kundiman Fiction fellow, and a VONA/Voices fellow whose fiction and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Eater, The Cut, NBC News THINK!, Longreads, PEN America, Catapult, Gulf Coast, and Guernica, among others. She was awarded an artist fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as well as multiple writing residencies including at Millay Arts, where she was a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. She was formerly a senior fiction editor at The Rumpus and currently serves as the editor-in-chief at Hyphen magazine. She received an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and splits her time between New Jersey and Taipei, Taiwan.

Rating: 5/5

How Can My Manager Be So Stupid by Kazumasa Hayami

About the book: Kyoko Tanihara still loves books. Just about.

But life at the Musashino Bookstore is starting to get her down. Instead of promoting her favourite stories, she finds herself distracted, tearing her hair out at the mere sight of her infuriating manager, who cannot seem to do anything but get in her way of success.

From his obsession with self-help books to his "inspirational" speeches at staff meetings, everything about Takeru Yamamoto seems designed to set her teeth on edge. As the store lurches from crisis to crisis, facing criticism from customers and authors alike, only the prospect of changing a life by handing over the perfect book keeps her going.

Until one day she is handed a book that speaks to all her frustrations, and opens her eyes to an alarming possibility. What if there's actually more to Yamamoto's obnoxious antics than meets the eye? What if, just maybe, her manager is not so stupid after all?

How Can My Manager Be So Stupid (2026) is the perfect read for anyone who has felt that they cannot even . . . with the idiots that walk among us.

How Can My Manager Be So Stupid is translated from the Japanese by Haydn Trowell.

About the author: Kazumasa Hayami is a writer and screenwriter, born in 1977 in Kanagawa Prefecture. His debut novel, 108, was a bestseller and later made into a manga and a film. He won the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award for his novel Innocent Days, and the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize for The Royal Family. His novels are almost all adapted for screen.

About the translator: Haydn Trowell is an Australian translator of Japanese literature whose work has appeared in Granta, Electric Literature, and Words Without Borders. He has translated fiction by major prize-winning authors such as Yasunari Kawabata, Maki Kashimada, and Rie Qudan, and he has worked extensively with publishers in Australia, Japan, the UK, and the US. Haydn holds a PhD in translation studies from Monash University and has a background in both translation and creative writing.

Rating: 5/5

St Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of the Message (Volume 2) by Joanne Mosley

About the book: Among the Church's many saints and blesseds, Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) is one of the most attractive and encouraging for our times. 

Author of the classic prayer, "O my God, Trinity whom I adore', she was a shining example of these words which she wrote at the age of twenty: 'even in the midst of the world one can listen to Him in the silence of a heart that wants to belong only to Him!"

Elizabeth was known for her sparkling vitality, her vibrant social life, her skill at the piano, and especially her love of prayer. She had many close friends, but the passion of her life was Jesus and it was this love that led her to the Carmel of Dijon where, after many trials but also profound joys, she died at the age of only twenty-six: a witness to the Trinity dwelling within each of us, and to God's call for us to be with him at every moment - both now and in eternity.

Here, in the first volume of this informative, engaging and inspiring book, we are introduced to the very human face of Elizabeth in the world and in the cloister as she listened to God's word in silence and in Scripture, and penetrated ever more deeply into the mystery of God.

Joanne Mosley's extensive biography, Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of Her Message, offers a detailed examination of the life and spiritual teachings of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun whose insights into the divine presence within each individual are presented as a significant development in Christian spirituality. Through two volumes rich in historical context and personal anecdotes, Mosley not only narrates Elizabeth's life experiences, including her early struggles and eventual sanctification, but also highlights the efforts to promote her posthumous legacy. 

St Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of the Message (Volume 2 - In the Infirmary & After her Death) was published in 2012. 

