Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence, until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he's been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako's life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru. An unusual man who has always...

Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech...

The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for this extraordinary story.
A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener.

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In the Nakano Thrift Shop, the objects hold many secrets-- as do the staff and the customers. Hitomi, the young woman who works the register, falls for her reserved co-worker Takeo. She seeks advice from Masayo, her employer's sister. Hitomi soon comes to realize that love requires acceptance of idiosyncrasies and secrets.

"Komomo attends her first festival by working in the Méli-Mélo food truck. Natsu keeps snubbing her in front of Noelle Étoile, an entitled rich girl who became attached to him when he lived in France. Komomo realizes that Natsu must be in love with Noelle, but why is Komomo so upset by it?" -- Page [4] of cover.

Two stories of two girls who share a name.

As a little girl, Komomo Ninomiya delighted in picking on Natsu Azumi, the son of her family’s pastry chef. Ten years later, when the family fortune is lost and she has no place to live, Komomo encounters Natsu again in her hour of need. Now that Natsu is a master pastry chef in his own right, he’ll help Komomo—but only if she works for him at his new confiserie!

In the near future, the federal government creates a committee to rid society of books it deems unsuitable. The libraries vow to protect their collections, and with the help of local governments, form a military group to defend themselves--the Library Forces! The Library Forces have decided that a censored author, Toma, must defect. But as he and the LF attempt to leave the courthouse, the roads are blocked by Media Betterment Committee troops! Library...