Naomi Hirahara

Set in 1944 Chicago, twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. On the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Aki's older sister Rose is killed by a subway train. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide. Aki's instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. Author of "Hiroshima Boy." Print run 75,000.

Clark and Division

During the L.A.'s Chinese New Year Parade, rookie bike cop Ellie Rush's day turns dangerous when a murder investigation falls into her lap. Original. 45,000 first printing.

Murder on Bamboo Lane

Set in modern L.A., this novel of moral and spiritual reckoning finds a Japanese American who survived the horrors of Hiroshima forced to relive the nightmare when a stranger show up looking for him. Original.

Summer of the Big Bachi

After Leilani Santiago discovers a young pro surfer dead in her family's shave ice shack on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, she must work to exonerate the No. 1 murder suspect, her estranged father, the star surfer's coach.

A Leilani Santiago Hawai'i Mystery

Iced in Paradise

LA gardener Mas Arai returns to Hiroshima to bring his best friend’s ashes to a relative on the tiny offshore island of Ino, only to become embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy who was about the same age Mas was when he survived the atomic bomb in 1945. The boy’s death affects the elderly, often-curmudgeonly, always-reluctant sleuth, who cannot return home to Los Angeles until he finds a way to see justice served. Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar-winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series, including Summer of the Big Bachi, Blood Hina, Strawberry Yellow, and Sayonara Slam. She is also the author of the LA-based Ellie Rush mysteries, published by Penguin. Her Mas Arai books have earned such honors as Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year and one of the Chicago Tribune’s Ten Best Mysteries and Thrillers. The Stanford University alumna was born and raised in Altadena, CA, where her protagonist lives; she now resides in neighboring Pasadena.

Hiroshima Boy

Japan faces Korea in the World Baseball Classic at Dodger Stadium, and curmudgeonly gardener Mas Arai finds himself embroiled in a murder. A Japanese tabloid writer drops dead on the field, and Mas gave the victim his last drink. It turns out there's more at stake than a baseball championship—international diplomacy depends upon uncovering secrets buried decades ago. Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar Award–winning and Anthony and Macavity Award–nominated author of the Mas Arai mystery series, including Strawberry Yellow, Blood Hina, and Snakeskin Shamisen. She is also the author of the new series of Los Angeles-based Ellie Rush mysteries, published by Penguin.

Sayonara Slam

From Summer of the Big Bachi to Gasa-Gasa Girl, Naomi Hirahara’s acclaimed novels have featured one of mystery fiction’s most unique heroes: Mas Arai, a curmudgeonly L.A. gardener, Hiroshima survivor, and inveterate gambler. Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly raised when the winner, a friend of Mas’s pal G. I. Hasuike, is found stabbed to death just days later. The last thing Mas wants to do is stick his nose in someone else’s business, but at G.I.’s prodding he reluctantly agrees to follow the trail of a battered snakeskin shamisen (a traditional Okinawan musical instrument) left at the scene of the crime…and suddenly finds himself caught up in a dark mystery that reaches from the islands of Okinawa to the streets of L.A.–a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder.

Snakeskin Shamisen

From the time she was a child, Mas Arai’s daughter, Mari, was completely gasa-gasa–never sitting still, always on the go, getting into everything. And Mas, busy tending lawns, gambling, and struggling to put his Hiroshima past behind him, never had much time for the family he was trying to support. For years now, his resentful daughter has lived a continent away in New York City, and had a life he knew little about. But an anxious phone call from Mari asking for his help plunges the usually obstinate Mas into a series of startling situations from maneuvering in an unfamiliar city to making nice with his tall, blond son-in-law, Lloyd, to taking care of a sickly child…to finding a dead body in the rubble of a former koi pond. The victim was Kazzy Ouchi, a half-Japanese millionaire who also happened to be Mari and Lloyd’s boss. Stumbling onto the scene, Mas sees more amiss than the detectives do, but his instinct is to keep his mouth shut. Only when the case threatens his daughter and her family does Mas take action: patiently, stubbornly tugging at the end of a tangled, dangerous mystery. And as he does, he begins to lay bare a tragic secret on the dark side of an American dream.… Both a riveting mystery and a powerful story of passionate relationships across a cultural divide, Gasa-Gasa Girl is a tale told with heart and wisdom: an unforgettable portrait of fathers, daughters, and other strangers.

