The South Korean runaway bestseller, debut author Baek Se-Hee’s intimate therapy memoir—think Crying in H Mart meets Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you? ME: I don’t know, I’m—what’s the word—depressed? Do I have to go into detail? Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her—what to call it?—depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like? Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions, and harmful behaviors that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness. It will appeal to anyone who has ever felt alone or unjustified in their everyday despair.

Mary Poppins meets Bridgerton in a feel-good blend of cozy fantasy magic, historical romance, humor, and Victorian era charm, as a recent graduate of the Parasol Academy for Exceptional Nannies and Governesses finds her supernatural abilities are little help when it comes to falling for the shy, mysterious inventor who happens to be her employer . . . For readers of Heather Fawcett, Allison Saft, Katherine Arden, Freya Marske, and Olivia Atwater’s Regency Faerie Tales series. Emmeline Chase, 25-year-old widow and new alumna, may be more high-spirited than the Academy would like. Few graduates, however, could turn a mismanaged teleportation onto a duke’s rooftop into an offer of employment. But Emmeline’s circumstances, along with her desperation to support her bankrupt, incarcerated father, have made her dauntless. Which seems the primary qualification to work for expert horologist Xavier Mason, Duke of St. Lawrence, and manage his three rambunctious wards. Yet Emmeline soon discovers that the nobleman’s heart-melting voice and captivating mind present an entirely different sort of trouble. She cannot risk losing her license by fraternizing with her employer . . . Xavier’s wards have sent two nannies packing in a month thanks to frogs, firecrackers, and general mayhem. In addition, Xavier’s professional reputation is on the line. He’s already considered odd, with his talking raven companion and his fascination with timekeeping instead of pleasure-chasing with his peers. Charming, vivacious Emmeline seems intrigued with his quirks—but Xavier must have absolute peace to design London’s “King of Clocks” for Westminster Palace before the competition closes. Emmeline can no doubt restore order. As long as he doesn’t fall under her spell . . . Yet, with a possible saboteur in their midst, and the attraction flaring between them threatening to become a deliciously disastrous distraction, a touch of magic may be required . . .

Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima. Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston