
The Last Tea Bowl Thief
Seventh Street Books · Paperback · October 20, 2020
For three hundred years, a stolen relic passes from one fortune-seeker to the next, indelibly altering the lives of those who possess it.
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- Who it’s for
- A layered mystery links two women’s precarious futures to a tea bowl with centuries of history.
- Themes
- A relic’s poisoned legacy, Dreams versus moral responsibility, Precarious livelihoods
- Genres
- Historical Mystery, Japanese Fiction, Cultural Heritage Fiction
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Start with this bookAbout this book
For three hundred years, a stolen relic passes from one fortune-seeker to the next, indelibly altering the lives of those who possess it. In modern-day Tokyo, Robin Swann’s life has sputtered to a stop. She’s stuck in a dead-end job testing antiquities for an auction house, but her true love is poetry, not pottery. Her stalled dissertation sits on her laptop, unopened in months, and she has no one to confide in but her goldfish.
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On the other side of town, Nori Okuda sells rice bowls and tea cups to Tokyo restaurants, as her family has done for generations. But with her grandmother in the hospital, the family business is foundering. Nori knows if her luck doesn’t change soon, she’ll lose what little she has left. With nothing in common, Nori and Robin suddenly find their futures inextricably linked to an ancient, elusive tea bowl. Glimpses of the past set the stage as they hunt for the lost masterpiece, uncovering long-buried secrets in their wake. As they get closer to the truth—and the tea bowl—the women must choose between seizing their dreams or righting the terrible wrong that has poisoned its legacy for centuries.
A Bowl’s Long Shadow
A layered mystery links two women’s precarious futures to a tea bowl with centuries of history.
Come here for
- An elusive relic and the lives it changes across three hundred years
- Modern Tokyo, antiquities, and a search for buried secrets
Expect
- Glimpses of the past woven into a present-day hunt
- A contemplative choice between personal dreams and setting an old wrong right
Where it sits
| Historical Mystery | 73% |
|---|---|
| Japanese Fiction | 36% |
| Cultural Heritage Fiction | 24% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Women Detectives
- International Crime Fiction
- Asian American Fiction
- Authors
- Jonelle Patrick
- Publisher
- Seventh Street Books
- Published
- October 20, 2020
- Format
- Paperback
- Theme
- A relic’s poisoned legacy · Dreams versus moral responsibility · Precarious livelihoods
- Reading lane
- Women Detectives