About the author: Dr Joanne Mosley is an editor, writer, retreat leader, and speaker who specializes in Carmelite spirituality. She is assistant editor of Mount Carmel, the spiritual review published by the Teresian Carmelites and frequently lectures and leads sessions on Carmelite mystics and saints for organizations like the Carmelite Friars in Britain. She is also the author of Edith Stein: Woman of Prayer (2004). 

St Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of the Message (Volume 1) by Joanne Mosley

About the book: Among the Church's many saints and blesseds, Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) is one of the most attractive and encouraging for our times. 

Author of the classic prayer, "O my God, Trinity whom I adore', she was a shining example of these words which she wrote at the age of twenty: 'even in the midst of the world one can listen to Him in the silence of a heart that wants to belong only to Him!"

Elizabeth was known for her sparkling vitality, her vibrant social life, her skill at the piano, and especially her love of prayer. She had many close friends, but the passion of her life was Jesus and it was this love that led her to the Carmel of Dijon where, after many trials but also profound joys, she died at the age of only twenty-six: a witness to the Trinity dwelling within each of us, and to God's call for us to be with him at every moment - both now and in eternity.

Here, in the first volume of this informative, engaging and inspiring book, we are introduced to the very human face of Elizabeth in the world and in the cloister as she listened to God's word in silence and in Scripture, and penetrated ever more deeply into the mystery of God.

Joanne Mosley's extensive biography, Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of Her Message, offers a detailed examination of the life and spiritual teachings of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun whose insights into the divine presence within each individual are presented as a significant development in Christian spirituality. Through two volumes rich in historical context and personal anecdotes, Mosley not only narrates Elizabeth's life experiences, including her early struggles and eventual sanctification, but also highlights the efforts to promote her posthumous legacy. 

St Elizabeth of the Trinity: The Unfolding of the Message (Volume 1 - In the World & In Community) was first published in 2012 and reprinted in 2016. 

About the author: Dr Joanne Mosley is an editor, writer, retreat leader, and speaker who specializes in Carmelite spirituality. She is assistant editor of Mount Carmel, the spiritual review published by the Teresian Carmelites and frequently lectures and leads sessions on Carmelite mystics and saints for organizations like the Carmelite Friars in Britain. She is also the author of Edith Stein: Woman of Prayer (2004). 

The Seven Mansions Of The Soul by Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582)

Fair Son, Set Thine Heart To Love GOD

Photo credit: Humble Flow on X.com

Saint Louis (1214-1270)

Photo credit: Memento Mori on X.com

The Woman Who Lived 60 Years On The Eucharist by Virtus et Veritas

About the booklet: Can faith suspend the laws of biology? 

Discover the fascinating story of Floripes Dornelas de Jesús, known as Lola, who defied science by living for six decades without consuming food or water, sustained solely by the Sacred Host.

In this book, science and theology come together to investigate one of Brazil's greatest mystical phenomena. 

Through medical reports and the insights of the great saints of the Church, delve into the enigma of a life that became a living miracle. 

An essential read for those who seek to strengthen their faith and understand the true power of the Eucharist.

Floripes Dornellas de Jesús (1913-1999) was a Brazilian Roman Catholic mystic. She is now a Servant of God after the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued the nihil obstat ("nothing against") in November 2005. Her home, known as Recanto Sítio de Lola in Rio Pomba, is a place of pilgrimage, welcoming the faithful from across Brazil on the first Friday and third Sunday of every month for Masses and prayer. The room where Lola lived for over 60 years remains preserved and can be viewed through a glass partition.

The Woman Who Lived 60 Years on the Eucharist was independently published on 3 January 2026.

The French Illusion by John Grisham

About the book: Bestselling author John Grisham delivers a new gripping, suspenseful page-turner about a Paris honeymoon gone horribly wrong - and the nightmare that follows.

Paul and Chelsea Tanner are riding a euphoric high after their fairytale wedding. But when they fly to Paris for their honeymoon, they are very quickly brought back down to earth. While on a day trip to the idyllic French countryside, they are suddenly and brutally kidnapped. Both of their families are in shock: who would target them - and why?

