Naomi Hirahara

"It's been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California--but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles. Aki...

With her parents on the verge of separating, a devastated twelve-year-old Japanese American girl spends the summer in Los Angeles with her grandparents, where she folds paper cranes into wedding displays, becomes involved with a young skateboarder, and learns how complicated relationships can be.

""Hirahara has a keen eye for the telling detail and an assured sense of character."--Los Angeles Times At Dodger Stadium it's Japan vs. Korea in the World Baseball Classic, but before the first pitch is thrown, Mas Arai finds himself in the middle of a murder. Mysteries layer atop mysteries in this sixth in the award-winning series featuring the most unlikely of sleuths, an aging, widowed, not-exactly-communicative gardener from Altadena, California....

"It's the middle of the pandemic and Hawai'i has been virtually closed to tourists. So when Leilani Santiago and her young sisters save a mysterious woman wearing a lei from drowning in Waimea Bay in Kaua'i questions abound: who is she and where did she come from? The lei, which is made of mokihana berries, the official flower of Kaua'i, is traced back to Leilani's best friend, the very pregnant Courtney Kahuakai, and her family's flower business....

"Ellie stops for a friendly chat with gardener Eduardo Fuentes while patroling one of Los Angeles's premier concert halls. A few minutes later she's shocked to discover him lying at the bottom of a staircase, clinging to life and whispering something indecipherable. Nearby, the father of Xu, a Chinese classical musician superstar, claims Fuentes was knocked down while attempting to steal his son's multi-million dollar cello, a story Ellie has trouble...

"Leilani Santiago is back in her birthplace, the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, to help keep afloat the family business, a shave ice shack. When she goes to work one morning, she stumbles across a dead body, a young pro surfer who was being coached by her estranged father. As her father soon becomes the No. 1 murder suspect, Leilani must find the real killer and somehow safeguard her ill mother, little sisters, and grandmother while also preserving a...

"We Are Here celebrates 30 of the most influential Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in U.S. history"--

"A collection of short stories from some of today's biggest crime writers, including Naomi Hirahara, David Bart, and Sara Paretsky, explores the idea of "home" and the crimes that endanger one's feelings of safety there."--