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)
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Soyangri Book Kitchen
In Kim's debut, a bestseller in South Korea, a woman leaves Seoul to open a bookshop and café in a small village. Over the course of a year, multiple people find comfort and hope in the Book Kitchen. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Second Chance Convenience Store
A man finds a second chance in life through the kindness of a convenience store owner in this work of healing fiction, a million-copy international bestseller that was named Korea's book of the year. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Yeonnam-Dong's Smiley Laundromat
Kim's debut novel is heartwarming and thought-provoking, set in a quaint laundromat where ordinary lives intersect in extraordinary ways. (Library Journal)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Dallergut Dream Department Store
Lee debuts with the quirky tale of a store where dreams are sold in glass bottles to customers hoping to cure their various ills while unconscious. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Full Moon Coffee Shop
Five people find their lives changed by their encounters with the Full Moon Coffee Shop. (Booklist)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Cat Who Saved Books
When a talking cat named Tiger demands that he help save books with him, high school student Rintaro Natsuki and Tiger embark on an amazing journey, liberating books from their neglectful owners and meeting a colorful cast of characters along the way. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Blanket Cats
In a quirky Tokyo pet shop, seven struggling customers take home "blanket cats" for three days, hoping these temporary companions will help them escape their realities, including a couple facing infertility and a woman on the run, but the cats challenge their expectations and perceptions of happiness. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen
In a remote seaside town near Tokyo, Kotoko discovers the Chibineko Kitchen, where kagezen meals promise reunions with departed loved ones, and where she meets the young chef Kai and embarks on a magical journey of eating and remembrance. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Satisfaction Café
Taiwanese immigrant Joan realizes her childhood dream—a café where hosts ask diners questions and provide pleasant conversation. Wang brings up the issues of sadness, isolation and loneliness in a quiet, restrained way, and offers a graceful pragmatic character in Joan. If cafés can offer cats to make people happier, why can't true human companionship be offered too? (LibraryReads)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
After a young Japanese woman’s life falls apart, she moves into a flat above her eccentric uncle’s bookshop, staying rent-free in exchange for working at the store and developing a passion for Japanese literature. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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