She was a perfect baby, and she had a perfect name. Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum loved her name—until she started school. A terrific read-aloud for the classroom and libraries!

For fans of Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a deeply moving novel that follows two Korean sisters separated by World War II. Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home. South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness? Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.

Muna has never known his father -- a samurai, a noble warrior. But Muna's mother has told Muna how he will know him one day: by the sign of the chrysanthemum. When his mother dies, Muna travels to the capital of twelfth-century Japan, a bewildering city on the verge of revolution. He finds a haven there, as servant to the great swordsmith, Fukuji. But Muna cannot forget his dream: He must find his father. Only then will he have power and a name to be reckoned with. Only then will he become a man.

This collection of Japanese short stories reveals a rapidly changing Japanese society and the deep draw of its traditional culture. The first half of this century saw the coming of age of the Japanese short story. Influenced by Western literary techniques, such innovative writers as Shiga Naoya, Ozaki Shiro, Yasunari Kawabata, Shimaki Kensaku, Hayashi Fumiko, Dazai Osamu, and (somewhat later) Kobo Abe reassessed the Japanese story tradition and brought new vigor to the uniquely Japanese sense of the detail and natural context of everyday life. The works of these writers stand at the center of modern Japan's literary development. Despite their differences, it is the simplicity and purity of their natural images-sultry late-summer days, cicadas, lizards, and the sounds of life's routines-that more than anything anchor the emotions and perceptions of their stories. For A Late Chrysanthemum, translator and editor Lane Dunlop has selected twenty-one stories by these seven intriguing and influential authors to convey the depth and range of the modern Japanese story, a discriminating selection which, in Dunlop's sure and masterful English renderings, won this book the Japan-United States Friendship Award for Literary Translation.

In One Chrysanthemum, it is 1964 and Misako Imai is a young Tokyo housewife with a secret. When she was a child living in her grandfather’s dark, wartime Buddhist temple in the northern prefecture of Niigata, she became aware of a special sensitivity that allowed her to see visions of things that were currently happening—but in another place—or that had happened in the past. Now, after five years of marriage and no children, Misako is living the life of a full-time maid to her husband’s widowed mother, who blames her for not producing a son to carry on the family name. One evening, she has the very clear vision of her husband making love to another woman and realizes that he has taken a mistress. Her marital problems unresolved, Misako is summoned by her grandfather to Niigata when his temple receives the ashes of a young girl’s bones that were found in a nearby garden pond. The old priest remembers his granddaughter playing in that garden as a child and telling him that she saw a girl fall into the pond. At that time there had been no evidence the sighting was anything more than the child’s over-active imagination. But, after meeting a most unusual Zen priest who tells him about something called clairvoyance, he realizes that his own granddaughter may have had such a gift when she was a child. The old priest becomes obsessed with the possible connection between the bones found in the pond and Misako’s childhood vision. Feeling that he can give into a bit of fool-hardiness in his old age, he plans an unorthodox memorial service in the garden where the bones were found and arranges for both the Zen priest and his granddaughter to attend. What he does not realize is that the combination of the two priests’ limited knowledge and his granddaughter’s powerful sensitivity would be a dangerous combination bound to end in disaster.

Sheila Rae, the Brave is a warm, humorous, and loving story of sibling sympathy and support. Just because Sheila Rae is older, she doesn't always know better! This classic picture book about overcoming fear is written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes, the nationally bestselling and celebrated creator of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Owen, and Kitten's First Full Moon. "I am very brave," Sheila Rae said, patting herself on the back. She wasn't afraid of anything—not thunder, not lightning, not the big black dog at the end of the block. And when she wanted to walk home a new way and Louise wouldn't, she called her sister a scaredy-cat and set out alone. But all the bravado in the world failed to help when Sheila Rae found herself lost. Luckily, her sister was not far behind. "Children will love it."—School Library Journal

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat. On one level, this is a book about identity, masquerade and disguise--about “the false mustache of the world”--but neither the mists of Laos nor the smog of Bangkok, neither the overcast of Seattle nor the fog of San Francisco, neither the murk of the intelligence community nor the mummery of the circus can obscure the linguistic phosphor that illuminates the pages of Villa Incognito. A female fan once wrote to Tom Robbins: “Your books make me think, they make me laugh, they make me horny and they make me aware of the wonder of everything in life.” Villa Incognito will surely arouse a similar response in many readers, for in its lusty, amusing way it both celebrates existence and challenges our ideas about it. To say much more about a novel as fresh and surprising as Villa Incognito would run the risk of diluting the sheer fun of reading it. As his dedicated readers worldwide know full well, it’s best to climb aboard the Tom Robbins tilt-a-whirl, kiss preconceptions and sacred cows goodbye and simply enjoy the ride.