"Sometimes the swamp-forest visibly thins away from these shores into wastes of reedy morass where, even of breathless nights, the quaggy soil trembles to a sound like thunder of breakers on a coast." Images are expertly imbued into the mind by vivid description. In Chita, Lafcadio Hearn paints life on a marshy, eclectic Gulf Coast island in the middle of the nineteenth century. Chita is a young white girl who is orphaned by a shipwreck and then adopted by a Spanish family on the island. Languages, cultures, and people collide and meld into a nebulous, but distinctive, way of life. Written...

Though Lafcadio Hearn went on to write a dozen more books on Japan, this collection of first impressions remains his most popular. Among the reasons is that here, more than anywhere else, the author most vividly captured a place that so affected him that he stayed for the rest of his life. The modern reader can still, through these pages, experience that "first charm of Japan, intangible and volatile as a perfume."

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan combines two...

For centuries, Japanese artists have honored simple beauty in prints, paintings and books. This adult coloring book recreates 23 artworks for you to color--images of flowers and trees, garden residents such as the bird and the butterfly, and in-the-moment scenes of people taking in the pleasures of these peaceful corners of the world.

A copy of the original print sits opposite your coloring "canvas" as a reference. Reflections...