Contemporary Asian American

Raised in the United States, Tom learns of his Japanese mother only at age 20. He is troubled and goes to Japan to search for his Japanese soul. He finds love in Kyoto's Gion, but the ruthless industrialist who claims the young maiko as his protégé feels dishonored and declares that only their deaths will satisfy him.

Daring yet aimless, smart but slightly strange, Cake Time's young female protagonist keeps making slippery choices, sliding into the dangerous space where curiosity melds with fear and desires turn into dirty messes. In "How Not to Have an Abortion" the teenage narrator looks for a ride from the clinic between her AP exams. In "Easy Target", the now-college-grad agrees to go to a swingers party with a handsome stranger. A decade later, in "Glow" she is suddenly confronted by the disturbing and thrilling fact of her lover's secret daughter.

Sarah Soon may have recovered from cancer - in body - but her brush with mortality has left the usually confident OB/GYN shaken about her future and herself. When she unexpectedly runs into Jake Li, her brother's annoying high school BFF who betrayed her trust, he's the last person she wants to see. She doesn't need the now-disturbingly hot social worker hanging around while she sorts herself out, yet suddenly he's inescapable.

Kelly Hopkins is ready to break away, from her small apartment, loneliness, and most important, her past. Struggling to cope with her parents’ double murder five years prior, she’s finally ready to leave her reality-TV-show-addicted grandmother and the tense reality of being half-white in Koreatown. Receiving a scholarship from Columbia University, it is time to achieve her dreams of becoming a successful lawyer. Nothing can break her steadfast focus - that is, until she meets Ian.

"Where are you from . . . ? No—where are you from from?" It's a question every Asian American gets asked as part of an incessant chorus saying you'll never belong here, you're a perpetual foreigner, you'll always be seen as an alien, an object, or a threat. Monica Youn's From From brilliantly evokes the conflicted consciousness of deracination. If you have no core of "authenticity," no experience of your so-called homeland, how do you piece together an Asian American identity out of Westerners' ideas about Asians? Your sense of yourself is part stereotype, part aspiration, part guilt.

At 26, Hope has only ever slept with one man, and at her boss's unsolicited advice, Hope plans to forget the abuse and degradation she suffered at her ex's hand by seducing and bedding the next man she meets. Only after Hope finds a promise of death at her doorstep, her plans are derailed, and her only chance at staying alive rests on the dedication of her new bodyguard and her own sheer will to live the life she deserves.

Jessica Song is tired of being a good girl, staying in a relationship well past closing time. Fresh from a breakup, she takes a walk on the wild side as a sports events intern. Baseball rookie Jay Pak Ahn has been burned one too many times by good girls, especially his cheating ex-fiancée. When he meets wild Jessica, he throws away all caution to enjoy her to the fullest.

I have a secret. I kind of faked my perfect SAT score to get a full scholarship at Middleson University. It worked, but now I have one major problem - Rick, a wealthy jerk who looks like Zac Efron, and who's blackmailing me with my lie. What does the jerk want in exchange for his silence?