Showing results by narrator "Kevin Shen" in All Categories

A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, Monkey King is one of the most memorable superheroes in world literature. High-spirited and omni-talented, he can transform himself into whatever he chooses and turn each of his body's 84,000 hairs into an army of clones. But his penchant for mischief repeatedly gets him into trouble, and when he raids Heaven's Orchard of Immortal Peaches, the Buddha pins him beneath a mountain.

Remy Kobata has always wished she was destined to be with her best friend, Cam Yasuda. All the way from being neighbors from birth to mixing up magical prank potions together to their “just friends” homecoming date during their senior year in high school, nothing’s a secret between Remy and Cam—except for how much she is in love with him. Remy is trying to work up the courage to confess her feelings during their winter break trip to Japan, when she gets selected for a mystical tea leaves reading and it reveals that they’re not meant to be together.

Billy, Dylan, Charlotte and Ling-Fei are back in their hometowns, missing each other and their dragons. While out surfing one morning, Billy panics when a water dragon emerges out of the waves, and soon strange sightings are being spotted all over the world. Meeting back in Dragon Realm, the friends, their dragons and two new acquaintances join forces to investigate.

Billy Chan and his friends are not having a very relaxing summer. Their friend Dylan has been kidnapped by the evil Dragon of Death, and it’s up to them to travel through time, back to the dangerous Dragon Realm in order to save him. Luckily they have their own dragons on side, but they’ll need to collect eight magical pearls if they’re to amass enough power to destroy the Dragon of Death and her followers for good. So begins an epic quest that will take them to the depths of the Frozen Wasteland and the imperial palaces of Ancient China. But can good triumph evil?

Natsuki Books was a tiny second-hand bookshop on the edge of town. Inside, towering shelves reached the ceiling, every one crammed full of wonderful books. Rintaro Natsuki loved this space that his grandfather had created. He spent many happy hours there, reading whatever he liked. It was the perfect refuge for a boy who tended to be something of a recluse. After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help.

Escaping his broken-down reality for a simulated world was never Declan's thing—until he got pulled into an MMORPG unlike any other and became Dustin the Magic Myconid. Now, with several quests completed and a few levels under his belt, he's ready to explore the world of Indiri and form a Mercenary Guild with his real-world friend Matt, aka Noam the Tiefling Bard. Only, their journey gets off to a very rough start. Almost immediately, their train is derailed, and they—along with the odd assortment of riffraff who've joined their guild—are forced to stop in a seemingly quiet town.

In the fifth book in the sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold series translated from Japanese, the mysterious café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests. They must follow the café's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. Another moving and heartwarming tale from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, in Before we forget kindness our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort so they can embark on a beautiful future.

After a traumatic incident, Aster's blood work comes back with some unusual readings. Unsurprising, as she’s the last of an alien race called the Kibsu, though she doesn’t know it. She becomes the focus of a hunt, with her mortal enemies, the Trackers, on one side, and the American government on the other. But help has come from a most unexpected quarter. Whoever finds her first, it won’t be good news for Aster. Or for the world!

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than 100 years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time. From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes a story of four new customers, each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula's time-travelling offer.

Declan has never cared much for VRMMO games. No matter how many times his best friend, Matt, has urged him to get into the latest craze and escape the monotony of their broken-down reality, he always finds something about the build or the engine that drives him crazy. But when an AI hacks into his Somatic Implant and invites him into a secret virtual world, he can’t resist the chance to explore.

Joanna Ho’s lyrical writing tells an inspiring story of Yo-Yo Ma, who challenges conventions, expectations, and beliefs in order to build bridges to unite communities, people, and cultures. A beautiful picture book biography to enjoy and share in the home and the classroom.

Ex-Delta Force soldier Jack Ford is trying to put the past behind him. But when he receives a letter from someone he hasn't spoken to in 30 years, claiming he has a daughter, he can't resist investigating for himself. Soon he's on a plane to China, a country he hasn't returned to since witnessing the atrocities of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But on his search he stumbles upon explosive information which both the Chinese and American governments are desperately chasing.

In an alternate reality, 5,000 years in the future, the evil Dragon of Death has become ruler of Dragon City. Humans now live to serve the dragon population, and it’s no different for Billy Chan and his friends. After losing contact with their own dragons, they’re determined to track them down in this new city, even if it means putting their own lives at risk. But one dragon has turned to the dark side and has no plans to return.

All eyes are on Billy and his friends after the Dragon Realm collapses and is exposed to the Human Realm. In their search for a new dragon home, they learn of the Hidden Realm, a secret so well guarded that only one dragon in the whole of history knows how to locate it—Glorious Old. But convincing her to trust them comes with its own problems, not to mention the introduction of an evil new baddie and a band of human-hating dragons. With trouble round every corner, what destiny is in store for Billy and the group?

Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told that he was a ‘do-nothing’ because he lacked initiative. Dispirited and unemployed, it occurred to him that if he was so good at doing nothing, perhaps he could turn it into a business. And with one tweet, he began his business of renting himself out, to do nothing. In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.

Over 100 generations, Mia's family has shaped Earth's history to push humanity to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices along the way. And now Mia finds herself about to help launch the first people into space. She can't take them to the stars, not quite yet. But with her adversary almost upon her, and with the future of the planet at stake, it's becoming clearer that obeying the first rule is no longer an option.

Mia is not sure what she is, but she isn't human. Smarter, stronger than her peers, all she knows are the rules: there can never be three for too long; always run, never fight. When she finds herself in Germany 1945, she must turn the Nazis' most trusted scientist with an offer: abandon the crumbling Nazi party, escape Germany with your life, come to work for the Americans building rockets. But someone is watching her work. An enemy who's smarter, stronger, and decidedly not human....

When 12-year-old Billy Chan finds out his parents are sending him to a summer camp in middle-of-nowhere China, he doesn’t know what to expect. There he meets fellow campers Dylan, Charlotte and Ling-Fei and together they stumble upon an age-old secret: four powerful warrior dragons, hidden deep within the mountain behind the camp. They have been trapped since an epic battle with the Dragon of Death and need the children’s help to set them free before terrible evil is unleashed on the earth.

At a New York City wedding, in early summer, four people are trying to get their lives started. Yun has everything he ever wanted, but somehow it's never enough. Emory is finally making her mark, but feels the shame more than the success. Andrew just wants to be honest, but has lied to himself his whole life. Fin can't resist falling in love, but can't help wrecking it all either. That night they see something none of them can explain. Someone sits down, and simply gives up. Soon it's happening all around them. Is it an illness, or a decision?

Set in the last shanty town of Hong Kong before the fraught 1997 handover from Britain to China, Diamond Hill follows the return of a recovering heroin addict, Buddha, as he tries to salvage what's left from a place he hoped to forget. Kit Fan's hard-hitting and exhilarating debut is a requiem for a disappearing city and a meditation on powerlessness, religion, colonialism and displacement. It explores the price of forgetting and how the present is ultimately always entangled in the past.