WATER MIRROR ECHO by Jeff Chang, CASUALTIES OF TRUTH by Lauren Francis-Sharma have both been named to the 2025 “Books We Love” list by NPR.
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The Nameless City (Book 1), is still making headlines! The NY Times Book Review included it in its list of 11 recommendations for fans of Rick Riordan’s Olympians series, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
“Full of heart-pounding leaps and flashing swords, this dynamic graphic novel also serves up subtle references to colonization, cultural conflict and identity.” —NY Times Book Review
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Karin Slaughter is one of those authors I turn to when I want a story guaranteed to completely pull me in. We Are All Guilty Here focuses on a small Southern town where a violent crime sends shockwaves through a community full of secrets. This isn’t just a whodunit—it’s more of a “what did we all do?” It leaves you questioning everything—and talking about it long after. Expect a slow-burn suspense that packs a serious emotional punch. If you loved Pieces of Her or Pretty Girls, this one should already be on your Wish List. —DG
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“Bruce was an Asian in America at the dawn of Asian America,” writes Jeff Chang in the introduction to "Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America," his definitive biography of Bruce Lee.
“He was not only living in between two worlds,“ writes Chang. “But in a third place, one with its own history, meaning, and direction. The lives that he lived there expose the true size of the obstacle he faced, describe the complicated character of the man he became, and delineate his extraordinary achievement.”
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Denene Millner has consistently excelled throughout her 25-year career. The former entertainment reporter and political journalist for the New York Daily News—and former editor for Parenting and Honey Magazine, the seminal millennial women’s publication that debuted in the early 2000s—turned author of 35 books to-date, six of which are New York Times best-sellers; two that were adapted into screenplays, one for the silver screen—is currently vice president and publisher of Denene Millner Books, a Black children’s book imprint under Simon & Schuster Publishing House.
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On May 15, 2025, Nottoway Plantation, one of the largest antebellum mansions in Louisiana, caught fire. The event immediately sparked an intense discussion on social media about race, slavery, and how we remember American history. While many white Americans mourned the loss of this grand historical estate, several African Americans expressed joyous relief. To us, Nottoway’s transformation in the 1980s – from a brutal site of enslavement to a luxury resort and wedding venue – represented the Southern plantation tourist industry’s tendency to whitewash our past.
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A new book traces the actor’s journey from Hong Kong to Hollywood—and reveals how his career redefined Asian representation on-screen.
When Bruce Lee hit movie screens in August of 1973 with his instant blockbuster, Enter the Dragon, everything about him seemed counter-intuitive.
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In the following months, publishers both big and small will release some of their most anticipated titles, perfectly timed for readers who want to dig into a book in a park, their backyard, or a coffeehouse with a hot drink in hand. (We won’t judge you for ordering something pumpkin-spice flavored.)
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Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang (September)
Say “Bruce Lee,” and the name conjures up a vision, a concept, or an ideal to almost everybody in the world, along the lines of Muhummad Ali or Bob Marley. Poke a bit beneath the surface, though, and just what people know about the martial arts legend and film star often proves to be quite vague and ethereal. Enter Water Mirror Echo (Mariner), Jeff Chang’s lively and deeply researched biography of Lee that doubles as a probing exploration of Lee’s profound effect on Asian American identity. Along with telling the gripping story of Lee’s life and groundbreaking career, Chang (whose first book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, was named one of the best American nonfiction books of the last quarter century) reframes the legend as a crucial pioneer and catalyst of assimilation, pride, and representation who, decades after his death at the age of 32, remains a powerful icon of power and resistance. This is that rare book that’s monumental in scope, ambition, and execution—and it’s both wildly fun and deeply rewarding.
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BOOK REVIEW
Bruce Lee Died Young, but He Changed the Look of Movies Forever. An exuberant new biography by Jeff Chang charts the action star’s life and legacy as a breakout Asian American celebrity who paved the way for others.
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“That I should be an American-born Chinese was accidental,” Bruce Lee once mused, “or it might have been by my father’s arrangement.”
Lee, cinema’s greatest martial artist and the most famous Asian American of all time, was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Nov. 27, 1940, in the segregated Chinese Hospital. His parents, Li (also anglicized as “Lee” in the U.S.) Hoi Chuen and Grace Ho, had come from Hong Kong a year earlier, sailing across the Pacific to perform Cantonese opera for Chinese American audiences across the United States.
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In spring 2024, Berkeley author and activist Jeff Chang had just completed the first draft of his Bruce Lee biography, “Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America,” when he called in the “firing squad.”
Borrowing a tactic from San Jose-raised author Viet Thanh Nguyen, Chang assembled a group of trusted peers — Bruce Lee “Be Water” documentary filmmaker Bao Nguyen, authors Adam Mansbach (“Go the F— to Sleep”) and Cathy Park Hong (“Minor Feelings”), and East Bay comedian and self-proclaimed “No. 1 Bruce Lee Expert (Non-Asian Division)” W. Kamau Bell.
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Advanced Praise for Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang:
Washington Post’s Fall Publishing Preview
New York Times 25 Books Coming in September
Inside Hook The 10 Books You Should Be Reading This September
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Created by Rebecca Cutter, The Hunting Wives’ first season was based on the bestselling novel by May Cobb. Season 2 will be an original concept-based continuation of the story, using the Season 1 finale as a jumping-off point. At the start of Season 2, Sophie (Snow) and Margo (Åkerman) are on the outs. But soon enough, old secrets and new foes force them back together. As they play their dangerous games the question arises. Are they the hunters or the hunted?
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It’s been 20 years since Jeff Chang’s masterful Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, but he’s back in a big way with Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Sept. 23). Chang rejects the legend and opts for a dense portrait using rarely-seen archives, of a man whose immigration reflected the rise of Asian American communities.
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Lindsey Stewart, author of the critically acclaimed The Conjuring of America, has written an enlightening article for TIME titled “The Powerful Meaning of Black Mermaids in American History.” “For centuries, Black enslaved communities invoked mermaids as they organized rebellions against slavery,” she says in her detailed analysis.
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This Here is Love – Princess Perry
"Perry’s intersecting plots are gripping, but what’s more impressive is the way she guides us through her characters’ emotional depths."
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Karin Slaughter’s new book opens on a hot summer night in Georgia. It’s Madison Dalrymple’s 15th birthday and she has a big night planned with her best friend. But both girls go missing and there’s no easy answer to what happened to them. We Are All Guilty Here is the crime writer’s 25th book in 25 years of writing. In today’s episode, Slaughter joins NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly for a conversation that touches on the dynamics of small Southern towns and the impact of the 1979-1981 Atlanta child murders.
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