The Straits Times Weekly Bestsellers July 5
(From left) The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei, Elevate Your Assets, Elevate Your Wealth by Kelvin Fong and National Geographic Kids Almanac 2026 by National Geographic Kids.
Fiction:
Singaporean writer Jemimah Wei's debut novel is titled The Original Daughter.
PHOTO: WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON
1. (3) The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei
2. (1) The Passengers On The Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa; translated by Allison Markin Powell
3. (2) Strange Houses by Uketsu; translated by Jim Rion
4. (-) The Second Chance Convenience Store by Kim Ho-yeon; translated by Janet Hong
5. (4) Strange Pictures by Uketsu; translated by Jim Rion
6. (6) The Wizard's Bakery by Gu Byeong-mo; translated by Jamie Chang
7. (-) The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
8. (7) To The Moon by Jang Ryujin; translated by Sean Lin Halbert
9. (10) Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
10. (-) The Calico Cat At The Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi; translated by Cat Anderson
Non-fiction:
Roads To Chinese Modernity: Civilisation And National Culture by Wang Gungwu.
PHOTO: WORLD SCIENTIFIC
1. (1) Elevate Your Assets, Elevate Your Wealth by Kelvin Fong
2. (2) Why Palestine? Reflections From Singapore by Walid Jumblatt Abdullah
3. (-) Roads To Chinese Modernity: Civilisation And National Culture by Wang Gungwu
4. (4) How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle by Ray Dalio
5. (-) The Woke Salaryman Crash Course On Capitalism & Money by The Woke Salaryman
6. (-) The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
7. (6) The Psychology Of Money by Morgan Housel
8. (-) Prisoners Of Geography by Tim Marshall
9. (-) The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
10. (-) Empire Of AI by Karen Hao
Children's:
National Geographic Kids Almanac 2026 by National Geographic Kids.
PHOTO: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC KIDS
1. (-) How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
2. (1) National Geographic Kids Almanac 2026 by National Geographic Kids
3. (8) The Lion Inside by Rachel Bright
4. (5) The World's Worst Superheroes by David Walliams
5. (-) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
6. (-) Big Jim Begins (Dog Man 13) by Dav Pilkey
7. (2) Never Thought I'd End Up Here by Ann Liang
8. (-) The Pandas Who Promised by Rachel Bright
9. (-) Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter
10. (-) Let's Celebrate NDP! by Sharon Koh
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Think shoji screens, hinoki beams, seasonal scrolls – nothing here is an approximation. It is the real deal. Globus Washitsu is not a commercial teahouse. It is a cultural space with two adjoining tatami rooms, carefully designed for a range of intimate, immersive experiences. One of the rooms, KeiSui-An, is a traditional teahouse used for lessons in Japanese tea ceremony ( US$50 or S$64 a person for members, US$60 for non-members) – but the entire space shifts as needed to host calligraphy workshops, rakugo storytelling nights, kimono exhibitions and other quiet arts of Japan: music, dance, ikebana. It also occasionally serves as a ryokan-style guesthouse for visiting artists and scholars. You e-mail for an appointment, remove your shoes at the door and enter a hushed, warm space where calm is not a marketing promise, but a policy. Whether you are there for tea or to simply sit and listen, you leave feeling quieter. And in this city, that is no small thing. 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Just a buzzer and a plain Greenpoint doorway that leads, improbably, to one of New York's most extraordinary private bookstores. Founded in 1999, High Valley Books is run out of Mr Bill Hall's living room and basement, and it is where fashion archivists, interior designers and set decorators go when they need the perfect print reference from 1963 or a magazine no one remembers. Appointments are made via landline – +1-347-889-6346 – or Instagram DM. First-timers get a quiet tour. Regulars know to leave time for the basement, where the discoveries get stranger and better. It is part archive dig, part conversation. Mr Hall might pull something you did not know to ask for. Or he might introduce you to someone across the room hunting something adjacent. Some books cost US$40. Some cost as much as a Vespa. Mr Hall knows which is which, and he will explain why – if you ask. Astro Gallery of Gems, 417 Fifth Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan A display case on the appointment-only floor of Astro Gallery of Gems. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES Astro Gallery of Gems bills itself as the world's largest gem and mineral shop. Upstairs, you can browse the vault-size geodes and sapphires. But the basement – by appointment only – is where things take a turn for the Jurassic. This is where president and chief executive Dennis Tanjeloff stores his backroom full of prehistoric flex: a US$125,000 Odontopteryx tilapia skeleton (since sold), trilobites as big as house cats, meteorite slices and the kind of dino bones that end up in Gulf State palaces or private Colorado libraries. It is a celebrity obsession too – he calls his buyers 'grown-up boys' who never got over the idea that dinosaurs were real. Among the best-known fossil collectors: American actors Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio. Mr Tanjeloff is part dealer, part historian and wholly unbothered by those who disapprove of his trade – not everyone loves the idea of rare fossils going to private collectors instead of museums. His current selection, which ranges from US$24 for small ammonites to US$95,000 for a Tyrannosaurus rex tibia, comes from old collections, private digs and other dealers. 'You're not hurting a thing,' he says with a shrug. 'They're already extinct.' Book ahead, ask for the fossil room and expect numbers that make you blink. If you do not leave with an ancient jawbone, you will at least understand why some people feel compelled to try. NYTIMES
