Kirjahaku

Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. Hugo Award FinalistA National BestsellerIndie Next PickNew York Public Library Top 10 Book of 2021A Kirkus Best Book of 2021A Barnes & Noble Best Science Fiction Book of 20212022 Alex Award Winner2022 Stonewall Book Award Winner Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.

Shizuka Satomi is a brilliant, cursed violinist who must win her soul back from damnation. To do this, she must take seven prodigies as students, then entice each to trade their soul for fame. She has already delivered six. However, rather than the usual pampered genius, the seventh, Katrina Nguyen, is a young transgender runaway with a wild talent, who is fleeing an abusive home. Meanwhile, Lan Tran, a starship captain, has crossed the galaxy with her family to make a new life running a local donut shop. But though she saved them from a galactic war, nothing can stop the end of existence itself. Faustian bargain meets space opera in this genre-bending novel of three vastly different women. Bombarded by catastrophe, misunderstanding, and fate, each has come to San Gabriel Valley, just outside of Los Angeles, to escape their fates, find their voices, and save the universe.

Something strange is happening in Hilo. Noleani Choi's new show about the life of Jesus Christ told through hula dance has everyone, especially her halau, wondering what she could possibly be thinking. Rumors circulate about a rich guy from the mainland, and the dancers and their friends must reckon with what is really hula, who is Hawaiian enough, and why each of them wants to dance. On one beautiful island, we discover that loving other people in spite of their flaws might just begin with being true to our own selves.

The planets are all unique, and never feel embarrassed or self-conscious about their differences. Join nande in their out-of-this-world journey of exploration, and learn with them about all the special and awe-inspiring parts of our solar system as they find they have a family they never knew about - in space