May 6, 2025 – May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Here is a collection of recently published books, from cozy mysteries to introspective memoirs, that tell stories by and about the many diverse cultures that are part of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.
Browse the list below, and put titles on hold in our catalog by clicking on their covers.
Fiction
"Banyan Moon" by Thao Thai (2023)
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste – but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.
Back in Florida, Huơng is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Huơng learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann’s childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who’s always held them together.
Running parallel to this is Minh’s story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life for her children. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House’s attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life – and beyond.
"Guilt and Ginataan" by Mia P Manansala (2024)
Autumn is in full swing for the town of Shady Palms – the perfect time for warm drinks, cozy cardigans, and …dead bodies? The annual Shady Palms Corn Festival is one of the town’s biggest moneymakers, drawing crowds from all over the Midwest looking to partake in delicious treats, local crafts, and of course, the second largest corn maze in Illinois.
Lila Macapagal and her Brew-ha Cafe crew, Adeena Awan and Elena Torres, are all too happy to participate in the event and even make a little wager on who can make it through the corn maze the fastest – but their fun is suddenly cut short when a dead body is found in the middle of the maze … and an unconscious Adeena lies next to it, clutching a bloody knife. The body is discovered to be a local politician’s wife, and all signs – murder weapon included – point to Adeena as the culprit. But Lila knows her best friend couldn’t have done this, so she and her crew put on their sleuthing caps yet again to find the killer who framed Adeena and show them what happens when they mess with a Brew-ha.
"Keya Das's Second Act" by Sopan Deb (2022)
Shantanu Das is living in the shadows of his past. In his 60s, he finds himself iced out of his traditional Bengali community after an uncouth divorce from his wife, Chaitali; he hasn't spoken to his eldest daughter Mitali in months; and most painfully, he lives each day with the regret that the Dases couldn't accept their youngest daughter Keya after coming out as gay. As the anniversary of Keya's death approaches, Shantanu wakes up one morning utterly alone in his suburban New Jersey home and realizes it's finally time to sell the place. That's when he discovers a tucked away box in his attic that could change everything.
When Mitali Das gets a call from her estranged father asking her to come back to New Jersey and help him pack up the house, she does so out of pity. But then father and daughter find the manuscript of an unfinished play Keya and her girlfriend had been writing. It's a wild idea, but Shantanu has nothing left to lose: what if they were to stage the play? It could be an homage to Keya's memory, and a way to make amends. But first he'll need to convince Keya's girlfriend, Pamela, to give her blessing.
Soon Shantanu has assembled a host of unlikely helpers – Kalpana, his traditional Bengali mother; Catherine, his dry witted girlfriend; his ex-wife Chaitali and her new husband, Jahar; and Neesh, Mitali's boyfriend who, with surprising revelations from his past, binds them all together. Set in the vibrant world of the Bengali New Jersey suburbs, Keya Das's Second Act is a warmly drawn homage to family, creativity, and second chances.
"Seeking Fortune Elsewhere" by Sindya Bhanoo (2022)
Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart.
In “Malliga Homes,” a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.
Sindya Bhanoo’s haunting stories show us how immigrants’ paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise.
"The Emperor of Gladness" by Ocean Vuong (2025)
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, "The Emperor of Gladness" shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul.
"The Fervor" by Alma Katsu (2022)
1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.
Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.
Nonfiction
"A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial" by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2023)
At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuot and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José.
But there is violence hidden behind the sunny facade of what he calls AMERICA TM. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Moi, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as "Apocalypse Now" throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed?
When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.
"Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family" by OiYan Poon (2024)
Before being struck down by the US Supreme Court in June 2023, affirmative action remained one of the few remaining policy tools to address racial inequalities, revealing peculiar contours of racism and anti-racist strategies in America. Through personal reflective essays for and about her daughter, OiYan Poon looks at how the debate over affirmative action reveals the divergent ways Asian Americans conceive of their identity. With moving sincerity and insightful study, Poon combines extensive research with personal narratives from both herself and a diverse swath of individuals across the Asian American community to reflect on and respond to her daughter’s central question: What does it mean to be Asian American?
Poon conducts interviews with Asian Americans throughout the US who have been actively engaged in policy debates over race-conscious admissions or affirmative action. Through these exchanges, she finds that Asian American identity remains deeply unsettled in a contest between those invested in reaching the top of the racial hierarchy alongside whiteness and those working toward a vision of justice and humanity co-constructed through cross-racial solidarity.
Poon uses these contrasting viewpoints to guide her conversations with her daughter, providing a heartfelt and optimistic look at how understanding the diversity and nuances of the Asian American experience can help us envision a more equitable future.
"Local: A Memoir" by Jessica Machado (2023)
Born and raised in Hawai‘i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with what it means to be “local.” Feeling separate from the history and tenets of Hawaiian culture that have been buried under the continental imports of malls and MTV, Jessica often sees her homeland reflected back to her from the tourist perspective – as an uncomplicated paradise.
Her existence, however, feels far from that ideal. Balancing her parents’ divorce, an ailing mother, and growing anxiety, Jessica rebels. She moves to Los Angeles, convinced she’ll leave her complicated family behind and define herself. Instead, her isolation only becomes more severe, and her dying mother follows her to California. For Jessica, the only way to escape is a reckless downward spiral.
Interwoven with a rich and nuanced exploration of Hawaiian history and traditions, "Local" is a personal and moving narrative about family, grief, and reconnecting to the land she tried to leave behind.
"Stay True: A Memoir" by Hua Hsu (2022)
In the eyes of 18-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken – with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity – is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, a first-generation Taiwanese American who has a 'zine and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to.
The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become best friends, a friendship built of late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life.
And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet. Determined to hold on to all that was left of his best friend – his memories – Hua turned to writing. "Stay True" is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, "Stay True" is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.