It quickly becomes clear that this is not the first crime of its kind. The search for answers soon stretches across borders, with the FBI, CIA and French intelligence working together to solve the puzzle. Struggling to find answers, a young lawyer is recruited to be the bait in an elaborate CIA operation.

Propulsive and surprising, The French Illusion is an unmistakable Grisham thrill ride - gripping and impossible to put down.

The French Illusion will be on sale on 29 September 2026.

About the author: John Grisham is the author of more than fifty consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include The Widow, Framed, and Camino Ghosts. Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honoured with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. When he is not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system. John lives on a farm in central Virginia.

Rating: 5/5

Wife Of The Chef by Courtney Febbroriello

About the book: Wife of the Chef: The True Story of a Restaurant and a Romance is at once a no-holds-barred memoir of restaurant life and a revealing look at married life. 

For Courtney Febbroriello, the two are intertwined. She and her husband own an American bistro in Connecticut. He is the chef, so naturally he gets all the credit. She has the role of keeping things running, but she is the wife, so she remains anonymous or invisible or both.

Febbroriello comes front and center here, detailing the everyday challenges she faces - taking over dish-washing duty, bailing waiters out of jail, untangling the immigration laws, cajoling lazy suppliers, handling unreasonable customers, and a host of other emergency duties. 

She pokes fun at people who take food and wine - and the chef - too seriously, with witty comments on everything from "chef envy" to the much-ballyhooed James Beard Awards.

Spiced with a healthy spoonful of feminism and enriched with a cup of humour, Wife of the Chef: The True Story of a Restaurant and a Romance (2010) is the tastiest "dish" of the season.

About the author: Courtney Febbroriello and her husband, Christopher Prosperi, opened Metro Bis in Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1998. This is her first book.

More Things In Heaven And Earth (A Novel of Watervalley) by Jeff High

About the book: Tucked away in the rolling Tennessee countryside is the charming community of Watervalley, whose inhabitants are quirky and captivating and more surprising than you might expect…

As an ambitious young doctor with a penchant for research, Luke Bradford never wanted to set up practice in a remote rural town. But to pay back his student loans and to fulfill a promise from his past, he heads for Watervalley, Tennessee - and immediately stumbles into one disaster after another.  Will he be labeled the town idiot before he is even introduced as the new doctor? 

Very quickly he faces some big challenges - from resuscitating a three-hundred-pound farmer who goes into cardiac arrest to not getting shot by a local misanthrope for trespassing. He expects the people of Watervalley to be simple, but finds his relationships with them are complicated, whether he is interacting with his bossy but devout housekeeper, the attractive schoolteacher he consistently alienates, or the mysterious kid next door who climbs trees while wearing a bike helmet. 

When a baffling flu epidemic hits Watervalley, Luke faces his ultimate test. Whether the community embraces him or not, it is his responsibility to save them. And he will soon discover that while living in a small town may not be what he wants, it may be just what he needs…

For stories, recipes, and anecdotes from your favourite Watervalley characters, visit watervalleybooks.com.

About the author: After growing up on a farm in rural Tennessee, Jeff High attained degrees in literature and nursing. He is the three-time winner, in fiction and poetry, of an annual writing contest held by Vanderbilt Medical Center. He lived in Nashville for many years, and throughout the country as a travel nurse, before returning to his original hometown, near where he now works as an operating room RN in open-heart surgery. He is the author of the first Watervalley Novel, More Things In Heaven and Earth (2013). The other books in the Watervalley novels are Each Shining Hour (2014); The Splendor of Ordinary Days (2015) and The Fullness Of Time (2019).

Rating: 5/5

A Panoramic View Of Holy Scripture (Volume 2) by Augoustinos N Kantiōtēs, Bishop of Phlorina, Greece

About the book: A Panoramic View of Holy Scripture, Volume 2: Orthodox Homilies Introducing All the Books of the Old Testament (2001) is a special commentary on and summary of the 27 books of the New Testament, written by the preeminent clergyman and preacher of the Orthodox Church, Bishop Augustinos Kantiotes of Phlorina, Greece. 

