Short stories by Marianne Villanueva, and novels by Amy Tan, Avdotya Panaeva, Sayaka Murata, and Domenico Starnone

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She's leaning forward, as if to kiss him. There's a mark on his cheek; perhaps she's done it already. They are both smiling. 
          These were my parents in Manila, circa 1956. They were happy; they had always been happy. The happiness of their marriage was like a reproach. 
—From Mayor of the Roses, a collection of short stories by Marianne Villanueva (Miami University Press, 2005). This segment is the opening of "Picture" (pp. 87-92).

[Art's daughters] wore their long chestnut hair alike, pulled into ponytails high on their heads so that they cascaded like fountain spray. All their friends wore their hair in an identical style, Ruth had noticed. When she was their age, she had wanted to grow her hair long the way the other girls did, but her mother made her cut it short. "Long hair look like suicide maiden," LuLing had said. And Ruth knew she was referring to the nursemaid who had killed herself when her mother was a girl. Ruth had had nightmares about that, the ghost with long hair, dripping blood, crying for revenge.  
—From The Bonesetter's Daughter, a novel by Amy Tan (Ballantine, 2001). This is from page 21 of the trade paperback.

In a room lit by a dim candle, they washed the dead body of my six-month-old sister. . . . The room was silent; neither my father nor my mother cried. Only the wet nurse cried—about the gilded cap and fur coat that she had lost due to my sister’s premature death. If the baby had waited five or six months longer to die, the nurse's work would have been through, and the promised reward would not have slipped through her fingers.
—From The Talnikov Family, a novel by Avdotya Panaeva, translated from the Russian by Fiona Bell (Columbia University Press, 2024). 

In the sex education class the next day, though, I was taught something completely different [from what my mother had explained to me]. We were made to watch endless videos about the mechanism of artificial insemination and the mystery of bringing a new life into the world.
—From Vanishing World, a novel by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2025).

Between the ages of eight and nine, I set out to find the pit of the dead. At school, in Italian class, I had recently learned about the legend of Orpheus and how he travelled to the underworld to bring back his girlfriend, Eurydice, who, unhappily, had wound up there after getting bitten by a snake. My plan was to do the same for a girl who was not my girlfriend but who might be if I managed to lead her back above ground from below . . . 
—From The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan, a novel by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Europa Editions, 2024). 

Short stories by Cleo Qian, and novels by Alina Bronsky, Amy Tan, John Irving, and Anne Tyler

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Most evenings, I ordered fried chicken from the same student hot spot near campus and took the food back to my studio, where I streamed Korean TV dramas and celebrity interviews with my VPN or played Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom until two in the morning. These were things I had done as a high schooler, and I was filled with the sickening and yet satisfying feeling of regression into immaturity. 
—From Let's Go Let's Go Let's Go, a collection of short stories by Cleo Qian (Tin House, 2023). This particular segment is from "Zeros:Ones," which appears on pages 41-54 of the book and which was originally published, possibly in a slightly different form, in The Adroit Journal (Issue 45). This specific passage appeared on page 45 of the paperback. 

When Herr Schmidt woke up early Friday and didn't smell coffee, at first he thought Barbara might have died in her sleep. It was an absurd idea—Barbara was as healthy as a horse—though even more absurd was the possibility that she could have overslept. She never overslept. But when he turned over in bed and saw that the other half of the bed was empty, it seemed to him that the most likely explanation was that Barbara had keeled over dead on her way to the kitchen.
—From Barbara Isn't Dying, a novel by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions, 2023). This book was originally published in German as Barbara stirbt nicht (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Germany, 2021). 

My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the World of Yin, ghosts who leave the mists just to visit her kitchen on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
—From The Hundred Secret Senses, a novel by Amy Tan (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995). One of my favorite sections of this book had to do with Kwan and the owl (the cat-eagle); it starts on page 191 of the Vintage trade paperback version that I have. 

One night he saw one of the mothers standing in the baby room. She did not appear to be looking for her baby in particular; she was just standing in her hospital gown in the middle of the baby room, her eyes closed, absorbing the smells and sounds of the baby room through her other senses. Homer was afraid the woman would wake up Nurse Angela, who was dozing on the duty bed; Nurse Angela would have been cross with her. Slowly, as Homer imagined you might assist a sleepwalker, he led the woman back to the mothers' room.  
—From The Cider House Rules, a novel by John Irving (William Morrow and Company, 1985). This passage appears on page 86 of the hardcover published in 1985.   

