What You Are Looking for Is in the Library

For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo's most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves--but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they're looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi--and the surprise book she lends each of them--will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship, and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.

Born in 1970 in Aichi Prefecture and currently living in Yokohama, Michiko Aoyama worked for two years as a reporter for a Japanese newspaper in Sydney after graduating from university. After her return to Tokyo, she started to work as a magazine editor at a publishing house before turning to full-time writing. Her work has won the first Miyazaki Book Award, the thirteenth Tenryu Literary Prize, and has been a runner-up for the 2021 Japan Booksellers' Award. Her other works include Kamakura Uzumaki lnformation Centre, Old God at the Bus Stop, Matcha Cafe on Monday, and Red, Blue, and Esquisse.Susan Momoko Hingley has a Japanese mother and British father. Born in Tokyo and raised in Munich, she is trilingual and speaks native-level English, Japanese, and German. After graduating from a law degree at the University of Warwick, she trained at East 15 Acting School in London and École Philipe Gaulier in Paris. She has worked with companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe, New National Theatre Tokyo, the BBC, and HBO.

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