This preacher and teacher par excellence in his long ministry in the Church has never failed to teach and expound Holy Scripture, recognizing the fact that God's Word will not return back again to God, void and without any effect. 

His marvellous knowledge, his unshakeable faith, and his appreciation of the laws of pedagogy have made him a giant among the Church's homilists. 

The present homilies are practical, inspirational, filled with instructions, and rightly helps the readers in their everyday lives. 

The author hopes that readers, after reading each homily, will then read the relevant text in the Holy Bible thoughtfully and prayerfully. The whole Bible for him is a single revelation with beginning, middle, and end. Christ is the center of the axis, around which all of Holy Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments, turns. Angels, patriarchs, kings, prophets, and all the saved speak about the Lord Jesus Christ. The author is sure that Holy Scripture, as the Orthodox Church interprets it, is a unique guide for the solution of all the problems that confront humanity today and the only way for man to find salvation.

The present edition (2019) of A Panoramic View of Holy Scripture, in two volumes, will be enjoyed by all Christians and in particular priests, preachers, Sunday School teachers, and Bible class students of the English-speaking Orthodox Church.

A Panoramic View of Holy Scripture is translated from the Greek by Asterios Gerostergios from the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Inc.

About the author: His Eminence Metropolitan Augustinos Kantiotes (Greek: Αυγουστίνος Καντιώτης)(1907-2010) was bishop of the Holy Metropolis of Florina, Prespai, and Eordaia in northern Greece, renowned as a defender of traditional Orthodoxy both in Greece and abroad, and a prolific writer of spiritual literature, publishing 82 books, several of which have appeared in English and in other languages.

A Panoramic View Of Holy Scripture (Volume 1) by Augoustinos N Kantiōtēs, Bishop of Phlorina, Greece

About the book: A Panoramic View of Holy Scripture, Volume 1: Orthodox Homilies Introducing All the Books of the Old Testament (2001) is a special commentary on and summary on the first 49 books of the Old Testament (the historical, instructive and prophetic ones), written by the preeminent clergyman and preacher of the Orthodox Church, Bishop Augustinos Kantiotes of Phlorina, Greece. 

This preacher and teacher par excellence in his long ministry in the Church has never failed to teach and expound Holy Scripture, recognizing the fact that God's Word will not return back again to God, void and without any effect. 

His marvellous knowledge, his unshakeable faith, and his appreciation of the laws of pedagogy have made him a giant among the Church's homilists. 

The present homilies are practical, inspirational, filled with instructions, and rightly helps the readers in their everyday lives. 

The author hopes that readers, after reading each homily, will then read the relevant text in the Holy Bible thoughtfully and prayerfully. The whole Bible for him is a single revelation with beginning, middle, and end. Christ is the center of the axis, around which all of Holy Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments, turns. Angels, patriarchs, kings, prophets, and all the saved speak about the Lord Jesus Christ. The author is sure that Holy Scripture, as the Orthodox Church interprets it, is a unique guide for the solution of all the problems that confront humanity today and the only way for man to find salvation.

The present edition (2019) of A Panoramic View of Holy Scripture, in two volumes, will be enjoyed by all Christians and in particular priests, preachers, Sunday School teachers, and Bible class students of the English-speaking Orthodox Church.

A Panoramic View of Holy Scripture is translated from the Greek by Asterios Gerostergios from the Institute of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Inc.

About the author: His Eminence Metropolitan Augustinos Kantiotes (Greek: Αυγουστίνος Καντιώτης)(1907-2010) was bishop of the Holy Metropolis of Florina, Prespai, and Eordaia in northern Greece, renowned as a defender of traditional Orthodoxy both in Greece and abroad, and a prolific writer of spiritual literature, publishing 82 books, several of which have appeared in English and in other languages.