This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaka, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time.

Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for — or rather, demands — the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and the cat and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners.

On the outskirts of Rainbow Town, there is an old, abandoned house. They say that if you send a letter detailing your misfortunes there, you could receive a ticket. If you bring this ticket to the house on the first day of the rainy season, you'll be granted entrance into the mysterious Rainfall Market—where you can choose to completely change your life. No one is more surprised than Serin when she receives a ticket. Lonely and with no real prospects for a future, Serin ventures to the market, determined to create a better life for herself.

In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they'll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon. This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives. It's also run by talking cats.

Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Burned out by her TV news writing job, Jungmin leaves in an attempt to salvage her life. When she stumbles upon a mysterious pottery studio, she feels immediately at home. The warmth, the smell of clay, and the incredible coffee awaken her senses and make her feel alive for the first time in months. Over the coming year, season by season, pot by pot, Jungmin returns to herself and builds unexpected friendships with the other members of the studio, who are all working through their own trials at the pottery wheel.

What would you do if you could travel back in time? Discover the internationally bestselling novels of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, now a worldwide phenomenon and BookTok sensation, in this special new book set. Step inside Tokyo’s whimsical Café Funiculi Funicula and travel back in time with a cast of unforgettable characters.

Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she's an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has been willing to listen. Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it's already been warned, and it may be too late.

“From exactly midnight until daybreak, the Namiya General Store advice box will be reopening for one night only.” When three delinquents hole up in an abandoned general store after their most recent robbery, to their great surprise, a letter drops through the mail slot in the store’s shutter. This seemingly simple request for advice sets the trio on a journey of discovery as, over the course of a single night, they step into the role of the kindhearted former shopkeeper who devoted his waning years to offering thoughtful counsel to his correspondents.

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.

Isabel Gibson has all but perfected the art of forgetting. She’s a New Yorker now, with nothing left to tie her to Brinkley’s Island, Maine. Her parents are gone, the family bookstore is all but bankrupt, and her sister, Sophie, will probably never speak to her again. But when a mysterious letter arrives in her mailbox, Isabel feels herself drawn to the past. After years of fighting for her independence, she dreads the thought of going back to the island.

Hours later, the man’s cold body lies in the city mortuary, alongside the woman he couldn’t save. And his sister, unconventional nurse Gemma Tate, tracks down troubled police inspector Sebastian Bell to unravel the truth. Sebastian has enough pressure to solve the murder of an aristocratic heiress without Gemma meddling in his case. But the cryptic sentences she brings him from her brother’s notebook could be a crucial lead. If only they knew what “milky way” meant.

Our protagonist, an unnamed junior at a prestigious university in Kyoto, is on the verge of dropping out. After rebelling against the dictatorial jock president of the film club, he and his worst and only friend, the diabolical creep Ozu, are personas non grata on campus. For two years, our protagonist has made all the wrong decisions, and now he's about to make another mistake. He and Ozu are preparing for revenge—a fireworks attack at the film club's welcoming party for new members.

The Last Unicorn is one of fantasy’s most revered classics, beloved by generations of readers and with millions of copies in print. Revisiting the world of that novel, Beagle’s long-awaited Hugo and Nebula-Awards-winning “Two Hearts” introduced the irrepressible Sooz on a quest to save her village from a griffin, and explored the bonds she formed with unforgettable characters like the wise and wonderful Molly Grue and Schmendrick the Magician.

Rosa Mandolini knows in her heart that her family are the greatest painters of magical illuminations in the city. But the eccentric Studio Mandolini has fallen on hard times and the future is no longer certain. While trying to help her family, Rosa discovers a strange magical box protected by a painted crow. But when she finds a way to open the box, she accidentally releases the Scarling, a vicious monster determined to destroy the Mandolini family at any cost.

Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then, a talking cat appears with an unusual request. The feline asks for — or rather, demands — the teenager’s help in saving books with him. The world is full of lonely books left unread and unloved, and the cat and Rintaro must liberate them from their neglectful owners.

A peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers a unique opportunity: the chance to adopt one of seven special cats whose "magic" is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket. In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality.

Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah's help. Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough—and then things go terribly wrong.

When twenty-six year old Shirin Bayat bumps into Kian at a house party in London, she is taken aback by the immediate feelings that resurface. It’s been a decade since they were close friends at school, before painful events pulled them apart, suddenly and seemingly forever. Ever since, Shirin has lived with the aching weight of things left unsaid between them. Now they're back in each other's lives, at a time when Shirin needs someone she can trust the most.

A small, magical town tucked away in rural Ohio, Moonville is the perfect place for floral witch Romina Tempest to use the language of flowers to help the hopeful manifest love in their lives. After giving up on her own big romance eleven years ago, at least she can bask in others' happily ever afters. When the shop’s potential financier shares news of his wedding, Romina jumps at the opportunity to discuss the business . . . even if it means she has to fake-date her chaotic colleague Trevor to get an invitation.

In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they'll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the right cat, you might just find yourself invited to a mysterious coffee shop under a glittering Kyoto moon. This particular coffee shop is like no other. It has no fixed location, no fixed hours, and seemingly appears at random to adrift young people at crucial junctions in their lives. It's also run by talking cats.

Tsukiko, 38, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei", in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is 30 years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy, which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.

Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission. But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye.

This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaka, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time.

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges her true passion, taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant, because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger with intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines.

The four Endicott siblings—Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude—were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country. Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven’t spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota.

La epopeya de Rintaro, el joven heredero de una entrañable librería de viejo, y de Tora, un sabio e ingenioso gato atigrado, se ha convertido en un fulgurante éxito internacional. Su emocionante misión consiste nada más y nada menos que en salvar los libros que están en peligro y extender así el amor por estos objetos, bellos e inigualables, que son parte imprescindible de nuestra vida.

Born with mysterious powers she does not know how to control, young Jieun accidentally causes her family to vanish. She vows to live a million lives in search of them. Finally, one night, she brings the Marigold Mind Laundry into existence. Its service: to remove the deepest pain from our hearts. Jieun listens while customers share their unhappy memories. As they speak, she transfers their sadness onto T-shirts as stains. After a spin in the washing machine, the stains become flower petals that soar into the air, and Jieun’s customers find solace.

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.

Nick Carraway―paper soldier and novelist―has found a life and a living watching the mad magical spectacle of New York high society in the late thirties. He's good at watching, and he's even better at pretending: pretending to be straight, pretending to be human, pretending he's forgotten the events of that summer in 1922. On the eve of the second World War, however, Nick learns that someone's been watching him pretend and that memory goes both ways. When he sees a familiar face at a club one night, it quickly becomes clear that dead or not, damned or not, Jay Gatsby isn't done with him.