Earlier this year I was mesmerized by Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold – a novel set in an intimate café in Tokyo, which allows you to travel in time (although a set of strict rules mean that few do so). Each chapter is dedicated to a specific time travel event such as a woman going back to see a boyfriend she had broken up with and a man who went to see his mother who had died in the hospital. Tales from the Café effortlessly continues where the original book left off and the way both of them made me deeply care for so many different lives in such a limited space is truly astonishing.