SPIT is the raw and electrifying memoir of Jonnie Park—better known by his rap moniker, Dumbfoundead—whose rise from an unruly childhood in Los Angeles’s iconic  Koreatown kid to international rap star is as unlikely as it is exhilarating.

Born in Argentina to Korean parents and smuggled by a coyote across the US-Mexico border at age three, Park grew up in L.A. amid cultural dislocation, his father’s violent alcoholism, and the turbulent protests and riots of the early 1990s. 

Searching for belonging, he found salvation in the highly competitive underground world of battle rap, where he was among the only successful Asian American battle rappers. He developed his freestyle superpowers amid a motley crew of characters at Project Blowed, the legendary South Central L.A. open-mic venue, many of whom went on to big careers in the music industry.

Told through the lens of his life’s greatest battles—his father’s rage, racist stereotypes, the pressures of fame, his own addiction—Park tells his story with his trademark humor, lyrical style, and unflinching honesty.

Like Eminem’s 8 Mile, SPIT charts the author’s course from dropout to cultural pioneer, one verse at a time. Featuring vivid graphic novel–style illustrations at the end of each chapter, SPIT gives visual life to the inner demons and outer adversaries Park faced along the way. From open-mics in South Central to music festivals across the globe, Park’s memoir is a testament to creativity, grit, and the power of speaking your truth—even when your voice isn’t what the world expects to hear.

More than just a chronicle of an artist’s path to success, SPIT is a groundbreaking story of identity, resilience, and reinvention. It is also the story of an Asian American outsider who turned life’s challenges into his stage, and battled his way to triumph.

“Choi's true-crime biography adds much-needed detail and perspective to Noguchi's unusual and compelling story.”
—Booklist

L.A. Coroner is a gripping true crime biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the controversial “Coroner to the Stars,” who performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Natalie Wood, and hundreds of other notable personalities. Choi, an award-winning historian and professor, deftly blends Los Angeles history, death investigation and forensic science, and Asian American history in a feat of exquisite storytelling.

L.A. Coroner is the first-ever biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Chief Medical Examiner–Coroner of Los Angeles County from 1967 to 1982. Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Noguchi conducted the official autopsies of some of the most high-profile figures of his time. His elaborate press conferences, which often generated more controversy than they did answers, catapulted him into the public eye.

Noguchi was also the inspiration for the popular 1970s–80s television drama Quincy, M.E., starring Jack Klugman. Featuring never-before-published details about Noguchi’s most controversial cases, L.A. Coroner is a meticulously researched biography of a complex man, set against the backdrop of the social and racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s and Hollywood celebrity culture.

February 24, 2020, started out like any other dayfor journalist and television anchor Dion Lim of San Francisco’s ABC7 News. Planning her pitches for the morning’s editorial meeting, she checked her Instagram account and saw a message from someone she didn’t recognize. Attached was a horrifying video in which men were beating and yelling racist slurs at an elderly Asian man who had been collecting cans in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. Lim felt compelled to inves-tigate the story, help the man who “looked freakishly like my dad,” and bring the perpetrators to justice.Thus began Lim’s three-years-and-counting quest to bring at-tention to the appalling rise of anti-Asian hate and violence in America. Amplify! My Fight for Asian America brings readers on an eye-opening journey alongside Lim, who has unwittingly be-come a national hero for her relentless fight for Asian American visibility. Through deeply personal anecdotes about her own life as a Chinese American, exclusive interviews with survivors, ac-tivists, and historians, and incisive historical context, she pro-vides the very first book to tackle one of the biggest political and social controversies of this century from the perspective of the AAPI community. Amplify! offers a meaningful look at the real stories behind the headlines, providing Asian Americans and al-lies of all backgrounds a vital resource to broaden their perspec-tive and contribute to positive social transformation.

Winner of the Asian American Writers' Workshop Pages in Progress Prize

"A delightful and perceptive jaunt into the heart of the Indian American community of New Jersey, Edison is a charming, often hilarious novel brimming over with life, laughter, and dreams worthy of the most outrageous Bollywood movies.”
—Chitra Divakaruni, author of Independence and Mistress of Spices

"A sparkling epic worthy of Bollywood's silver screens."
—Kirkus Reviews

Edison is a Bollywood-style epic tale brimming with song and dance, action and comedy, love and pathos, and cameos by dozens of real Indian stars of yesterday and today—a hilariously entertaining masala film in the guise of literary fiction. 

Along the way, we glean bits of Bollywood history and fall in love with an improbable cast of characters that inhabits Edison’s “Little India.” Edison is a wild, romantic, laugh-out-loud love letter to the Indian American community of Edison, New Jersey, where author Pallavi Dixit grew up.

The unlikely star of Edison is Prem Kumar, the hapless youngest son of a titan of New Delhi industry. Obsessed with Hindi movies—what the world calls Bollywood—he is uninterested in joining the family business or marrying the spear-wielding heiress chosen by his father. He runs away to chase his filmmaking dreams in America, but his plans are immediately derailed. Instead, he finds himself crashing on a mattress and working at an Exxon gas station in the Indian immigrant community of Edison, New Jersey.

Although life is not going according to script, Prem finds a happy rhythm in this bewildering setting. When the beautiful and ambitious Leena Engineer bursts onto the scene, she and her grocery store–owning father upend Prem’s short-term plan to do as little as possible, launching him on an epic adventure to make something of himself. Supported by an unruly cast of roommates, aunties, murderous yet orderly mobsters, and film stars at once glamorous and ludicrous, Prem test-drives the role of hero, and along the way, he witnesses around him the transformation of an ordinary suburb into a bustling "Little India."

"Ambitious . . . themes of family, friendship, and personal integrity shine."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A highly engaging journey of connection and transformation and an innovative read for this present age." —Rita Williams-Garcia, Newbery Honor author of One Crazy Summer

Welcome to The Vale, a world that grows by the power of imagination

A magical new phenomenon from the New York Times bestselling author and executive producer of the Loveboat, Taipei series (adapted to the Netflix film Love in Taipei).

Thirteen-year-old Bran Joseph Lee has spent half his life building the Vale, an immersive, AI-generated, virtual-reality environment using technology created by his inventor parents. It's a lush fantasy world complete with a Blue Forest, a Castle, and adventures with his mushroom-obsessed Elf named Gnomly—a much better place to spend his days compared to his real life, where his parents have suffered through the failed launches of one invention after another. 

Bran wants nothing more than to see his Elves come fully to life, a hope that seems on the brink of reality when he enters the Vale in a multi-million-dollar competition to fund its further development. But instead, things in the Vale begin to go wrong: The sunlight is fading. A beautiful girl appears from nowhere. A wizard is stealing from the Vale’s inhabitants. And the strangest part of all is that none of this is the young inventor’s doing. 

Can Bran and Gnomly uncover the truth of what is happening before both their worlds are destroyed?

Look out for The Vale—Origins, the short film prequel to The Vale starring three-time Tony Award winner Lea Salonga, coming to film festivals and screenings near you!

"Exposes both the wonder of AI and its pitfalls, and the elastic boundary between. Storytelling at its best!"
—Kathi Appelt, National Book Award Finalist and Newbery Honor author of The Underneath