Hailed by The New York Times as a “formidable young writer … one who unpacks her characters’ emotions with a firm, graceful hand,” Nani Power garnered impressive acclaim for her profound debut last year. 

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Crawling at Night is a searing, unforgettable portrait of New York City and of the appetites and self-sabotaging patterns of its displaced inhabitants. Ito is a literate yet tongue-tied sushi chef who recites haiku in his head as he labors over shopping lists, which at once define and confine him. Alone, he dreams of Mariane, a lost alcoholic waitress who works with him at the Chelsea sushi bar. Ito can’t help but live part of every waking day reliving the tragedy he left behind in Japan, and across town Mariane yearns for the baby girl she abandoned almost fifteen years before...

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A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Nani Power’s The Good Remains is an enchanting tribute to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that follows a beguiling cast of characters in a small Virginia town heavy with history.

 

Dr. C. R. Ash is a neonatologist and chronic bachelor, the last in line to an old Southern family name. During a snowy prelude to a much-anticipated hospital Christmas party, C.R. crosses paths with a world of local characters, living and dead: from Betty, his fire-fearing secretary; to C.R’s lascivious best friend, who mends the hearts of babies; to Kirsten, a candy striper who teeters between the worlds of childhood and child rearing; to a clutch of death-obsessed teenagers; to two amateur caterers striving to create a Dickensian world of magic for the overworked and bedraggled hospital staff. In a town adrift with housing developments, strip malls, and Civil War history, this motley assemblage are all impelled by their search to solve the ancient human riddles of love, loss, and desolation...

"Please teach me Indian cooking! I will bring ingredients and pay you for your trouble. I would like to know about your culture as well.”

 

And with this posting on Craigslist, so begins Nani Power’s journey to learn traditional Indian cooking in the most ancient of ways — woman to woman. Welcomed warmly into the homes of strangers, Power meets women of all ages and backgrounds, and from them learns the skills that were passed on to them from their own mothers. Power takes the reader into a culture, a cuisine, and the female psyche, with recipes and stories from each chapter revealing the struggle of modern women, both American and of Indian descent, searching for identity and a definition of what it means to be a woman today...

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An author whose fiction has been praised by Mary Gaitskill and Darcy Steinke, Nani Power turns her incredible storytelling talents to memoir, crafting a sublime work of nonfiction centered around a life of travel, eclectic dining, and dealing with her decidedly eccentric Southern bohemian family.

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Consumption is the real American pastime. Through the prism of food, we all see our pasts differently. Like the finest food writers, Power brings readers directly into her world through the evocative depiction of the experience of eating. From her childhood on a rambling farm in Virginia — during which she witnessed a saga of fighting, disowning, silencing, and other regrettable acts — to her peripatetic and international adult life, Power’s reflections are surprising, enthralling, and entertaining...

“This is all about love,” begins The Sea of Tears , a story that is infused with the sensuality and smarts that have established Nani Power as one of our most compelling writers.

 

This otherworldly novel delves into the tangled relationships and hidden world of people brought together—and torn apart—under extraordinary
Jedra has fled his native Iraq and is working in the boiler room at the Royale Hotel, where he pines for Phyllis, the front–desk clerk who mysteriously remembers heaven. Khouri, an Iranian engineer, attends a business conference at the Royale, where he meets Patricia, a single mother and hotel maid, and finds himself wanting in ways he never has before. And in the penthouse apartment, young loner Daniel cannot escape his memories of Brazil, and only makes contact with the outside world through room service delivery. That is, until the hotel chef, Leslie Downing, comes knocking on his door...