Keiko the Fairy is a great adventure of the heart and a coming-of-age story set in contemporary Japan. The star characters are a 16 year-old half-Japanese girl named "Red" who attends the American School in Tokyo and a 17 year-old American Naval Intelligence seaman named Nick. Our young heroes are introduced by an unexpected source, a boisterous 1,400 year-old Japanese Bamboo Wood Fairy named Keiko. Keiko tries to help her young friends navigate through the dramatic events that are impacting their lives by drawing from her long and rich historical and philosophical past. She conveys her influence by using her own unique methods of storytelling and personal powers like fairy dream vision: which allows the recipient to see the events of the past and feel the emotions of the character in view. Ultimately, she gives her friends tools they will need to help them find inner peace and happiness in their often difficult and dangerous world.

The Silk Road, the second book of the Keiko series, is filled with twists and unexpected turns as Red tries to avoid the mob in Tokyo, and the U.S. Navy sends Nick on special assignment. Red is invited to the Imperial Palace where Empress Meiko extends her hand in friendship and gives Red important information about her mother's true identity. Nick is sent to China for its 60th Naval Anniversary celebration, and secretly attempts a dangerous mission to retrieve Red's mother and the Crown of India, with help from a very unexpected ally. Red and Nick learn about the ancient trade routes from China to the Middle East, called the Silk Road, and how powerful philosophical ideas accompanied the precious riches traded. In the face of extraordinary challenges, Keiko continues to share her love and wisdom with the young couple, as they begin to realize they care for one another deeply.

The third book in the Keiko series brings major changes for both Nick and Red, as they move to Tokyo. Nick enters Tokyo University on a scholarship awarded by the Empress of Japan to study marine archeology. He meets an enchanting 85-year-old woman that teaches him many things about life and love. He is immediately sent on a research boat to explore the "Great Garbage Patch" in the Pacific Ocean and an underwater monument, at Yonaguni, thought to be from an ancient culture, thousands of years old. Red, although finding her own empowerment, enters a path of trouble. Her parents send her to visit family in the United States. After more trouble, she unexpectedly meets an Apache medicine woman who brings about profound personal healing and transformation for Red-not to mention, a powerful realization: Japan's historic connection to the Native American people.

Dylan "Books" Griffith isn't the first soldier to lose friends in Afghanistan. Or the first to be sent home wounded. Nor is he the first to find it hard to find his way in the civilian world, despite his short time of deployment. But when alcohol, drugs, and sex can't wallpaper over his deepest wounds, Dylan embarks on a quest to save himself and search for deeper meaning-by way of a vision-quest trip by motorcycle across the Southwest to the Hopi tribal home of a fallen comrade. What he finds there astonishes him-but who and what he encounters along the way stirs his soul in equal measure. DYLAN'S DIVIDE is a story with familiar themes, but a wholly unique story, infused with the heat of passion and the heart of an underdog-and a hope that burns brighter than the high-noon highways of the Southwest.

What's the skateboarding daughter of professional bodybuilders to do when she's expelled from a posh East Coast boarding school in a cloud of sex scandal? Barbella goes back home to Venice Beach, California, where she tries to find new purpose in her old surroundings. Enter the new Maxi Ho Gym, a wild-eyed Korean ex-K-Pop star's gamble that "Muscle Beach" is ready for natural fitness without barbells and steroids. Barbella joins his ragtag team alongside a homeless philosopher, an ex-Navy SEAL, a brassy Brooklyn yoga instructor, a theatrical Compton dancer, and a handsome Chechen parkour star who falls for her. When financial realities threaten to close the gym, the only hope for a last-hour rescue comes from the unlikeliest of sources-and from a stunning decades-old secret. Full of crazy heart and cheerfully profane camaraderie, the "pali pali Boom Boom!" BARBELLA will make you cheer and crack up in equal measure.

Sheppard Schulek has spent his entire life trying to find what it feels like to be "normal." He lives with the difficulties of having an abusive father, celebrity mother, sexual abuse, and his struggles to find personal peace in a lifetime journey of travel and search. We follow Sheppard's path through the university experience, to Mexico, Europe, Japan, entry in to his professional world, a first failed marriage to a coffee heiress, and finally-in the most unexpected way-he finds his redemption.

Kokugaku in Meiji-period Japan elucidates kokugaku's gradual shift from a politico-religious movement to an educational and academic discipline. Michael Wachutka investigates numerous prominent kokugaku scholars and describes their new latitude for actively influencing the nation-oriented discourse in Meiji-period Japan.

The Rough Guide to Manga is the ultimate handbook offering a comprehensive overview of one of the most fashionable genre's in today's popular culture. The guide features the manga story: from manga's twelfth-century roots to the rise of English-language manga with profiles of influential creators like Leiji Matsumoto and CLAMP as well as publishers to look out for. You'll find an overview of manga's unique styles, techniques and genres decoded as well as a canon of fifty must-read manga, including the iconic Astro Boy, global hits Fruits Basket and Battle Royale, plus less well-known works like Please Save My Earth. The Rough Guide to Manga demystifies unfamiliar terms and genres for newcomers whilst offering manga fans plenty of new recommendations including listings for manga magazines and websites along with a glossary of terms. Crammed with illustrations, and including a section on the anime connection, this is must-have Manga for beginners and enthusiasts alike.

Long established as the standard reference tool for the identification of Japanese names on works of art, and is therefore essential for collectors, galleries, auction-houses, restorers and students. A reprint of the first (1923) edition.

A collection of essays by an international cast of scholars, experts, and fans, providing a definitive, one-stop Manga resource.