Showing results by narrator "Susan Hingley" in All Categories

Twenty-five-year-old Takano has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Ojisan, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoki left him five years earlier. When Takano's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takano is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

'What are you looking for?' asks Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. She is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she has read every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they're looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

When a man's favourite elephant vanishes, the balance of his whole life is subtly upset. A couple's midnight hunger pangs drive them to hold up a McDonald's. A woman finds she is irresistible to a small green monster that burrows through her front garden. An insomniac wife wakes up in a twilight world of semi-consciousness in which anything seems possible - even death. In every one of these stories Murakami makes a determined assault on the normal.

In Tokyo, there is a neighbourhood with the highest number of bookstores in the world. It is called Jinbocho where book lovers can browse to their heart's delight and where hunters of first editions or autographed copies prowl the bookcases. The Morisaki bookshop, a small family-run shop, is so packed with books that barely five people can fit inside. Books crowd the shelves and invade every corner of the floor; when a customer arrives, the owner, Satoru, immediately pops out from behind the counter.

What if we could learn to look instead of see, listen instead of hear, feel instead of touch? Priest and best-selling author Ryunosuke Koike shows how, by incorporating simple Zen practices into our daily lives, we can reconnect with our five senses and live in a more peaceful, positive way. When we focus on our senses and learn to re-train our brains and our bodies, we start to eliminate the distracting noise of our minds and the negative thoughts that create anxiety.

Hidden away, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Here is where Takako comes to nurse a broken heart, finding within its crowded shelves books to soothe and uplift her flagging spirits. Over the course of two novels, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Takako and her uncle Satoru discover their similarities and differences, and learn all about life, love and the healing power of books.

Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship that has been soured by infidelity. One day, by chance, she runs into her old friend Mr. Takaoka, who offers friendship, love, and an unusual escape: he teaches her the trick of living inside her dreams. And so, each night, she sinks into another life: first as a high-ranking courtesan in the 17th century, and then as a serving lady to a princess in the late Middle Ages.

Yuriko leads a quiet, orderly life as a piano teacher. It's New Year's Eve and her grown-up son Izumi comes to visit. Yuriko makes him his favourite meal: omelette and hayashi rice. Together, they look like a normal family. But Yuriko has a secret. Many years earlier, when Izumi was a boy, Yuriko suddenly disappeared for an entire year. She returned, but the lost year was never discussed.

Chowa is a Japanese concept that is often translated as 'harmony', but more accurately means 'the search for balance'. Chowa is both a philosophy and a set of practices that can help us get to the heart of what is most important to us, and change our way of thinking about ourselves and others. This book will teach you how to apply the lessons of chowa to your own life to better focus on what really matters and cultivate an everyday state of equilibrium and calm that will help you feel ready for anything.

The Moon has been sucked through a wormhole in space and has arrived countless miles away from its proper place. The crew of Moonbase Alpha can only guess at the resultant devastation left behind on Earth. They must decide how best they can survive. Some Alphans find it difficult to let go of the notion of returning to Earth, others are facing the reality that they must find another home to ensure the survival of the human race. They can't survive on Alpha indefinitely.

The year is 1903, and tenacious and spirited Aoi Ichi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan, becoming the protégée of Shinonome, the oiran, or the highest-ranking courtesan. Through Shinonome's teachings, fifteen-year-old Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. Education for a courtesan extends beyond the art of seduction, and as Ichi is taught to read and write she develops a voice that refuses to be dampened by the brothel's rigid hierarchy.

Nagomi represents a state of being where both 'bad' and 'good' things live in harmonious and beneficial co-existence. Every life will have joys and sorrows, opportunities and misfortunes. Understanding and accepting this is important, but nagomi takes it one step further by showing you how to balance all of these experiences, both positive and negative. Best-selling and internationally celebrated author Ken Mogi delves into Japan's history, into its traditions, its society and also into neuroscience to adapt the concept of nagomi for a Western audience.

The third in a pacy, lyrical and vivid fantasy adventure trilogy set in a world of flying ships, sky cities and rebel uprisings.

Teen fantasy adventure set in a world of flying ships and sky cities, where chosen ones have the ability to bring paper to life and work as Crafters - people who hunt wild paper spirits called shikigami. Inspired by Asian culture and exploring themes of empire, slavery and freedom.

When Japanese-American teenager, Adam, discovers a diary in his attic, he is enthralled by its account of a young Japanese woman’s life. A hundred years separate them yet she, like Adam, is caught between cultures, relationships and heartbreak. She also writes of the ghosts that have begun to seek her out, which Adam dismisses as fantasy – until he too, begins to be haunted. It leads him to Nagasaki, trying to solve the mystery of the diary, and his own identity.

urara and her shipmates have escaped the grasp of the princess, whose wish to control and command them as her own human shikigami would be a fate worse than death. Travelling through the forests and across the seas of Mikoshima, they finally the Grand Stream, where their old airship—and old enemies—await. Both parties seek the greatest shikigami of all: Suzaku, a paper phoenix. But will it be saved—or destroyed?

There's a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls. Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones–the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces. But it's dangerous there.