Naomi Hirahara
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 1
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pub. Date
2004
Language
English
Formats
Description
In the foothills of Pasadena, Mas Arai is just another Japanese-American gardener, his lawnmower blades clean and sharp, his truck carefully tuned. But while Mas keeps lawns neatly trimmed, his own life has gone to seed. His wife is dead. And his livelihood is falling into the hands of the men he once hired by the day. For Mas, a life of sin is catching up to him. And now bachi—the spirit of retribution—is knocking on his door.
It begins...
It begins...
2) 1001 Cranes
Author
Publisher
Random House Children's Books
Pub. Date
2008
Language
English
Formats
Description
WHEN 12-YEAR-OLD ANGELA Kato arrives in L.A., the last thing she wants to do is spend the entire summer with her grandparents. But in the Kato family, one is never permitted to complain. Grandma Michi and Aunt Janet put Angela to work in their flower shop, folding origami and creating 1001 crane displays for newlyweds. At first, Angela learns the trade begrudgingly. But when her folding skills improve and her relationships with family and friends...
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 2
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pub. Date
2005
Language
English
Formats
Description
From the time she was a child, Mas Arai’s daughter, Mari, was completely gasa-gasa–never sitting still, always on the go, getting into everything. And Mas, busy tending lawns, gambling, and struggling to put his Hiroshima past behind him, never had much time for the family he was trying to support. For years now, his resentful daughter has lived a continent away in New York City, and had a life he knew little about. But an anxious phone...
4) Blood Hina
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 4
Language
English
Description
Mas Arai's best friend Haruo is getting married, and the cranky detective and semi-retired gardener has grudgingly agreed to serve as best man. But when the ancient Japanese doll display that belongs to Haruo's fiancée goes missing, the wedding is called off with fingers pointed at Haruo. To save his friend's life, Mas must untangle a web of secrecy, heartbreaking memories, and murder stretching from the internment camps of the 1940s through the...
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 6
Language
English
Description
The Japanese American detective's most engaging mystery yet delves into baseball, WWII, and the complex history between Japan and Korea. At Dodger Stadium, Japan is playing Korea in the World Baseball Classic, but before the first pitch is thrown, Mas Arai finds himself investigating a murder. Mystery, history, and cultural conflict form a dangerous web in this riveting chapter in the Edgar Award-winning series featuring the most unlikely of sleuths-an...
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 5
Language
English
Description
Hiroshima survivor Mas Arai first arrived in Watsonville, California in the 1940s. Now a semi-retired gardener living in an LA suburb, he returns for a cousin's funeral only to get entangled in the mystery of a young woman's murder. Was his cousin murdered, too? Mas has to figure out what happened, keep himself safe in the face of considerable peril, and uncover the mystery of a new strawberry varietal so important that someone just might be willing...
Author
Language
English
Description
From the editor of the award-winning Children of Manzanar, Heather C. Lindquist, and Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara comes a nuanced account of the "Resettlement": the relatively unexamined period when ordinary people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during World War II, were finally released from custody. Given twenty-five dollars and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east to Denver and Chicago to start...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
From the award-winning author of the Japantown Mysteries, trouble awaits rookie LAPD Officer Ellie Rush as she patrols the mean streets of Los Angeles on her bicycle . . .
Bike cop Ellie Rush dreams of becoming a homicide detective, but it's still a shock when the first dead body she encounters on the job is that of a former college classmate.
At the behest of her Aunt Cheryl, the highest-ranking Asian-American officer in the LAPD (a source of pride...
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 3
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pub. Date
2006
Language
English
Formats
Description
From Summer of the Big Bachi to Gasa-Gasa Girl, Naomi Hirahara’s acclaimed novels have featured one of mystery fiction’s most unique heroes: Mas Arai, a curmudgeonly L.A. gardener, Hiroshima survivor, and inveterate gambler.
Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly...
Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Chicago, 1944: twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, the California concentration camp where they have been 'interned' by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier as a forerunner of the...
11) Evergreen
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Los Angeles, 1946: It's been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California--but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Leilani Santiago is back in her birthplace, the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, to help keep afloat the family business, a shave ice shack. When she goes to work one morning, she stumbles across a dead body, a young pro surfer who was being coached by her estranged father. As her father soon becomes the No. 1 murder suspect, Leilani must find the real killer and somehow safeguard her ill mother, little sisters, and grandmother while also preserving a...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"It's the middle of the pandemic and Hawai'i has been virtually closed to tourists. So when Leilani Santiago and her young sisters save a mysterious woman wearing a lei from drowning in Waimea Bay in Kaua'i questions abound: who is she and where did she come from? The lei, which is made of mokihana berries, the official flower of Kaua'i, is traced back to Leilani's best friend, the very pregnant Courtney Kahuakai, and her family's flower business....
14) Hiroshima boy
Author
Series
Mas Arai mysteries volume 7
Language
English
Formats
Description
After surviving the atomic bomb in 1945, Mas Arai returned to Hiroshima only once, fifty years ago, to find himself a bride. Now the retired, 86-year-old Los Angeles gardener is going back out of obligation, to deliver his best friend Haruo's ashes to Haruo's sister. As soon as he arrives at her nursing home on a small island off Hiroshima, he becomes embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy who was about the same age Mas was when the Bomb...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Ellie stops for a friendly chat with gardener Eduardo Fuentes while patroling one of Los Angeles's premier concert halls. A few minutes later she's shocked to discover him lying at the bottom of a staircase, clinging to life and whispering something indecipherable. Nearby, the father of Xu, a Chinese classical musician superstar, claims Fuentes was knocked down while attempting to steal his son's multi-million dollar cello, a story Ellie has trouble...
Author
Publisher
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
Pub. Date
2024.
Edition
First edition.
Physical Desc
95 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 27 cm
Language
English
Description
"Celebrate the diversity, history, and rich cultures of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and teach kids ages 8-12 about the people, experiences, and events that have shaped AAPI history."--