As a formally trained teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages, I'm always enamored with books written in English by those for whom it is not their first language. The author brings to life the unique cross-cultural heritage of a person who has part of their soul in two separate continents. In addition to learning historical details about Chinese culture, the book has a non-western story arc that makes it feel distinctly different from other works.
When she loses her job and her lover in one fell swoop, art history professor Rose Ming agrees to accompany her mother on an annual visit to relatives in her Chinese hometown of Three Rivers. Once there, Rose learns that she, her mother, aunt, and her cousin, Hong-Mei, have all shared a strange dream prompting them to search for an ancestor nobody seems to remember. With her future uncertain, Rose decides to solve the family mystery, and instead unearths an unutterable tragedy hidden for over a hundred years.Living in the last decades of the Qing dynasty, Peony, Lady Han, has…
I love graphic novels that fully utilize the fact that there is a visual storytelling element, and a written storytelling element. When both of these things are used in tandem, it makes for a really lovely, unique experience that can only be actualized through the comic book medium. Add to that a beautiful sapphic romance with fantasy elements, and I'm instantly hooked. I was rooting for the characters all the way through.
From the author of The Witch Boy trilogy comes a graphic novel about family, romance, and first love.
Fifteen-year-old Morgan has a secret: She can't wait to escape the perfect little island where she lives. She's desperate to finish high school and escape her sad divorced mother, her volatile little brother, and worst of all, her great group of friends...who don't understand Morgan at all. Because really, Morgan's biggest secret is that she has a lot of secrets, including the one about wanting to kiss another girl.
Then one night, Morgan is saved from drowning by a mysterious girl named…
I loved the first half of the book but was challenged by the second half, because it took a turn in tone and became less hijinks/hilarious and far darker/moodier. There were many laugh out loud moments and I was really having a lot of fun with the basic premise, as well as jumping through multiple POVs that were all interconnected. In the end, despite all the comic elements, it asked some really big questions about how humans would realistically cope with a very serious (albeit zany) threat.
One day, suddenly and without explanation, the moon turns into a ball of cheese.
For some, it's an opportunity. For others, it's time to question their life choices. How can the world stay the same in the face of such absurdity and uncertainty?
Astronauts and billionaires, comedians and bank executives, professors and presidents, teenagers and patients at the end of their lives - over the length of a lunar cycle, each gets their moment in the moonlight. To panic, to plan, to wonder and to hope, to laugh and to grieve. All in a story that goes all the places…
A hundred years in the future, in a world where technologically enhanced bodies are valued above organic ones, Complete Life Management (CLM) is selling perfection in the form of the latest and greatest bionic model, the Apogee. As an elite runner and inadvertent spokesperson for the humanism movement, NYPD Detective Naomi Gate has eschewed vanity upgrades. However, if she hopes to survive in New York City’s fierce criminal Underground and find her brother, she can’t show up in her organic cop body. When Jax Raelyn—CLM’s playboy CEO and Naomi’s boyfriend—offers her an unauthorized body transfer, she accepts in order to save the only family she has left.
Plunging into the Underground’s den of illegal body modifications and bionic hit squads, it turns out to be the first of several body transfers. And as the stakes rise, Naomi fears the price for saving her brother may be the thing she values most—her own humanity.
April McCloud [she/her] is a 1% bionic human who worships her cat and hopes to be reincarnated as a red panda. A librarian, educator, and opinionated black belt, she hails from Rochester, NY and enjoys plotting, be it a book, vacation, or a heist at a GF bakery. She identifies as disabled, LGBTQIA+, neurospicy, and as a struggling practitioner of Zen Buddhism.
