BOOKS
Isle Pages
New releases from Hawaii authors
"Kindred Spirit, Kindred Care"
By Shannon Fujimoto Nakaya
New World Library, $13.95
The author, a Kailua-Kona veterinarian, offers a guide to making health decisions for your pet, from grooming to graceful aging.
Perhaps most useful, she offers advice in common-sense terms on the most difficult of decisions -- whether to choose aggressive treatment when an animal is seriously ill.
"Khadija's Diary: The Ghandi Legacy"
By Charles M. Uyeda
CMU Publishing, $20, via
www.cmuhawaii.com
Essays of peace and love take the form of letters written by fictional youths from Palestine, Israel and Hawaii as they comment upon modern political events.
The Maui-based writer says his aim is to advance his philosophies of humanitarianism and peace activism.
"Morning of the World"
By Dennis Jung
Xlibris, $19.54 paperback, $29 hardcover; via
www.xlibris.com
The author found inspiration for this love-story thriller in a visit to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where he discovered the concept of the vampire witch of Bali. Not that this is a pure vampire mystery -- it centers on parents mourning a dead child and the path they take toward resolving their pain.
Their search takes them through Hawaii and into many exotic and intriguing locales.
"Sparrows, Bedbugs and Body Shadows"
By Sheldon Lou
University of Hawaii Press, $21
This memoir recounting the author's life in the early period of Mao's China provides a deeply personal account of the Cultural Revolution.
He recalls, for example, a nationwide noisemaking session that the government believed would rid the country of pesky sparrows by scaring them out of the sky. It worked about as well as the revolution itself.