I just finished reading a very funny YA book called Nothing but the Truth(and a few white lies) for the library for the blind. Then I started Kiran Desai's Booker prize winner The Inheritance of Loss. And while at my in-laws for Christmas, I discovered a new form of fiction--literary journalism, as proclaimed by the author John Sack for his novel The Dragonhead.

The first novel is by a Chinese-American author, the second by an Indian author, and the third about the Chinese triads. So that means that, without trying at all, I've been reading Asian fiction non-stop for over a month! They're very different novels, in terms of style and subject matter, but equally enjoyable.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (and a few white lies), by Justina Chen Headley

Teenage Patty Ho is half-and-half. Her single mom is Taiwanese and her absentee dad is Caucasian. When a fortune-teller channels Patty's future through her belly button and fortells a white guy in her future, her mom ships her off to math camp at Stanford U where the cream of the math crop are as Asian and nerdy as they come. A coming-of-age tale and a teenage rite of passage further complicated by Patty's racial background, though the lessons learned are universal and priceless. Full Review

THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS, by Kiran Desai

Passionate, sweeping evocation of the immigrant experience, from the time of the Raj to the present day. Desai's prose soars, shines and shimmers as she chronicles the lives and choices of the dispossessed, the soul-destroying choices made by Indian immigrants across the generations. Fierce and tender by turns, this is a deeply-felt chronicle of the dispossessed, both the foreign-educated elite living in India and those seeking better opportunities in the New World. Full Review

THE DRAGONHEAD, by John Sack

Journalist John Sack spent twelve years shadowing and befriending the most powerful crime lord in the Chinese Mafia. In The Dragonhead, he tells the story of one man's rise through the echelons of triad society, his associates and enemies, his family and his ambition: to destroy the United States. Full Review