Asian Fantasy Fiction

Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her best friends—one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria’s parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West....

China: AD 1200 Guo Jing and Lotus have escaped Qiu Qianren’s stronghold, but at a steep price: Lotus has been mortally wounded. The only one who could save her life is Duan, King of the South, a man skilled and renowned for his healing. But little do they know that danger awaits, including a plan to tear them apart.

All her life, Zephyr has tried to rise above her humble origins as a no-name orphan. Now, she is a god in a warrior's body, and never has she felt more powerless. The warlordess Xin Ren holds the Westlands, but her position is tenuous. In the north, the empress remains a puppet under Miasma's thumb. In the south, the alliance with Cicada is in pieces.

Once there was a prophecy that a chosen one would rise to defeat the Eternal Khan, an immortal god-king. But the prophecy was wrong. Now Jian, the former chosen hero, is just an ordinary young man trying to find his own way. But he may yet have an extraordinary destiny, because he joins forces with Taishi, his grumpy grandmaster, who instructs him in the ways of her family’s powerful war art. Jian still has a long way to go before he can become her heir, so she recruits a band of elderly grandmasters out of retirement to whip him into shape and help with this one last job.

This novel centers on the "It's me" telephone scam - often targeting the elderly - that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, "Hey, it's me", and goes on to claim in great distress that he's been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away. ME's narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano.

Theo's adventure ended with his mentor's hands around his neck. The betrayal cost him his friends, allies, and everything he had built...but not his life. Though broken and powerless, Theo has one last chance to enter the Nine Worlds, wielding the knowledge and expertise of his first life. This time, he needs more than just power, he needs to unravel the deception that killed him once...and is coming for him again.

Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji in the 11th century to entertain the other women in the court. It follows the romantic exploits of the title character, an emperor’s son, as he navigates life within aristocratic society and eventually outside of it. Praised for its psychological insight into the characters’ motivations, the book greatly influenced Japanese culture and is widely considered the world’s first novel. In 1882, Suematsu Kencho translated a condensed version of the text into English, allowing this classic tale to reach a wider audience.

Long Fang is stranded in a foreign world where proper cultivation has been replaced by annoying blue screens. He is confused and alone...but not for long. Completely ignoring the System, he forms a wholesome sect of followers to spread cultivation across the wild world. Blue screens do not take kindly to rejection, however, and Long Fang’s stubbornness soon finds him pitted against increasingly dangerous foes.

Theo's adventure ended with his mentor's hands around his neck. The betrayal cost him his friends, allies, and everything he had built...but not his life. Though broken and powerless, Theo has one last chance to enter the Nine Worlds, wielding the knowledge and expertise of his first life. This time, he needs more than just power, he needs to unravel the deception that killed him once...and is coming for him again.

It's the end of the 19th century. San Francisco's cobblestone streets are haunted, but Chinatown has an unlikely protector in a young Daoist priestess named Li-lin. Using only her martial arts training, spiritual magic, a sword made from peachwood, and the walking, talking spirit of a human eye, Li-lin stands alone to defend her immigrant community from supernatural threats. But when the body of a young girl is brought to the deadhouse Li-lin oversees for a local group of gangsters, she faces her most bewildering - and potentially dangerous - assignment yet.

Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many things—to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it’s not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says there’s buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family’s life forever. Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead.

Having vanquished demons and halted invasions of devious creatures from the Spirit Realms, Asako Sekken and Agasha no Isao Ryotora are finally going to be married. But when a note from their old ally Sayashi arrives unexpectedly, the samurai find themselves dragged into another supernatural mystery.

Pahua Moua has a bit of a reputation for being a weirdo. A lonely 11-year-old Hmong girl with the unique ability to see spirits, she spends her summer days babysitting her little brother and playing with her best friend, a cat spirit no one else can see. One day Pahua accidentally untethers an angry spirit from the haunted bridge in her neighborhood - whoops. When her brother suddenly falls sick and can't be awoken, Pahua fears that the bridge spirit has stolen his soul.

Life for Cha Ming is a daily grind. A rat race where people don’t make any real decisions. When he asks the universe for something more, fate itself answers his prayer. A talisman brush older than time itself sends him to another world, where magic, fortune, and danger await. Now, the world is at his fingertips. He has a new life, a new body, and can wield the five elements. It’s too bad his new home is a place where might makes right, and immortal cultivators and demons fight at the drop of a hat. But where the divine brush goes, danger follows.

It’s an old, familiar story: a young person hears the voice of an angel saying they have been chosen as a warrior to lead their people to victory in a holy war. But Misery Nomaki (she/they) knows they are a fraud. Raised on a remote moon colony, they don’t believe in any kind of god. Their angel is a delusion, brought on by hereditary space exposure. Yet their survival banks on mastering the holy mech they are supposedly destined for, and convincing the Emperor of the Faithful that they are the real deal.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year AD 12,090, vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world. But what happens when those rules no longer apply?

After all the drama surrounding the invasion of the White Crane Hall, Seiki gave his word to Ippei that he’d join the War Games. So, when he hits level 14 and finally gets eligible for his first troops, Seiki gets ready to face the Demonic Clan and begin his climb up the military ranks. But before he can claim his unit from the Shogun, Seiki has one last promise to fulfill. Together with the whole band, he has to clear Nezumi Temple - aka the rat dungeon - in order to secure a rare armguard for Yamura as a thank you for saving their neck back at the siege.

Based on Japanese literature and foldlore, Kwaidan contains 17 stories. The story of Loichi, the blind biwa player who was called to perform for the dead; of Muso, the journeying priest who encountered a man eating goblin; of the samurai who outwitted the ghost of a dead man. All these plus 14 other spooly tales are included in this collection.

Pawned by her mother to the King of Hell as a child, Lady Jing is half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit, and all sasshole. As the King's ward, she has spent the past ninety years running errands, dodging the taunts of the spiteful hulijing courtiers, and trying to control her explosive temper—with varying levels of success. So when Jing overhears the courtiers plotting to steal a priceless dragon pearl from the King, she seizes her chance to expose them, once and for all.

Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid. But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her.