Washoe County Library System

"Set in the post-martial-law era of 1990s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive...

A disillusioned and raggedy American reporter and his drunken photojournalist partner are the last to see three Japanese schoolgirls who disappear into Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's largest national park. The journalists--who are themselves suspects-- investigate the disappearance along with the girls' homeroom teacher, their bickering classmates, and a seasoned and wary Taiwanese detective. The conflicts between them--complicated by the outrageousness of...

"Taipei is rocked by the back-to-back murders of a petty criminal and a police captain just as the city is preparing to host the big Austronesian Cultural Festival. The celebration is set to bring in indigenous performers from all around the Pacific Rim to the island nation of Taiwan. Jing-nan, the proprietor of Unknown Pleasures, a popular food stand at Taipei's largest night market, is thrown into the intrigue. Is he being set up to take the rap,...

"When an American woman inherits the wealth of her Taiwanese family, she travels to confront them about their betrayals of the past in this stunning debut by Lyn Liao Butler. Lexa Thomas has never quite fit in. Having grown up in a family of blondes while more closely resembling Constance Wu, she's neither white enough nor Asian enough. Visiting her father in Taiwan as a child, Lexa thought she'd finally found a place where she belonged. But that...