Summer Reading

Banana Yoshimoto's novels have made her a sensation in Japan and all over the world, and Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine of Kitchen, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, she is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who was once his father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale that recalls early Marguerite Duras. Kitchen and its companion story, "Moonlight Shadow," are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

In these essays, the acclaimed artist, photographer, writer, and filmmaker Moyra Davey often begins with a daily encounter – with a photograph, a memory, or a passage from a book – and links that subject to others, drawing fascinating and unlikely connections, until you can almost feel the texture of her thinking. While thinking and writing, she weaves together disparate writers and artists – Mary Wollstonecraft, Jean Genet, Virginia Woolf, Janet Malcolm, Chantal Akerman and Roland Barthes, among many others – in a way that is both elliptical and direct, clearheaded and personal, prismatic and self-examining, layering narratives to reveal the thorny but nourishing relationship between art and life.

Counterfeit

by Kirstin Chen

"At face value, Kirstin Chen’s new novel, “Counterfeit,” is easy to sum up: Ava Wong, a strait-laced Chinese American lawyer, reconnects with her enigmatic college roommate, Winnie, and becomes entangled in a scheme that involves importing counterfeit luxury handbags. When trouble arises, Winnie disappears, leaving Ava to deal with the consequences. Seemingly, what you see is what you get — a con artist story, a pop-feminist caper, a fashionable romp. Fun! Pass the popcorn. Except nothing in this novel is what it seems." – Camille Perri, New York Times Book Review.

Beautiful World, Where Are You

by Sally Rooney

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world? 

Green Fire

by Francis Mallmann

In Green Fire, explore the flavourful potential of cooking vegetables—caramelized, charred, smoked, and always delicious—using chef Francis Mallmann’s acclaimed live-fire cooking method. Divided seasonally, each of the more than 80 vegetarian dishes will become your main meal and not the side. Enjoy also Mallmann’s impressive seasonings, sauces, and finishings with Argentine influences. Spring artichoke and fava salad, salt-baked beets with lemon confit, and cabbage steaks with a mustard fennel crust are just a few of the stars. And desserts and cocktails are included, too.

This stunning guide to edible flowers–conceived by Monica Nelson, the founding creative and photo director of the influential journal Wilder Quarterly, and Adrianna Glaviano, a noted food and lifestyle photographer–is packed with information and features lush original photography.