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After moving to Dulan, in Taitung County, Lung Ying-Tai began recording her observations of a life immersed in nature with intimate and incisive prose, capturing the fragility of the vast forests and subtle interactions that bind living things together. In Lessons from Dulan, the author takes a back seat to her subject matter – a reduction of the self that is coupled with an enhanced capacity for feeling. Through her writing, readers glimpse a world not centered on the human self, where every minute detail is a site of wonder.

The protagonist of this novel can see “threads” extending from the backs of everyone around him, connecting them to one another. The only exception is himself, a discovery that makes him suspect he has no genuine connections or feelings to the outside world. Developing from this intriguing premise, the protagonist of the novel eventually discovers his only “thread”, which links him to a police officer. After some interactions with generous doses of BL appeal, the novel shifts into mystery-genre gear as the pair heads into the police station to work on cases together. Blending mystery, BL, and an element of fantasy (in concretized form), Tied to You is the ultimate genre-bender, and highly entertaining read to boot.

We’re all familiar with the trope of the oil and water duo that ends up falling in love. It works, after all. The tension mounts, the sparks fly, but in the end, the conflict only proves how powerful, and therefore worthwhile, love is. Meeting and Missing You embraces this familiar terrain, but spices up the good-girl/bad-boy romance with a love quadrilateral in which the two female characters become fast friends after a chance meeting. The conflicting demands of friendship and romance accentuate the tug on the heartstrings, highlighting not only of love’s sweetness, but also its woes.

After the suicide of her twin brother, an adolescent girl runs away from home and the hyper-controlling tendencies of her cult-obsessed mother, only to embark on a dispirited life of self-destructive independence. Suicides, runaways, domestic emotional abuse, bizarre cults – this might sound like standard fare for Japanese thrillers, but in As She Blossoms in Twilight, these elements take on entirely new meanings. After a car accident in adulthood, the protagonist finds herself seventeen again. Everywhere she goes she is haunted by the voice of her deceased brother. Is this a sign that her opportunity at redemption has finally come? Or, is it a symptom of a mental breakdown? When humanity is distorted by superstition and misguided faith, even affection and warmth become sources of terror.

A master detective who has long since departed from the police force teams up with a child prodigy to investigate three cases of spontaneous human combustion. As the duo probes the meaning behind the esoteric words branded on the chests of the victims, readers will savor the mystery of why the detective quit police work so many years ago. Having met over a game of go, the protagonists apply the principles of the classic strategy game to their investigation, lending a new angle to classic mystery tropes. As the duo work through their clashing personalities and contrasting generational wounds, the result is an entertaining psychological thriller that delivers equally on both fronts.

Under pressure to quickly resolve the case, a female detective from the Serious Crimes Unit is sent to investigate the kidnapping of the scion of a restaurant chain empire. The fraught relations within the victim’s household, involving everyone from servants to rivals for the family fortune, reveal hints of a long-suppressed family secret. Delving deeper, the detective finds that her own thoughts are beginning to reflect the twisted case she is tasked with solving. Author Chen Xue, who has probed the subtle workings of the human psyche in numerous thrillers, stays true to form. Initially presenting as a classic mystery story, the detective of Dear Accomplice must do more than clarify the murky circumstances surrounding the kidnapping. If she is to understand the culprit’s motive, she will have to face down her own demons in a dark thriller that questions our definitions of family.