12 Must-Read Books Releasing in May 2025 By Asian Authors
April showers bring May flowers~Whether you're in the mood for something tender, thrilling, or thought-provoking, there's something here for every reader this May. Keep reading to discover some of our most anticipated releases this month!
The Original Daughter Jemimah Wei
In this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.
Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.
When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.
In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary
Pages: 368
Why should you read it? The Original Daughter is a powerful literary debut set in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore, following two sisters bound by a complex family history and relentless societal pressures. As they strive for academic success in a world that demands perfection, their deep bond is tested by betrayal, forcing them to confront the cost of ambition, identity, and loyalty. With emotional depth and sharp social commentary, Jemimah Wei explores what it means to belong—within a family and within a rapidly changing society.
Time Loops & Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau
The “masterful, inspiring, and full of heart” (Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author) Jackie Lau returns with a thoroughly unique love story about a woman reliving the same Friday over and over again—and the intriguing man who can’t quite remember her.
Noelle Tom really shouldn’t have eaten those dumplings at the night market. But the old lady at the stall said they’d give her what she needed most, and what Noelle desperately needed after another long workweek was food.
Except now she’s reliving the same Friday over and over. Every morning her alarm goes off at 6:45 no matter what, the Wordle answer is always “happy,” and she watches a silly squirrel video go viral day after day. And no matter how much she works on the same proposal, it’s always erased when she wakes up. It seems Monday will never come in this workaholic’s worst nightmare.
Noelle has no idea how being trapped in a time loop is the “thing she needed most,” especially now that everything seems meaningless. Sure, three fancy meals in a row is a fun treat, but it’s getting repetitive. Noelle’s not sure what lesson the old lady was trying to impart. Even a trip to the dumpling stall doesn’t help…because there’s no sign of it.
But then she meets a young woman who also ate the dumplings, and good-looking Cam, who appears in multiple places on her Friday. While he seems to have no memory of their encounters, there are signs he might be the key to getting un-stuck. But Noelle will have to put work aside and live a little in order to make him notice her. As their flirtation progresses, Noelle begins to worry that if she ever gets to turn the calendar page, Cam won’t know who she is and her life may never return to what it was before that fateful Friday…
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Romance, Time Travel, Fiction
Pages: 339
Why should you read it? Jackie Lau’s latest is a fun, heartfelt rom-com about a woman stuck reliving the same Friday over and over after eating some suspicious dumplings—and the charming guy who might be her way out. As Noelle navigates this unexpected time loop, she starts to question her workaholic habits and whether a perfectly planned life is really what she wants. Full of warmth, humor, and unexpected connection, this is a love story that reminds you to slow down and savor the moment.
Detective Aunty (Kausar Khan Investigates #1) by Uzma Jalaluddin
When her grown daughter is suspected of murder, a charming and tenacious widow digs into the case to unmask the real killer in this twisty, page-turning whodunnit—the first book in a cozy new detective series from the acclaimed author of Ayesha at Last.
After her husband’s unexpected death eighteen months ago, Kausar Khan never thought she’d receive another phone call as heartbreaking—until her thirty-something daughter, Sana, phones to say that she's been arrested for killing the unpopular landlord of her clothing boutique. Determined to help her child, Kausar heads to Toronto for the first time in nearly twenty years.
Returning to the Golden Crescent suburb where she raised her children and where her daughter still lives, Kausar finds that the thriving neighborhood she remembered has changed. The murder of Sana’s landlord is only the latest in a wave of local crimes which have gone unsolved.
And the facts of the case are Sana found the man dead in her shop at a suspiciously early hour, with a dagger from her windowfront display plunged in his chest. And Kausar—a woman with a keen sense of observation and deep wisdom honed by her years—senses there’s more to the story than her daughter is telling.
With the help of some old friends and her plucky teenage granddaughter, Kausar digs into the investigation to uncover the truth. Because who better to pry answers from unwilling suspects than a meddlesome aunty? But even Kausar can’t predict the secrets, lies, and betrayals she finds along the way…
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Cozy Mystery, Fiction
Pages: 336
Why should you read it? This witty and twist-filled whodunnit introduces Kausar Khan, a sharp-witted widow who jumps into detective mode when her daughter is accused of murder. Set in a vibrant Toronto suburb, the story blends cozy mystery with family drama as Kausar teams up with her granddaughter and old friends to uncover the truth. With heart, humor, and plenty of twists, it’s a fresh, engaging start to a new series perfect for fans of meddlesome aunties and page-turning mysteries.
Flying in Colors by Padma Prasad Reddeppa
Aunties tell nine-year-old Pavi that she’s asking too many “big women” questions, but she’s tired of grown-up secrets. How are babies born? And why do people die? A beautiful debut about family, tradition, and the healing that comes from finding the answers.
