**PRE-ORDER THE NEW NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS IN THE LIBRARY**
For lovers of Moo Deng and Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Discover the enchanting new feelgood novel where five overlapping lives seek comfort from a magical hippo ride:
Nestling at the bottom of a five-storey apartment block in the community of Advance Hill is the children's playground, Hinode Park, where you will find a very special hippo ride. According to urban legend, if you touch it with the area of your body that needs comfort, you will see swift signs of recovery.
Meet a couple of the neighbours who use the hippo ride, from a highschool student to an eighty-year-old cleaning lady:
-Kanato lays his head on the hippo's back, hoping to recover the confidence he lost when he started at his scary new school;
- Saha, a new mother with no friends, strokes its mouth, in case she can bring back the words she spoke when she was an award-winning retail assistant;
Three more neighbours will come to the magical hippo for help, as they discover how to resolve emotional pain for themselves, if their heart is open and their minds are at peace, in this deeply moving celebration of kindness, community and understanding.
Readers adore Recovery Hippo:
'I wanted to find the magical hippo in myself as I read this book' *****
'How does Aoyama depict human emotion so vividly? I imagined myself in this book' *****
'I almost wept on my train home from work' *****
'It gripped my heart. I wish there was a magical hippo near my home' *****
'Whenever I feel hurt, I want to re-read this wonderful book' *****

Michiko Aoyama was born in 1970 in Aichi Prefecture, Honshu, Japan. After university, she became a reporter for a Japanese newspaper based in Sydney before moving back to Tokyo to work as a magazine editor. What You are Looking for is in the Library was shortlisted for the Japan Booksellers' Award, was a Time Book of the Year, a Times bestseller and a New York Times Book of the Month. It has sold two million copies and is being published in over thirty territories. Her new healing fiction title The Recovery Hippo at Hinode Park will be published internationally. Aoyama lives in Yokohama, Japan.