Ask a Bookseller: ‘The Elsewhere Express’ by Samantha Sotto Yambao

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Need something kind and cozy to sink into this weekend?

Allie Cesmat of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., recommends hopping aboard “The Elsewhere Express.”

It’s the new cozy fantasy by Samantha Sotto Yambao, who drew national attention for her novel “Water Moon,” about a pawn shop where people go to sell regrets. Cesmat compares Yambao’s writing to the playful worlds of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.

Cesmat says she's never read another book like it. She describes the premise:

“You are adrift in life. You're sitting there, kind of feeling like you have no purpose, nothing's going on, and all of a sudden a train pulls up and lets you on to this world that is set apart from ours. The train [contains] revolving rooms and magical dimensions. You are trying to find your purpose, and your purpose is the train compartment that you're walking towards.”

“We follow two characters on this train as they figure out their purpose is, what they're what they're missing. The train is a closed-door mystery: you don't really know what's happening next. You don't know what the tension is. It's a cozy fantasy, for sure, but it is lyrical. It is magnetic.

“And as you're reading it, you start wondering, well, what's my compartment? Where am I adrift in this world? And it brings hope and comfort that you wouldn't otherwise have.”