Healing Fiction
Originating from Korea and Japan, healing fiction is a subgenre of cozy, feel-good novels that center on everyday people dealing with problems like grief, loneliness, and transition, and often feature the power of books, a magical cat, or a tea shop. (Created December 2025)
-
The Reading List
Working at the local library, Aleisha reads every book on a secret list she found, which transports her from the painful realities she's facing at home, and decides to pass the list on to a lonely widower desperate to connect with his bookworm granddaughter. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View The Reading List -
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library
Tokyo librarian Sayuri Komachi senses what each visitor needs and provides perfect book recommendations. A retail assistant, a mother, an accountant, and a retired salaryman find guidance in her choices, helping them achieve their dreams. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View What You Are Looking for Is in the Library -
The Passengers on the Hankyu Line
A handful of stories overlap as men, women, and children commute on the Hankyu Railway Line in a mountainous region in Japan...A gentle intertwining of small vignettes that evoke smiles in the characters—and the reader. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View The Passengers on the Hankyu Line -
Legends & Lattes
An orc retires from adventuring to start a fantasy city’s very first coffee shop. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View Legends & Lattes -
Cat's People
Children's author Guerrero makes her adult debut exploring the lives of five lonely souls and the cat that unites them. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Cat's People -
The Door-to-door Bookstore
An elderly bookseller who delivers his recommendations door-to-door forms an unlikely friendship with a 9-year-old girl who changes his life. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View The Door-to-door Bookstore -
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
A former high-flying corporate employee quits her job, leaves her marriage, and opens a neighborhood bookstore and cafe outside Seoul...A snapshot of life in a quiet corner of Seoul examines how reading can help give voice to emotions, worries, and dreams. (Kirkus)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop -
The Seven O'clock Club
Four people find companionship and attempt to heal from grief in this heart-rending debut by Ireland. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View The Seven O'clock Club -
We'll Prescribe You A Cat
At a certain Kyoto intersection is a narrow opening to an alley leading (eventually, sometimes) to the heavy fifth-floor door of the Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. The staff, acerbic nurse Chitose and affable Dr. Nikké, might seem a bit strange, but their therapies always work because they will prescribe you a cat—Bee for freedom, Margot and Koyuki for empathy, Tank and Tangerine for inspiration, Mimita for letting go. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
View We'll Prescribe You A Cat -
The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Down a quiet Kyoto backstreet, "food detectives" Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the proprietors of the Kamogawa Diner, through ingenious investigations, recreate dishes from a person's treasured memories, which hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
View The Kamogawa Food Detectives