It’s 1975, Tamil Nadu, South India, and nine-year-old Pavi is living a carefree life with her large intergenerational family. Everyday is an adventure. Why not steal 233 mangoes from the neighbor’s tree? Or make up grand stories that take her to Jupiter? If only there wasn’t a sadness lingering over the family. You see, her uncle Selva died just five months after she was born.
Pavi may have been just a baby when Selva died, but she feels close to him, as if he’s watching over her, helping her when she needs it. But she has so many questions about Selva’s death. And why does anyone die when they do?
The grown-ups in Pavi’s life are hiding something. They dismiss her questions. For instance, when Pavi and her cousins ask about babies, all anyone says is “Little women are asking big women questions.” And when she asks about Selva, there are no answers either. Why is talking about life and death so hard? Pavi is tired of grown-up secrets!
But what if those answers can hurt, or bad things happen? Can prayers and traditions really protect those we love? Pavi is determined to find out.
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Middle Grade
Pages: 320
Why should you read it? Set in 1970s Tamil Nadu, this heartfelt debut follows curious nine-year-old Pavi as she navigates childhood, family secrets, and the mysteries of life and death. As she pushes back against the silence of the adults around her, Pavi’s search for truth becomes a tender, often funny journey of growing up, grief, and healing. With rich cultural detail and emotional depth, it’s a moving story about the power of questions—and the courage it takes to ask them.
Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family by Jill Damatac
In the style of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings, filmmaker Jill Damatac blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as she cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America.
Jill Damatac left the US in 2015 after living there as an undocumented immigrant with her family for twenty-two years. America was the only home she knew, where invisibility had become her identity—her mother tongue and indigenous roots long buried—and where poverty, domestic violence, ill health, and xenophobia were everyday experiences. First traveling to her native Philippines, she eventually settled in London, England, where she was free to pursue an education at Cambridge University, fully investigate her roots, and process what happened to her and her family; after nine years, she was granted British citizenship.
Interweaving forgotten colonial history and long-buried indigenous traditions, Damatac takes us through her time in America, cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace, Dirty Kitchen explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration, belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition, and comfort of food, can answer them.
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Food
Pages: 256
Why should you read it? Dirty Kitchen is a powerful blend of memoir, food writing, and history, as filmmaker Jill Damatac traces her journey from undocumented life in America to rediscovering her Filipino roots abroad. Through cooking, she confronts the trauma of invisibility, displacement, and colonial erasure, weaving personal and ancestral stories into a moving exploration of identity, belonging, and healing. Thoughtful and lyrical, this book is a poignant reminder of how food can nourish both body and soul—and help piece together a fractured past.
The Manor of Dreams by Christina Li
Mexican Gothic meets Everything I Never Told You in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.
They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But silence can be deadly.
Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse.
Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood Vivian’s grand, sprawling Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.
In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of the families’ unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?
Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.
Publication date: May 6, 2025
Genres: Horror, Gothic, Mystery
Pages: 352
Why should you read it? The Manor of Dreams is a haunting, multi-generational gothic novel that unearths long-buried secrets when two estranged Chinese American families are forced to share the decaying mansion of a reclusive Hollywood legend. As tensions rise and supernatural forces stir, Vivian Yin’s daughters must confront the painful truths behind their mother’s final days—and the dark legacy of ambition, betrayal, and silence that haunts them all. With echoes of Mexican Gothic and Everything I Never Told You, this gripping story explores the price of the American dream through a chilling blend of mystery, memory, and family drama.
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
Publication date: May 13, 2025
Genres: Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Queer
Pages: 416
Why should you read it? Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness is a luminous, emotionally rich novel about the healing power of unexpected connection. When a suicidal teen and a lonely, aging widow cross paths, their unlikely friendship transforms both of their lives, weaving a tender story of chosen family, memory, and survival on the margins. With Vuong’s signature lyricism and emotional depth, this novel explores how love and compassion can offer redemption—and the courage to begin again.
The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland by Michelle Young
A riveting and stylish story set in Paris during World War II, THE ART SPY uncovers how an unlikely heroine infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the cultural legacy of the West.
On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a 45-year-old woman of quiet daring, found herself in a truly terrifying position. Frontline French tanks had rolled down the Paris streets and surrounded where she stood. The Nazi leadership was hiding in her beloved Jeu de Paume museum behind her. Bullets flew over the Seine. Nazi soldiers were flooding onto the streets in surrender. Would the museum curator, peering through her glasses, be killed before she could tell her story, a story that would mean saving humanity's cultural inheritance?
