"From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. In the eyes of 18-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken-with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity-is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, a first-generation...

"Isa de Smit was raised in the vibrant, glittering world of her parents' small art gallery in Amsterdam, a hub of beauty, creativity, and expression, until the Nazi occupation wiped the color from her city's palette. The "degenerate" art of the Gallery de Smit is confiscated, the artists in hiding or deported, her best friend, Truus, fled to join the shadowy Dutch resistance. And masterpiece by masterpiece, the Nazis are buying and stealing her country's...

"Sandy Saito looks back to his childhood in 1940s Vancouver, when he was eight years old. He's a happy kid: he goes to school, reads comic books and is obsessed with baseball -- especially the Asahi baseball team, the pride of the Japanese-Canadian community. Then the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor -- and everything changes. The kids Sandy used to play with every day now call him names and chase him from the playground. He and his family are no longer...