WASHOKU:Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen / KANSHA: Celebrating Japan's Vegan & Vegetarian Traditionsby Elizabeth Andoh

If you like simple home-style Japanese country cooking, you'll love Elizabeth Andoh's books. She also has three websites, one for each book offering more recipes and online workshops and archives.
http://www.WASHOKUcooking.com/
http://www.KANSHAcooking.com/
http://www.KIBOcooking.com/

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

This is one of my all time favorites. What a storyteller! His other two books, which are autobiographies are also good!
"The story is a riveting saga of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone, born of a tragic union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.But it's love, not politics -- their passion for the same woman -- that will tear them apart and force Marion to flee his homeland and make his way to America, finding refuge in his work at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him, wreaking havoc and destruction, Marion has to entrust his life to the two men he has trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him."

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

Beautifully crafted, very real understanding of PTSD  in soldiers. This is a must-read!
"Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremny that defeats the most virulent of afflictions—despair."

Master of the Jinn by Irving Karchmar

Exquisitely beautiful, highly recommend this one!
"Here is a tale set on the Path of the Heart, a mystical adventure wherein a modern-day Sufi master sends seven companions on a quest for the original Ring of Power, and the greatest treasure of the ancient world - King Solomon's ring. It is the very same seal ring of a hundred legends, given to King Solomon by God to command the Jinn, those terrifying demons of living fire."

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (Armand Gamache mystery)

Am enjoying this mystery series by Louise Penny, most of which take place in and around Montreal.