The White Chrysanthemum

For fans of Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a deeply moving novel that follows two Korean sisters separated by World War II. Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home. South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness? Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.

She was a perfect baby, and she had a perfect name. Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum loved her name—until she started school. A terrific read-aloud for the classroom and libraries!

Muna has never known his father -- a samurai, a noble warrior. But Muna's mother has told Muna how he will know him one day: by the sign of the chrysanthemum. When his mother dies, Muna travels to the capital of twelfth-century Japan, a bewildering city on the verge of revolution. He finds a haven there, as servant to the great swordsmith, Fukuji. But Muna cannot forget his dream: He must find his father. Only then will he have power and a name to be reckoned with. Only then will he become a man.

This collection of Japanese short stories reveals a rapidly changing Japanese society and the deep draw of its traditional culture. The first half of this century saw the coming of age of the Japanese short story. Influenced by Western literary techniques, such innovative writers as Shiga Naoya, Ozaki Shiro, Yasunari Kawabata, Shimaki Kensaku, Hayashi Fumiko, Dazai Osamu, and (somewhat later) Kobo Abe reassessed the Japanese story tradition and brought new vigor to the uniquely Japanese sense of the detail and natural context of everyday life. The works of these writers stand at the center of modern Japan's literary development. Despite their differences, it is the simplicity and purity of their natural images-sultry late-summer days, cicadas, lizards, and the sounds of life's routines-that more than anything anchor the emotions and perceptions of their stories. For A Late Chrysanthemum, translator and editor Lane Dunlop has selected twenty-one stories by these seven intriguing and influential authors to convey the depth and range of the modern Japanese story, a discriminating selection which, in Dunlop's sure and masterful English renderings, won this book the Japan-United States Friendship Award for Literary Translation.

The Chrysanthemum Palace introduces Bertie Krohn, the only child of Perry Krohn, creator of TV's longest running space opera, Starwatch: The Navigators (which counts Jennifer Aniston and Donald Rumsfeld among its obsessed fans). Bertie recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two companions: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary movie star, long dead. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers; between them, as Bertie says, "there was more than enough material to bring psychoanalysis back into vogue." As the incestuous clique attempts to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents over a two-week filming of a Starwatch episode in which they costar, Bertie scrupulously chronicles their highs and lows -- as well as their futile struggles against the ravenous, narcissistic, Convulsive and poignant, The Chrysanthemum Palace is a tragic tale of friendship and fate writ large -- a tour de force by a major writer whose narrative delivers devastating emotional impact.

A Chinese American girl puts her goldfish into a fish pond that she creates and borders with chrysanthemums in order to remind her grandmother of the fish pond she had back in China.

Judy Nunn' s latest bestselling novel will take you from the cotton mills of England to the magnificent theatres of Melbourne, on a scintillating journey through the golden age of Australian showbusiness.' So, Will, are you going to come with me and my team of merry performers to the sunny climes of Australia, where the crowds are already queuing and the streets are paved with gold?' In the second half of the 19th century, Melbourne is a veritable boom town, as hopefuls from every corner of the globe flock to the gold fields of Victoria.And where people crave gold, they also crave entertainment.Enter stage right: brothers Will and Max Worthing and their wives Mabel and Gertie. The family arrives from England in the 1880s with little else but the masterful talents that will see them rise from simple travelling performers to sophisticated entrepreneurs.Enter stage left: their rivals, Carlo and Rube. Childhood friends since meeting in a London orphanage, the two men have literally fought their way to the top and are now producers of the bawdy but hugely popular ' Big Show Bonanza' . The fight for supremacy begins.

As Osaka Maru steams into the port town of Kure, the great, grey war-making vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy are making steam. The boy at the bow wonders where they are headed.Once ashore, he finds Kure changed beyond recognition. The boy is returning to Japan, to the only family he knows, his uncle and aunt and his cousin, Kazuo. It is seven years since he last saw his homeland. Seven years since, with his parents, he left Kure for Minas Gerais, in the wilds of Brazil, to fulfil his father's misplaced ambition to become a coffee planter. It had brought his parents only misery and ultimately, an untimely end for them both, leaving Hanro orphaned and alone in a foreign country. It has taken almost two years to find the means to return to his homeland. He climbs Mount Egezan and knocks on his Uncle Junichiro's door. The lady who answers is a surprise. She is a gaigin, an Englishwoman who explains that his uncle's family had moved away, to Hiroshima. She invites him in and he finds that she is married to a flyer on the aircraft carrier Hiryu, the Flying Dragon. When she shows a photo of her husband flying his Nakajima torpedo bomber, wearing a white hachimaki tied around his forehead, a samurai of the sky, he is immediately seen as a hero. The Englishwoman invites the boy to stay with her until he can find his family. In exchange, he agrees to restore the samurai's garden. The boy finds that he has walked into a tense and conflicted household. Then Radio Tokyo announces that the Imperial Japanese Navy has destroyed the US fleet at Pearl Harbor ?

Chronicles an American rifle company's tour of duty in Korea, their battle for survival, and their relationships with one another