Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.

The Vegetarian

An international sensation and a bestseller that has sold over 1.5 million copies author's Korea, "Please Look After Mom" is a stunning, deeply moving story of a family's search for their missing mother - and their discovery of the desires, heartaches and secrets they never realized she harbored within.

When sixty-nine year old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, and vanishes, their children are consumed with loud recriminations, and are awash in sorrow and guilt. As they argue over the "Missing" flyers they are posting throughout the city - how large of a reward to offer, the best way to phrase the text - they realize that none of them have a recent photograph of Mom. Soon a larger question emerges: do they really know the woman they called Mom? 

Told by the alternating voices of Mom's daughter, son, her husband and, in the shattering conclusion, by Mom herself, the novel pieces together, Rashomon-style, a life that appears ordinary but is anything but. 

This is a mystery of one mother that reveals itself to be the mystery of all our mothers: about her triumphs and disappointments and about who she is on her own terms, separate from who she is to her family. If you have ever been a daughter, a son, a husband or a mother, "Please Look After Mom" is a revelation - one that will bring tears to your eyes.

Please Look After Mom

A Korean "Charlotte's Web

"More than 2 million copies sold
  
 This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command, only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild—and to hatch an egg of her own.

 An anthem for freedom, individuality and motherhood featuring a plucky, spirited heroine who rebels against the tradition-bound world of the barnyard, "The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly "is a novel of universal resonance that also opens a window on Korea, where it has captivated millions of readers. And with its array of animal characters—the hen, the duck, the rooster, the dog, the weasel—it calls to mind such classics in English as "Animal Farm "and "Charlotte’s Web."

 Featuring specially-commissioned illustrations, this first English-language edition of Sun-mi Hwang’s fable for our times beautifully captures the journey of an unforgettable character in world literature.

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

A FRESH, FUNNY, UP-CLOSE LOOK AT HOW SOUTH KOREA REMADE ITSELF AS THE WORLD'S POP CULTURE POWERHOUSE OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

By now, everyone in the world knows the song "Gangnam Style" and Psy, an instantly recognizable star. But the song's international popularity is no passing fad. "Gangnam Style" is only one tool in South Korea's extraordinarily elaborate and effective strategy to become a major world superpower by first becoming the world's number one pop culture exporter.

As a child, Euny Hong moved from America to the Gangnam neighbourhood in Seoul. She was a witness to the most accelerated part of South Korea's economic development, during which time it leapfrogged from third-world military dictatorship to first-world liberal democracy on the cutting edge of global technology.

Euny Hong recounts how South Korea vaulted itself into the twenty-first century, becoming a global leader in business, technology, education, and pop culture. Featuring lively, in-depth reporting and numerous interviews with Koreans working in all areas of government and society, "The Birth of Korean Cool "reveals how a really uncool country became cool, and how a nation that once banned miniskirts, long hair on men, and rock ‘n' roll could come to mass produce boy bands, soap operas, and the world's most important smart phone.

The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

In the spirit of "Lilac Girls", the heartbreaking history of Korea is brought to life in this deeply moving and redemptive debut that follows two sisters separated by World War II.

Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home.

South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness?

Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, "White Chrysanthemum" tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.

White Chrysanthemum

An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction. 

Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present. 

In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants' unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter. 

In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.

Drifting House

"I don't encourage murder. I have no interest in one person killing another. I only want to draw out morbid desires, imprisoned deep in the unconscious. This lust, once freed, starts growing. Their imaginations run free, and they soon discover their potential... They are waiting for someone like me."

A spectral, nameless narrator haunts the lost and wounded of big-city Seoul, suggesting solace in suicide. Wandering through the bright lights of their high-urban existence, C and K are brothers who fall in love with the same woman - Se-yeon. As their lives intersect, they tear at each other in a struggle to find connection in their fast-paced, atomized world.

Dreamlike and cinematic, "I Have the Right to Destroy Myself" brilliantly affirms Young-ha Kim as Korea's leading young literary master.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

"Step into Shadow Falls, a camp for teens with supernatural powers. Here friendship thrives, love takes you by surprise, and our hearts possess the greatest magic of all."