Bonus book to read again: 

At the puppet show, in a green and white tent lit by a chilly greenish glow, Cinderella wore a strapless evening gown that made her audience shiver. She was a glove puppet with a large, round head and braids of yellow yarn. At the moment she was dancing with the Prince, who had a Dutch Boy haircut. They held each other so fondly, it was hard to remember they were really just two hands clasping each other. "You have a beautiful palace," she told him. "The floors are like mirrors! I wonder who scrubs them."  
—From Morgan's Passing, a novel by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf, 1980). 

An essay by Devon Geyelin, novels by Yūko Tsushima and Amy Tan, a memoir by Amy Bloom, and a poem by Jane Hirshfield

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I first wrote this while I sat in bed in the months after, once he wasn't there anymore and I was upset. Initially it was very long, maybe a hundred pages, or more than that. It had a part where we were friends, and a part where we dated, and a part where we stopped, and then the attack. 
—From "Friendship," an essay by Devon Geyelin, The Paris Review (online July 25, 2023). 

The apartment had windows on all sides.
          I spent a year there, with my little daughter, on the top floor of an old four-storey office building. We had the whole fourth floor to ourselves, plus the rooftop terrace. At street level there was a camera shop; the second and third floors were both divided into two rented offices.
—From Territory of Light, a short, atmospheric novel by Yuko Tsushima, translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). (Note: If you are looking for this book or others by the same author, her name in English is alternately stylized as Yuko Tsushima and Yūko Tsushima.) The English translation was previously published in Great Britain (Penguin Books Ltd., 2018), and this quote is from a paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2019. An unabridged audiobook version of the English translation, narrated by Rina Takasaki, is also available (Macmillan Audio, 2019). 

Territory of Light was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzō (July 1978-June 1979). The story takes place over the course of a year, and the release of the twelve chapters marked the months in real time. It was then published in book form in Japan as Hikari no Ryōbun (Kodansha Ltd., 1979). 

Helen thinks all her decisions are always right, but really, she is only lucky. For over fifty years I have seen this happen, how her foolish thinking turns into good fortune. It was like that at lunch yesterday. "Winnie-ah," she said. "Have more chicken." I told Helen I did not want to eat any more funeral leftovers—five days was enough. So we went shopping at Happy Super, deciding what new things to eat for last night's dinner.
          Helen picked out a flat fish, pom-pom fish, she called it, only a dollar sixty-nine a pound, bargain bin. 
          And I said, "This kind of bargain you don't want. Look at his eye, shrunken in and cloudy-looking. That fish is already three days old."
          But Helen stared at that fish eye and said she saw nothing wrong. So I picked up that fish and felt its body slide between my fingers, a fish that had slipped away from life long time ago. Helen said it was a good sign—a juicy, tender fish!
          . . .
          She bought that three-day-old fish, the dinner I ate at her house last night. . . . 
          I tell you, that fish made me so mad. It was sweet. It was tender. Only one dollar sixty-nine a pound. I started to think, Maybe Helen went back to Happy Super and exchanged that fish. But then I thought, Helen is not that clever. And that's when I remembered something. Even though Helen is not smart, even though she was born poor, even though she has never been pretty, she has always had luck pour onto her plate, even spill from the mouth of a three-day-old fish. 
—From The Kitchen God's Wife, a novel by Amy Tan (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1991). The section above is from the beginning of chapter 3, pages 67-68 of the mass market paperback (Ivy Books/Ballantine Books/Random House, 1992). The novel was reissued by Penguin in 2006.

When we moved to a small Connecticut village in 2014, Brian was invited to join a men's book club. He was dubious because they seemed to prefer nonfiction and he did not, but he was pleased to be asked and he went regularly. He suggested a novel whenever it was his turn to suggest. They asked him why he wanted to be in their book club and he said, I love a good read and I love intimacy. He was pleased that they looked shocked, and he felt that he'd announced himself properly. 
—From In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom (Random House, 2022). This segment appears on page 15 of the hardcover. The audiobook version, available from Random House Audio, features Amy Bloom reading the book herself. 

In Amy Bloom's memoir, she quotes the last line from "Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World," a poem by Jane Hirshfield, which begins with this: 

If the gods bring to you 
a strange and frightening creature, 
accept the gift 
as if it were one you had chosen.