Based on troves of previously undiscovered documents, THE ART SPY tells the story of Valland, the only Resistance spy in the heart of the Nazi’s art looting headquarters in Paris. A veritable female Monuments Man, who until now was written out of history, she bore witness to the largest art theft in history. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Rose was his undercover adversary.
During every stage of World War II, she was front and center in the action. She came face to face with Göring, she passed crucial information secretly to the Resistance network, put herself deliberately in harm’s way to protect the museum and her staff during the Battle of Paris, and had a gun put to her back during the last hours of Liberation Day as a mob broke into the museum she was protecting. She also singlehandedly provided the information to stop the last train of looted artworks to leave France, including works by Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Braque, Degas, Modigliani and Toulouse-Lautrec.
This incredible story takes us through pre-War Paris, when the geniuses of our modern times--Picasso, Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Le Corbusier--socialized in glittering cafes. It places us in the tensions of conflict building in the glorious cities of Europe and through the harrowing years when brave people, such as Rose, had to risk everything to fight for what they believed in.
This is a must read for those who loved the film Monument Men or the book,The Rape of Europa. In the spirit of Hidden Figures, Rose is a unique female hero who has not been yet celebrated as she should.
Publication date: May 13, 2025
Genres: Nonfiction, Art
Pages: 400
Why should you read it? The Art Spy is a gripping, cinematic account of Rose Valland, an unsung heroine who risked her life to save Europe’s stolen art from the Nazis during World War II. As the only Resistance spy inside Hitler’s looted art headquarters in Paris, Valland secretly tracked priceless masterpieces and passed critical intelligence to the Allies—facing down danger, betrayal, and a gun to her back to protect cultural history. Perfect for fans of Monuments Men and Hidden Figures, this riveting true story finally gives Rose the recognition she deserves.
Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang
From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection
Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.
Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.
Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.
Publication date: May 13, 2025
Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller
Pages: 304
Why should you read it? Immaculate Conception is a dark, provocative novel that explores obsession, ambition, and the price of connection through the lens of a toxic friendship in the elite art world. When struggling artist Enka becomes entangled with her brilliant, rising-star friend Mathilde—and a billionaire-backed technology that can transfer trauma—boundaries between identity, empathy, and control begin to unravel. Sharp, unsettling, and deeply original, this novel probes what it means to truly know someone—and what we risk when we try to possess them.
Red Sword by Bora Chung, Anton Hur (Translator)
Amid a literal fog of war on a disputed planet, a woman is thrust into battle, forced to fight in her captors' war. With an empire at her back, ready to kill her at the slightest hesitation, this slaveturned- reluctant hero must battle through an unknown enemy, scientific abominations, and truly alien terrain to uncover the truth about her identity and that of her enslaved companions. Chung's novel—told in sparse, evocative prose and expertly translated by Anton Hur—draws on the real history of Korean soldiers who fought and died in a war against Russia on behalf of the Qing Dynasty. Red Sword combines stunning world-building with a thought-provoking challenge to readers: what does it mean to wield power over others?
Publication date: May 13, 2025
Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 220
Why should you read it? Red Sword is a gripping sci-fi novel that blends vivid world-building with historical resonance, following a woman forced to fight in a brutal war for an empire that enslaves her. As she battles strange enemies and unearths hidden truths, her journey becomes a haunting exploration of identity, resistance, and the cost of wielding—or surviving—power. Inspired by the real history of Korean soldiers under the Qing Dynasty, Chung’s sparse, lyrical prose delivers a powerful meditation on agency, memory, and what it means to fight for a freedom you’ve never known.
Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan
An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.
“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.” —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.
Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
Publication date: May 13, 2025
Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Dystopia
Pages: 320
Why should you read it? Set in a hauntingly submerged San Francisco of the future, this stunning debut follows the unexpected bond between a stalled young artist and a 130-year-old woman who hires her as a caregiver. As the city sinks and time runs out, their connection rekindles Bo’s creative spirit and reveals the quiet power of memory, art, and presence. Tender, lyrical, and deeply human, this is a novel about holding on—to stories, to place, and to each other—in the face of inevitable loss.
Things in Nature Merely Grow byYiyun Li
Yiyun Li’s remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James.
“There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.
“There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.”
There is no good way to say this—because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, “a single point in a timeline.” Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she “doing the things that work,” including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.
This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving or mourning. As Li writes, “The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will alw
Publication date: May 20, 2025
Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir
Pages: 192
Why should you read it? Yiyun Li offers a profoundly moving and intellectually rigorous meditation on life after unimaginable loss, as she reflects on the deaths of her two sons by suicide. Refusing sentimentality or easy answers, Li turns to literature, philosophy, and everyday acts of living to grapple with what it means to exist in the wake of grief. This is not a book about mourning—it’s a quiet, defiant act of presence and love, an attempt to keep being in a world forever changed.