Kylie Galen wants the truth so badly she can taste it. The truth about who her real family is, the truth about which boy she's meant to be with--and the truth about what her emerging powers mean. But she's about to discover that some secrets can change your life forever…and not always for the better.

Just when she and Lucas are finally getting close, she learns that his pack has forbidden them from being together. Was it a mistake to pick him over Derek? And it's not just romance troubling Kylie. An amnesia-stricken ghost is haunting her, delivering the frightful warning, "someone lives and someone dies. "As Kylie races to unravel the mystery and protect those she loves, she finally unlocks the truth about her supernatural identity, which is far different--and more astonishing--than she ever imagined.

Taken at Dusk (Shadow Falls, #3)

An eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility, The Disaster Tourist engages with the global dialog around climate activism, dark tourism, and the #MeToo movement.

For ten years, Yona has been stuck behind a desk as a coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specializing in vacation packages to destinations devastated by disaster and climate change. Her work life is uneventful until trouble arises in the form of a predatory colleague.

To forestall any disruption of business-as-usual, Jungle makes Yona a proposition: a paid "vacation" to the desert island of Mui. But Yona must pose as a tourist and assess whether Jungle should continue their partnership with the unprofitable destination.

Yona travels to the remote island, whose major attraction is an underwhelming sinkhole, a huge disappointment to the customers who've paid a premium. Soon Yona discovers the resort's plan to fabricate a catastrophe in the interest of regaining their good standing with Jungle--and the manager enlists Yona's help. Yona must choose between the callous company to whom she's dedicated her life, or the possibility of a fresh start in a powerful new position. As she begins to understand the cost of the manufactured disaster, Yona realizes that the lives of Mui's citizens are in danger--and so is she.

In The Disaster Tourist, Korean author Yun Ko-eun grapples with the consequences of our fascination with disaster, and questions an individual's culpability in the harm done by their industry.

The Disaster Tourist

It's the early 1980s - the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. 

As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. 

Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. 

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

The Marriage Plot

The bride ‧ The plus one ‧ The best man ‧ The wedding planner ‧ The bridesmaid ‧ The body 

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

The Guest List

How friendship, European literature, and a charismatic professor defy war, oppression, and the absurd
  
 Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, "I’ll Be Right There" follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, twenty-something woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, memories of a tumultuous youth begin to resurface, forcing her to re-live the most intense period of her life. With profound intellectual and emotional insight, she revisits the death of her beloved mother, the strong bond with her now-dying former college professor, the excitement of her first love, and the friendships forged out of a shared sense of isolation and grief.
  
 Yoon’s formative experiences, which highlight both the fragility and force of personal connection in an era of absolute uncertainty, become immediately palpable. Shin makes the foreign and esoteric utterly familiar: her use of European literature as an interpreter of emotion and experience bridges any gaps between East and West. Love, friendship, and solitude are the same everywhere, as this book makes poignantly clear.

I'll Be Right There

Communication—or the lack thereof—is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque novel. "No One Writes Back" is the story of a young man who leaves home with only his blind dog, an MP3 player, and a book, traveling aimlessly for three years, from motel to motel, meeting people on the road. Rather than learn the names of his fellow travelers—or even invent nicknames for them—he assigns them numbers. There's 239, who once dreamed of being a poet, but who now only reads her poems to a friend in a coma; there's 109, who rides trains endlessly because of a broken heart; and 32, who's already decided to commit suicide. The narrator writes letters to these men and women in the hope that he can console them in their various miseries, as well as keep a record of his own experiences: "A letter is like a journal entry for me, except that it gets sent to other people." No one writes back, of course, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some hope that one of them will, someday...

No One Writes Back

A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime. 

Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues - evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. She is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. To them, everything in North Korea is the best, the tallest, the most delicious, the envy of all nations. Still, she cannot help but love them - their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. 

As the weeks pass, she begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own - at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. The students in turn offer Suki tantalizing glimpses into their lives, from their thoughts on how to impress girls to their disappointment that soccer games are only televised when the North Korean team wins. Then Kim Jong-il dies, leaving the students devastated, and leading Suki to question whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.

Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

A nameless narrator passes through her life, searching for meaning and connection in experiences she barely feels. For her, time and identity blur, and all action is reaction. She can’t quite understand what motivates others to take life seriously enough to focus on anything—for her existence is a loosely woven tapestry of fleeting concepts. From losing her virginity to mindless jobs and a splintered, unsupportive family, the lessons learned have less to do with the reality we all share and more to do with the truth of the imagination, which is where the narrator focuses to discover herself.

Nowhere to Be Found

"Nothing to Envy "follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. 

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. 

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.  

"Nothing to Envy "is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

In this classic tale, Richard Kim paints seven vivid scenes from a boyhood and early adolescence in Korea at the height of the Japanese occupation, 1932 to 1945. Taking its title from the grim fact that the occupiers forced the Koreans to renounce their own names and adopt Japanese names instead, the book follows one Korean family through the Japanese occupation to the surrender of the Japanese empire. "Lost Names" is at once a loving memory of family and a vivid portrayal of life in a time of anguish.

Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood

Possessed by the demon of Defeat, Strider cannot lose a challenge without suffering unimaginable pain. For him, nothing stands in the way of victory. Until Kaia, an enchanting Harpy, tempts him to the razor's edge of surrender.

Known among her people as The Disappointment, Kaia must bring home the gold in the Harpy Games or die. Strider is a distraction she can't afford because he has an agenda of his own-steal first prize, an ancient godly artifact, before the winner can be named. But as the competition heats up, only one prize will matter-the love neither had thought possible...

The Darkest Surrender  (Lords of the Underworld, #8)

À Sokcho, petite ville portuaire proche de la Corée du Nord, une jeune Franco-coréenne qui n’est jamais allée en Europe rencontre un auteur de bande dessinée venu chercher l’inspiration depuis sa Normandie natale. C’est l’hiver, le froid ralentit tout, les poissons peuvent être venimeux, les corps douloureux, les malentendus suspendus, et l’encre coule sur le papier, implacable : un lien fragile se noue entre ces deux êtres aux cultures si différentes. Ce roman délicat comme la neige sur l’écume transporte le lecteur dans un univers d’une richesse et d’une originalité rares, à l’atmosphère puissante.

Winter in Sokcho

Suzy Park is a twenty-nine-year-old Korean American interpreter for the New York City court system who makes a startling and ominous discovery about her family history that will send her on a chilling quest. Five years prior, her parents--hardworking greengrocers who forfeited personal happiness for their children's gain--were brutally murdered in an apparent robbery of their store. But the glint of a new lead entices Suzy into the dangerous Korean underworld, and ultimately reveals the mystery of her parents' homicide.

The Interpreter

Human rights activist Park, who fled North Korea with her mother in 2007 at age 13 and eventually made it to South Korea two years later after a harrowing ordeal, recognized that in order to be "completely free," she had to confront the truth of her past. It is an ugly, shameful story of being sold with her mother into slave marriages by Chinese brokers, and although she at first tried to hide the painful details when blending into South Korean society, she realized how her survival story could inspire others. Moreover, her sister had also escaped earlier and had vanished into China for years, prompting the author to go public with her story in the hope of finding her sister.

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

"At Least We can Apologize" focuses on an agency whose only purpose is to offer apologies--for a fee--on behalf of its clients. This seemingly insignificant service leads us into an examination of sin, guilt, and the often irrational demands of society. A kaleidoscope of minor nuisances and major grievances, this novel heralds a new comic voice in Korean letters.

At Least We Can Apologize


  A concise, lively history of Korea, which explores the richness of Korean civilization from the ancient era through to the jarring transformation that resulted in two distinctive trajectories through the modern world. Chapters flow both chronologically and thematically, covering themes such as identity, gender and family. 


 


A History of Korea (Palgrave Essential Histories series)

For every fan of K-Pop music, Korean Wave dramas and Kimchi—or anyone intrigued by Korea and Korean culture—"A Geek in Korea" is a hip, new guide to the land of the Samsung smartphone and Gangnam Style.

