New Releases by Rachel Khong

From the beloved author of New York Times bestseller Real Americans, a brilliant short story collection about love, life, and the anguish of becoming oneself in a time when it’s so easy to be someone else. The characters in these pages find themselves facing extraordinary choices in scenarios that range from the everyday to the absurd: The U.S. government injects all citizens with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. God does away with humans in favor of something much better. A woman adopts a cat who conjures the ghosts of her ex-loves. The simple, mellowed memory of a sweet college crush. These stories go deep beneath the surface, touching on everything from the awkwardness of dating in your thirties to what it means to be an Asian woman in America—in fact, what it means to be American at all, and to be human. Along the way, the characters we meet must stop to consider interventions from the supernatural, the earthly, and the immortal. Playful, profane, and yet enveloped with profound compassion for this life we’re living, these stories take on dating, marriage, childbearing age; intimacy, memory, race, and capitalism; living, dying, and being dead. But at their very core, they are tales of love in all its forms—what it means to be in love when you’re not supposed to be, or not to be in love when you wish you were; to fail at dating apps or find yourself in weird-but-wonderful lifelong friendships; to struggle, even, in remembering your husband in heaven. Ranging from sinister to tender, witty, and without fail expertly paced, these stories will have you laughing out loud one minute and reaching out for your best friend the next.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA’S MAY BOOK CLUB PICK • From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? "Mesmerizing"—Brit Bennett • "A page turner.”—Ha Jin • “Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"—Andrew Sean Greer • "Traverses time with verve and feeling."—Raven Leilani Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love. In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers. In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home. Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

«Un catálogo de nuestros días, una canción de amor a lo efímero, una colección de instantáneas de las celebraciones y fallas cotidianas. La suma de estos fragmentos crea una novela que inesperadamente te desnuda y te deja sintiéndote más compasivo... y perdonado». --STEPHANIE DANLER, autora de la novela bestseller Sweetbitter Ruth acaba de romper su compromiso amoroso y siente que la vida no es exactamente lo que había planeado. A sus treinta años renuncia a su trabajo, deja la ciudad en la que vive y regresa a casa de sus padres sólo para encontrar que su vida familiar es aún más complicada de lo que imaginaba. Su padre, un reconocido profesor de Historia, está perdiendo la memoria, ha comenzado a olvidar desde cosas cotidianas, como la forma de sus alimentos favoritos, hasta sus recuerdos más preciados. Su madre no puede con la culpa. ¿Será que es la responsable de que su esposo ahora padezca alzhéimer? A Ruth sólo le queda acompañarlos en lo inevitable: verlos envejecer y de nuevo aprender a vivir con ellos, con todo y los regaños de su padre y las vitaminas de su madre. Una novela de la vida... y el corazón roto. Y amor.

Rachel Khong wants to elevate cabbage from its lowly peasantish reputation to its rightful position among the vegetable firmament, where it belongs.

Wenn das Gedächtnis des eigenen Vaters schwindet, hilft nur noch Humor. Und ein gutes Steak. Rachel Khongs Debütroman »Das Jahr, in dem Dad ein Steak bügelte« thematisiert den Moment im Leben jedes Menschen, wenn sich das Eltern-Kind-Verhältnis umkehrt. Sehr humorvoll beschreibt sie den Alltag mit einem dementen Familienmitglied, mit all seinen traurigen Tiefen, aber auch mit den urkomischen Höhen. Ruth ist 30, als ihr Verlobter sie plötzlich verlässt. Völlig aus der Bahn geworfen, kommt sie der Bitte ihrer Mutter nach, kündigt Job und Wohnung und zieht für ein Jahr wieder zurück zu ihren Eltern. Dort soll sie ein Auge auf ihren Vater werfen, einen berühmten Geschichtsprofessor, der nach und nach sein Gedächtnis verliert. Aus purer Verzweiflung verbannt seine Ehefrau alles aus dem Haus, was nur irgendwie im Verdacht steht, Demenz zu begünstigen. Ruth schafft es aber zusammen mit einigen Verbündeten, dem Leben ihres Vaters noch einmal einen Sinn zu geben, indem sie zum Beispiel sein geliebtes Seminar zur amerikanischen Geschichte heimlich weiterhin stattfinden lassen, ohne dass der Dekan Wind davon bekommt. Mit viel Humor und einer ordentlichen Portion Situationskomik schildert Ruth das Jahr mit ihrem Vater, das die beiden immer enger zusammenschweißt. »Unglaublich ergreifend. Rachel Khongs erster Roman schleicht sich an, so wie das Leben es manchmal tut. Und der Herzschmerz. Und die Liebe.« Miranda July

Un roman pétillant et touchant, mené par une héroine irrésistible, qui se penche sur la famille et les détours improbables que peut prendre la vie. Après avoir fait preuve d'un comportement pour le moins étrange, Howard Young, éminent professeur d'histoire, vient d'être diagnostiqué comme souffrant de la maladie d'Alzheimer. Quand sa femme demande l'aide de leur fille Ruth, celle-ci s'installe dans la maison parentale pour une année. À trente ans, en proie à ses propres doutes et confrontée à une vie qui ne ressemble pas à ce qu'elle avait imaginé, Ruth se retrouve plongée dans le joyeux chaos qui règne au sein de la famille : entre les rares moments de lucidité de son père et le comportement erratique de sa mère, la situation s'annonce plus compliquée que prévu. Un premier roman aussi frais qu'original, parsemé d'anecdotes loufoques, d'humour et d'humanité.

Her life at a crossroads, a young woman goes home again in this funny and inescapably moving debut from a wonderfully original new literary voice.

A handbook, a cookbook, an eggbook: this quasi-encyclopedic ovarian overview is the only tome you need to own about the indispensable egg. Eggs: star of the most important meal of the day, and, to hear billions of cooks and chefs tell it, quite possibly the world's most important food. Does that make Lucky Peach's All About Eggs the world's most important book? Probably yes. In essays, anecdotes, how-tos, and foolproof recipes, this egg-centric volume celebrates everything an egg can be and do. Whether illuminating the progress of an egg through a chicken, or teaching you how to poach the perfect egg, All About Eggs bursts with facts to deploy at your next cocktail party—then serves up a killer deviled egg recipe to serve while you’re doing it. All About Eggs is for anyone who has ever delighted in the pleasures of an omelet, marveled at the snowflake patterns on a century egg, or longed to make a sky-high soufflé.

ABSTRACT: Hello, Vitamin is about the weirdness of families, the limits of memory, the numerous pasts that comprise every individual history. It's about time and how we spend it. It's about getting reacquainted with the people you used to be.