Hookline Books is our fiction imprint - all authors have attended writing classes to post-graduate university level. All manuscripts are approved by book groups before being accepted for publication. Non-fiction publisher specialising in self-help, travel and social history.
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Established in 1980, Woongjin Thinkbig is a multi-award winning top publishing and education company in South Korea. We provide tutoring at home sevices, various children's books and a digital library service with a variety of digital contents.
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* 2020 Japan International Manga Award (Silver)* 2020 Golden Comic Award* French, Japanese, and Korean rights have been sold for the original novel and a TV series is soon to be released. Man Booker prize nominee Wu Ming-Yi’s much-loved collection of nostalgic short stories, as a graphic novel. Let the artists whisk you back to Taipei of the 1980s, to the long-gone Chunghwa Market Bazaar and a world of magical memories. In 1980s Taipei, the Chunghwa Market Bazaar was home to hardware stores, snack stalls, record shops, tailors, locksmiths and seal-carvers – if you needed it, you could find it here. Any resident of Taipei at the time will have precious memories of the eight buildings that formed the market. And linking those buildings, they will remember, was a skywalk. And perhaps one day, on the skywalk, they saw an illusionist. The illusionist on the skywalk has many tricks. He can magic up a copy of a key, make the safety railing disappear, and have a papercut man stand up and dance. Children cluster round, trying to spot the trick to his tricks. Years later, those children are grown and the market is gone, and all that is left is stories steeped in magic: The elevator to the 99th floor that turns you invisible, the stone lion that walks into your dreams and joins you for a stroll, the drawing of a goldfish which comes to life and swims around its bowl (although if you look closely, you can see through it) and a curiously clever cat which keeps lonely old folk company. Adapted from a collection of short stories by Taiwan’s best-known writer, Wu Ming-Yi, this graphic novel has been created by two artists, each drawing four stories from the lives of those children who watched the illusionist on the skywalk. These are tales of adventure and setback, of love and death – of all that we must face as we grow up, told in a blend of nostalgia and magical realism. Let Wu Ming-Yi’s words and the art of Sean Chuang and Ruan Guang-Ming carry you back to 1980s Taipei.
A graphic novel adaptation by Ruan Guang-Min of selected stories from The Illusionist on the Skywalk and Other Stories by Wu Ming-Yi is based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Wu Ming-Yi. The graphic novel is a collection of eight short stories that take place in the seventies at the famous Chunghwa shopping centre in Taipei. The shopping centre consisted of eight buildings in a row. The illusionist and the skywalks connecting the buildings are prominent in these stories, with childhood memories of the shopping centre as a central theme. The protagonists, narrators and perspectives are all different in each of the stories, but personae that appear in one story sometimes appear in another as passers-by. Besides this, memories also create a continuity that makes it seem that the narrators have overlapping memories despite their different pasts. Spinning memories into stories becomes magic, and the narrator skillfully demonstrates his tricks in a marvellous illusion of disappearances, reappearances and invisibility. The last story sheds new light on the stories, making the reader want to re-read them again and again.
If the mermaid doesn't swim back to the sea, but instead goes ashore, she will learn to walk on two legs. Perhaps, she will even learn to dance...... In her early thirties, Summer lives alone, jobless, with little material wants. Her only passion is dancing. To be more specific, ballroom dancing. She is at an awkward position: she started too late to be competition-worthy, yet takes dancing far too seriously to be a mere pastime. Her solitary existence poses another obstacle: you need a partner in the ballroom, where "men lead, women follow" is the ironclad rule. Under the tutelage of the legendary Donny, Summer embarks on a journey of self-discovery and, perhaps more importantly, in search of the perfect partner. Her hopes are dashed again and again as she witnesses (and sometimes partners with) the colorful characters in the ballroom: the arrogant youngster Youlin from a dancing dynasty; the talented Grace who wants nothing but an ordinary life; and the petite Meixin, forever at war with her fiance/partner. There is of course Donny, the gay dancer ferociously committed to competition and every bit as traditional as most straight men. As Summer continues her pursuit for Mr Right, she is forced to confront the dark memories of her past: the slut-shaming from her control-freak mother, the attempted suicide of her cousin, and the painful humiliation of sex with a classmate. She dreams of the perfect dancing body, yet dreads her own sexuality. THE MERMAID'S TALE is a beautiful solo dance of a novel. It brings to mind the exploration of the female body in THE VEGETARIAN and the madness of the dance world of BLACK SWAN, but is told in a lighter voice at once dreamy, whimsical, and scintillating. Written in the author's darkest days, it is nevertheless a book about life and freedom.
Twenty-five years in the making, REGRETS is Sharon Chung’s literary masterpiece and a once-in-a-lifetime publishing event. This is DOWNTON ABBEY meets MATCH POINT in pre-handover Hong Kong, both a haunting family saga and a dark retelling of the classic Chinese novel A DREAM OF RED MANSIONS. When Yat-Ping visits his aunt, Chun, at the Wong Mansion on Victoria Peak, he has no idea he is about to enter a world of passion, intrigue, and madness. Chun is Mr. Wong’s second wife, a frail and sickly woman who cannot set foot outside. She beseeches Yat-Ping to look after her willful daughter, Po-Chuen, by becoming her private tutor. A bond develops between the cousins, yet Mr. Wong deems it inappropriate and fires Yat-Ping, unexpectedly triggering a string of tragic events. Although forced to leave, Yat-Ping remains inseparable from the Wongs’ affairs. In the years that follow, he is befriended by Cheng-Yiu, Mr. Wong’s adopted son and designated heir, who is a shrewd and cold-blooded manipulator; he falls in love with Kam-Chuen, daughter of Mr Wong and his first wife, only to discover that she’s pregnant with someone else’s child; he is beaten up by Ching Hon, the family driver and son of the housekeeper, who sees him as a threat; he is seduced by Wang-Tai, the sexy Portuguese heiress about to marry Cheng-Yiu; and he is equally confused and enamored by Po-Chuen, now a beautiful young woman, who still recalls his tutor sessions with fondness. Soon, a death in the swimming pool will threaten to shatter the whole family, and a kidnapping plot gone awry will reveal something far more sinister.