Author Dan Tudor first arrived in Korea on the eve of the 2002 World Cup when South Korea played Italy in the finals. What he saw inspired him to return and work in Korea. Tudor served as "The Economist" magazine's Korea correspondent for three years and writes regular columns for the national daily "Joongang Ilbo" newspaper. Along the way, he has developed a great love and admiration for Korean culture and the Korean people.

"A Geek in Korea" reinvents the culture guide for the Internet age. Packed with articles and photographs, it covers all the touchstones of Korean culture—from Buddhism and Confucianism to chapters on the traditional arts and disciplines like Taekwondo. There are chapters on cultural code words and norms; personal relationships; business and technology; and symbols and practices that are peculiarly Korean. A number of chapters are devoted to Korean pop culture, with attention to the stars, idols, and urban subcultures associated with them. For visitors to Korea, the author includes a mini-guide to his favorite neighborhoods in Seoul and other places of outstanding interest.

Spotlighting the originality and creativity of the Koreans, debunking myths about them, and answering nagging questions like why they're so obsessed with education and success—Tudor has created the perfect book for the growing ranks of Koreaphiles in this inspired, insightful, and highly informative guide.

A Geek in Korea: Discovering Asian's New Kingdom of Cool

A foreign film importer, Gi-yeong is a family man with a wife and daughter. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly he receives a mysterious email, a directive seemingly from the home office. He has one day to return to headquarters. He hasn't heard from anyone in over ten years. Why is he being called back now? Is this message really from Pyongyang? Is he returning to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence? Has someone in the South discovered his secret identity? Is this a trap? 

Spanning the course of one day, "Your Republic Is Calling You" is an emotionally taut, psychologically astute, haunting novel that reveals the depth of one particularly gripping family secret and the way in which we sometimes never really know the people we love. Confronting moral questions on small and large scales, it mines the political and cultural transformations that have transformed South Korea since the 1980s. A lament for the fate of a certain kind of man and a certain kind of manhood, it is ultimately a searing study of the long and insidious effects of dividing a nation in two.

Your Republic Is Calling You

Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
A "Washington Post "Best Book of the Year
Winner of the 2009 Borders Original Voices Award

 In early-twentieth-century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. But her country is in tumult under Japan's harsh occupation, and her family's traditions, entitlements, and wealth crumble. Narrowly escaping an arranged marriage, Najin becomes a companion to a young princess, until Korea's last king is assassinated, and the centuries-old dynastic culture comes to its end.

 Najin pursues a coveted education and is surprised to find love. After one day of marriage, a denied passport separates her from her new husband, who journeys alone to America. As a decade passes and the world descends into war, Najin loses touch with her husband. Will the love they share be enough to sustain her through the deprivation her country continues to endure? "The Calligrapher's Daughter "is a "vivid, heartfelt portrait of faith, love and life for one family during a pivotal time in history" ("Bookpage)."

The Calligrapher's Daughter: A Novel

Just a few decades ago, the Koreans were an impoverished, agricultural people. In one generation they moved from the fields to Silicon Valley. The nature and values of the Korean people provide the background for a more detailed examination of the complex history of the country, in particular its division and its emergence as an economic superpower.

Who are these people? And where does their future lie? In this absorbing and enlightening account, Michael Breen provides compelling insight into the history and character of this fascinating nation.

The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation

"In a grand gesture of reclamation &amp; remembrance, Mr Halberstam has brought the war back home."--"NY Times"
 Halberstam's magisterial &amp; thrilling "The Best &amp; the Brightest" was a defining book about the Vietnam conflict. More than three decades later, he used his research &amp; journalistic skills to shed light on another pivotal moment in our history: the Korean War. He considered "The Coldest Winter" his most accomplished work, the culmination of 45 years of writing about America's postwar foreign policy. He gives a masterful narrative of the political decisions &amp; miscalculations on both sides. He charts the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu River &amp; that caught Douglas MacArthur &amp; his soldiers by surprise. He provides vivid &amp; nuanced portraits of all the major figures-Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, &amp; Mao, &amp; Generals MacArthur, Almond &amp; Ridgway. At the same time, he provides us with his trademark highly evocative narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. As ever, he was concerned with the extraordinary courage &amp; resolve of people asked to bear an extraordinary burden. "The Coldest Winter" is contemporary history in its most literary &amp; luminescent form, providing crucial perspective on every war America has been involved in since. It's a book that Halberstam first decided to write over 30 years ago that took him nearly a decade to complete. It stands as a lasting testament to one of the greatest journalists &amp; historians of our time, &amp; to the fighting men whose heroism it chronicles.