Novels by Claire Keegan and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, short stories by Souvankham Thammavongsa and Yoon Choi, and a bonus book to read again

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During busy times like these, Furlong made most of the deliveries himself, leaving the yardmen to bag up the next orders and cut and split the loads of felled trees the farmers brought in. Through the mornings, the saws and shovels could be heard going hard at it, but when the Angelus bell rang, at noon, the men laid down their tools, washed the black off their hands, and went round to Kehoe's, where they were fed hot dinners with soup, and fish & chips on Fridays.
          'The empty sack cannot stand,' Mrs Kehoe liked to say, standing behind her new buffet counter, slicing up the meat and dishing out the veg and mash with her long, metal spoons. 
          Gladly, the men sat down to thaw out and eat their fill before having a smoke and facing back out into the cold again. 
—From Small Things Like These, a short novel by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 2021). It was first published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Faber & Faber Limited.

I must leave this city today and come to you. My bags are packed and the empty rooms remind me that I should have left a week ago. Musa, my driver, has slept at the security guard’s post every night since last Friday, waiting for me to wake him up at dawn so we can set out on time. But my bags still sit in the living room, gathering dust.
          I have given most of what I acquired here—furniture, electronic devices, even house fittings—to the stylists who worked in my salon. So, every night for a week now, I’ve tossed about on this bed without a television to shorten my insomniac hours.
          There’s a house waiting for me in Ife, right outside the university where you and I first met. I imagine it now, a house not unlike this one, its many rooms designed to nurture a big family: man, wife and many children. I was supposed to leave a day after my hairdryers were taken down. The plan was to spend a week setting up my new salon and furnishing the house. I wanted my new life in place before seeing you again.
—From Stay with Me, a novel by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Vintage, 2018). The book was originally published in hardcover in Great Britain (Canongate Books Ltd., Edinburgh) and then in the United States (Alfred A. Knopf) in 2017. 

My mother learned to speak English watching these [soap operas], and soon she started practising what she learned. When my father didn't feel like eating, she would ask who he had been eating his meals with that he had no appetite? When a sock went missing from the dryer, she would ask where it went, and when he had no answer, she would accuse him of having an affair. 
—From How to Pronounce Knife, a short story collection by Souvankham Thammavongsa (Little, Brown and Company, 2020). This book won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award, and it was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN America Open Book Award. The segment above is from the story "Edge of the World," which appears on pages 93-105 of the hardcover from Little, Brown in the United States. The collection is also available from McClelland & Stewart in Canada and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom.

Once, before [the cancer] got so bad, she took her handbag and left. No one knew where she went. But later they found out that she had taken the 7 line to Main Street, Flushing. Even though I have never met James mother, I can picture her on that day, buying a sponge cake in the gift box and holding it by the ears. She paid the visit to Elder Huang, the optometrist, who is the matchmaker. Afterward, Mr. Huang contacted so-and-so, and so-and-so, until one day in September, Big Mother—which is my father's older brother's wife—came to our Front Gate and cried out: I'm here!

          Inside the house, we all ran around. My mother slapped every cushion on the guest sofa. She said, "Leave it, leave it," to our Miss, who was trying to pull off the dry flowers from the butterfly orchid on the glass table. She put Miss in the Back Room with Min-soo so that he would not be under Big Mother's eye-measure. She pushed me to the kitchen. Finally she opened the door as Big Mother came up the steps from the courtyard.
—From "First Language," a short story by Yoon Choi, from her collection Skinship (Knopf, 2021). This story appears on pages 44-79 of the Vintage Books trade paperback edition, 2022. This specific segment appears on page 46.  

Bonus book to read again: 

When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost. This did not mean my mother was dead. In those days, a ghost was anything we were forbidden to talk about. So I knew Popo wanted me to forget my mother on purpose, and this is how I came to remember nothing of her. The life that I knew began in the large house in Ningpo with the cold hallways and tall stairs. This was my uncle and auntie's family house, where I lived with Popo and my little brother. 
—From The Joy Luck Club, a novel by Amy Tan (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1989/Penguin Books, 2016). The section above is from "Scar," which is on pages 33-41 of the Penguin paperback reissued with a preface by Amy Tan in 2019 for the thirtieth anniversary of the book's publication.