Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month - Books for Adults

Explore books for adults that spotlight a range of experiences within Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.

Updated April 27, 2024
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All you can ever know : a memoir
Chung, Nicole
Paper Book
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR) What does it means to lose your roots--within your culture,...
Chlorine : a novel
Song, Jade
Paper Book
In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts...
Concepcion : an immigrant family's fortunes
Samaha, Albert
Paper Book
Nearing the age at which his mother had migrated to the U.S., part of the wave of non-Europeans who arrived after immigration quotas were relaxed in 1965, Albert Samaha began to question the ironclad belief in a better future that had inspired his mother's family to uproot themselves from their...
Crying in H Mart : a memoir
Zauner, Michelle
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American--"in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself" (NPR). * CELEBRATING...
Cursed bunny
Chung, Bora
Paper Book
Diamond Head : a novel
Wong, Cecily
Paper Book
A sweeping debut spanning from China to Hawaii that follows four generations of a wealthy shipping family whose rise and decline is riddled with secrets and tragic love--from a young, powerful new voice in fiction. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Frank Leong, a fabulously wealthy...
Girl in translation
Kwok, Jean.
Paper Book
Kimberly Chang has her world turned upside-down when she moves with her mother from their home in Hong Kong to New York. But their new life doesn't quite live up to their expectations - living in a vermin-ridden apartment in Brooklyn, the pair only have a sometimes working oven to keep warm. They...
Hula : a novel
Hakes, Jasmin 'Iolani
Paper Book
Named a Best Book of the Summer by Harper's Bazaar and ELLE * Audiofile Magazine Earphones Award Winner "Stunning . . . An intricately built novel that spans decades, moving in and out of a collective voice, while also telling Hi'i's deeply personal and devastating story...
The hundred secret senses
Tan, Amy
Paper Book
The "wisest and most captivating novel" (Boston Globe) from the author of the bestselling The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles Set in San Francisco and in a remote village of Southwestern China, Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses is a...
Insurrecto
Apostol, Gina
Paper Book
"A bravura performance."--The New York Times Histories and personalities collide in this literary tour-de-force about the Philippines' present and America's past by the PEN Open Book Award-winning author of Gun Dealers' Daughter.   Two women, a...
Interior Chinatown
Yu, Charles
Paper Book
Winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction - a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, and escaping the roles we are forced to play-by the author of the infinitely inventive How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.
The leavers : a novel
Ko, Lisa
Paper Book
FINALIST FOR THE 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and Electric Literature "There was a time I would have called Lisa Ko's novel...
Murder casts a shadow : a Hawai'i mystery
Kneubuhl, Victoria N.
Paper Book
New Year's Eve, 1934. While Honolulu celebrates with champagne and fireworks, someone is making away with the Bishop Museum's portrait of King Kalakaua and its curator. A series of brutal murders follows, and an unlikely pair, newspaper reporter Mina Beckwith and visiting playwright Ned Manusia,...
Must I go : a novel
Li, Yiyun
Paper Book
"One of our major novelists" (Salman Rushdie) tells the story of a woman reflecting on her uncompromising life, and the life of a former lover, in this provocative novel. "Yiyun Li is one of my favorite writers, and Must I Go is an extraordinary book."--Meg...
My life : growing up Asian in America
Pak, SuChin
Paper Book
A collection of thirty heartfelt, witty, and hopeful thought pieces on the experience of growing up Asian American, for fans of Minor Feelings. There are 23 million people, representing more than twenty countries, each with unique languages, histories, and cultures,...
Nuclear family : a novel
Han, Joseph
Paper Book
Winner of the AAAS Book Award for Prose APALA Adult Literature Honor Book Shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A TIME Best Book of the...
On Earth we're briefly gorgeous a novel
Vuong, Ocean
Paper Book
A New York Times bestseller * Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction * Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century ...
Our missing hearts : a novel
Ng, Celeste
Paper Book
An instant New York Times bestseller * A New York Times Notable Book * Named a Best Book of 2022 by People, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily, and more * A Reese's Book Club...
Pachinko
Lee, Min Jin
Paper Book
In this New York Times bestseller, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan-the inspiration for the television series on Apple TV+.  In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored...
The picture bride
Yi, Kŭm-i
Paper Book
Different fates await each of these women. Hongju, who dreams of a marriage of 'natural love', meets a man who looks twenty years older than his photograph; Songhwa, who wants to escape from her life of ridicule as the granddaughter of a shaman, meets a lazy drunkard. And then there's Willow, whose...
The possibilities
Hemmings, Kaui Hart.
Paper Book
In this highly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of The Descendants, a grieving mother struggles to overcome her son's death, when a strange girl enters her life with a secret that changes them both forever. FromNew York Times bestselling author Kaui Hart...
Severance
Ma, Ling
Paper Book
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine- her work, watching movies with her boyfriend, avoiding thoughts of her recently deceased Chinese immigrant parents. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps the world.
Sex and vanity
Kwan, Kevin
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * GMA BOOK CLUB PICK * The author of the international phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians takes us from Capri to NYC, where a young woman finds herself torn between two men--and two very different cultures. "Another riveting tale of privilege,...
The sleepwalker's guide to dancing : a novel
Jacob, Mira
Paper Book
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, KIRKUS REVIEWS, BUSTLE, AND EMILY GOULD, THE MILLIONS For fans of J. Courtney Sullivan, Meg Wolitzer, Mona Simpson, and Jhumpa Lahiri comes a winning, irreverent debut novel about a family wrestling with its...
Spirits abroad : stories
Cho, Zen
Paper Book
Winner of the LA Times/Ray Bradbury Prize Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho's Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo...
The taker
Katsu, Alma.
Paper Book
From the author of The Hunger--hailed by Stephen King as "deeply, deeply disturbing, hard to put down"--comes a hauntingly atmospheric tale replete with alchemy, lust, and betrayal. True love can last an eternity...but immortality comes at a price... ...
A tale for the time being
Ozeki, Ruth
Paper Book
A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki--shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award "A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be."
To hold up the sky
Liu, Cixin
Paper Book
From New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu comes a short story collection of captivating visions of the future and incredible re-imaginings of the past. In To Hold Up the Sky, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space, from a rural mountain community where...
To paradise
Yanagihara, Hanya
Paper Book
SELECTED AS ONE OF THE OPRAH DAILY''S BEST BOOKS OF 2022From the author of the classic A LITTLE LIFE, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. In an alternate version of...
We could be heroes
Chen, Mike
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood The super hero book you need to read right now! "An enjoyable, exciting, and action-packed read... at its core, just fun." -Associated Press ...
Yellowface : a novel
Kuang, R. F.
Paper Book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK "Hard to put down, harder to forget." -- Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she...

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