Gasa-Gasa Girl

Evergreen

1944, sur la côte californienne, Aki Ito, 20 ans, et ses parents viennent d'être libérés du camp de Manzanar, où ils étaient détenus par le gouvernement américain depuis le bombardement de Pearl Harbor, aux côtés de milliers de citoyens Américains d'origine japonaise.
La vie qu'ils avaient avant-guerre n'existe plus et ils sont contraints de quitter leur région pour se réinstaller à deux mille kilomètres de là, à Chicago, où la sœur aînée d'Aki, Rose, avait été envoyée quelques mois plus tôt. Rose vit dans le nouveau quartier nippo-américain, près de la station de métro Clark & Divison. Mais à la veille des retrouvailles de la famille Ito, Rose est tuée par une rame de métro. Les autorités concluent à un suicide, mais Aki, qui vénérait sa sœur, est stupéfaite : comment cette jeune femme, parfaite, polie et optimiste, a pu mettre fin à sa vie ? Ne se fiant qu'à son instinct et à son amour fraternel, Aki se lance dans une enquête qu'elle est la seule à pouvoir mener.

Ma soeur est morte à Chicago

Eternal Lei

1001 Cranes

Set in modern L.A., this novel of moral and spiritual reckoning finds a Japanese American who survived the horrors of Hiroshima forced to relive the nightmare when a stranger shows up looking for him. A first novel. Reprint.

With her parents on the verge of separating, a devastated twelve-year-old Japanese American girl spends the summer in Los Angeles with her grandparents, where she folds paper cranes into wedding displays, becomes involved with a young skateboarder, and learns how complicated relationships can be.

Mas Arai returns for his fifth mystery by getting entangled in a family reunion murder in California's strawberry fields.

Strawberry Yellow

Julian Smith

Jennet Conant

Ishmael Reed

Julia Flynn Siler

Jane Hirshfield

Mark Wallace

Doug Peacock

Lydia Lee

D. J. Waldie

Joseph Giovannini

Désirée Zamorano

Laura Fraser

Joy Lanzendorfer

Santi Elijah Holley

Monica Corcoran Harel

Jessica Klein

Robert Ito

Adam Mayer

Emma Pratt

Ky-Phong Tran

Matt Twombly

Jessica Zack

The Gimme Shelter Issue

Alta Journal Issue 24

Gwenn M. Jensen

Oral Histories of Japanese American Doctors in World War II Detention Camps

Silent Scars of Healing Hands

Kat Richardson

Richie Narvaez

Aaron Erickson

Peter Spiegelman

Libby Cudmore

Jim Winter

Steve Brewer 

W.H. Cameron 

Reed Farrel Coleman 

Matthew Quinn Martin

Jim Thomsen

Think you can’t buy a thrill? This book proves you wrong. Katy lied. Or did she? As with the blues and Elvis and somebody else’s favorite song, it’s open to interpretation. These twelve tales interpret shady pasts, dubious presents, and doomed futures. There’s no hiding inside a hall of rock and sand from stories as deliciously wicked and terrifically twisty as the jazz-rock noir that inspired them. These masters of crime fiction heard the call and wrote it on the wall for you and me. As they name the beast, they make alive worldly wonders in characters you’ve known for decades through the hypnotically woven tapestries of Steely Dan, destined to live on as indelibly as the hallucinatory memories in the caves of Altamira. Edited by Brian Thornton with stories by Steve Brewer, W.H. Cameron, Reed Farrel Coleman, Libby Cudmore, Aaron Erickson, Naomi Hirahara, Matthew Quinn Martin, Richie Narvaez, Kat Richardson, Peter Spiegelman, Jim Thomsen, and Jim Winter.

Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan

A Beast Without a Name

The Story of George Aratani : Founder of Mikasa and Kenwood

An American Son

Naomi Hirahara

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