Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning 'red pine', and Oumi, 'blue sea', while the girls' names were Shirane, 'white root', and Kurono, 'black field'. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki's friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again. Since that day Tsukuru has been floating...

When the New York Post published Tina Traster's essay about her difficulty bonding with her daughter, Julia, whom she and her husband had adopted from a Siberian orphanage, the seasoned journalist was shocked and overwhelmed by the response, both empathetic and angry. In this frank and honest memoir, Traster tells her full foreign-adoption story, from dealing with the bleak landscape and the inscrutable and withholding adoption handlers in Siberia,...