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

In a drab North Korean city, a seventh daughter is born to a couple longing for a son. Abandoned hours after her birth, she is eventually rescued by her grandmother. The old woman names the child Bari, after a legend telling of a forsaken princess who undertakes a quest for an elixir that will bring peace to the souls of the dead. As a young woman, frail, brave Bari escapes North Korea and takes refuge in China before embarking on a journey across the ocean in the hold of a cargo ship, seeking a better life. She lands in London, where she finds work as a masseuse. Paid to soothe her clients' aching bodies, she discovers that she can ease their more subtle agonies as well, having inherited her beloved grandmother's uncanny ability to read the pain and fears of others. Bari makes her home amongst other immigrants living clandestinely. She finds love in unlikely places, but also suffers a series of misfortunes that push her to the limits of sanity. Yet she has come too far to give in to despair.

Princess Bari

The Black Flower is the gripping Story of a young Confederate rifleman named Bushrod Carter. When Bushrod is wounded, he is taken to a makeshift hospital where he comes under the care of Anna, who has already lost two potential romances to battle. Bushrod and Anna's attempt to forge a bond n the midst of pathos and horror is a powerful reminder that the war that divided America will not vanish quietly into pages of history.

The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War

A gripping first-person account of one young American's life-changing years in a South Korean prison  At age twenty-three Cullen Thomas was, like most middle-class kids his age, looking for something meaningful and exciting to do before settling into the 9-to-5 routine. Possessed of a youthful, romantic view of the world, he set off for adventure in Asia and a job teaching English in Seoul, South Korea. But he got more than he ever bargained for when an ill-advised stunt led to a drugsmuggling arrest and a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence. "Brother One Cell" is Cullen�s memoir of that time�the harrowing and unusual story of a good kid forced to grow up in very unusual circumstances.  One of only a handful of foreign inmates, Cullen shared a cell block with human-traffickers, jewel smugglers, murderers, and thieves. Fortunately for him, the strict Confucian social mores that dominated the prison made it almost a safe place, different from the brutal, lawless setting most would imagine. In the relative calm of this environment Cullen would learn invaluable life lessons and come out of the experience a wise and grounded adult. With its gritty descriptions of life behind the concrete walls, colorful depictions of his fellow inmates, and acute insights about Korean society, "Brother One Cell" is part gritty prison story, part cautionary tale, and part insightful travelogue into the places most people never see.

Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons

In the aftermath of World War I, a family estate hangs in the balance

 For generations, the Barthélemy family tended to the olive trees of Restanques, a sprawling property in Cotignac whose olive oil and almonds were as incredible as the countryside that produced them. But all that changed when war came to France. Robert Barthélemy never returned from the trenches, and without him, the farm is beginning to die. His widow has lost the will to live, and only the fierce efforts of their daughter, Jeanne, have kept the creditors at bay.

 Jeanne is spending an afternoon at home with the family’s grim financial statements when a handsome stranger appears on the front steps. His name is Jérôme Guillaumin and he is a brilliant botanist about to embark on a journey around the globe. From the moment they meet, Jeanne is struck by feelings she never thought possible: feelings that could save her life or destroy everything she has ever known.

In the Shade of the Almond Trees: A Novel

Our Happy Time (Cinta Tak Pernah Salah Memilih Waktu)

Political prisoner Hyun Woo is freed after eighteen years to find no trace of the world he knew. The friends with whom he shared utopianist dreams are gone. His Seoul is unrecognizably transformed and aggressively modernized. Yoon Hee, the woman he loved, died three years ago. A broken man, he drifts toward a small house in Kalmoe, where he and Yoon Hee once stole a few fleeting months of happiness while fleeing the authorities. In the company of her diaries, he relives and reviews his life, trying to find meaning in the revolutionary struggle that consumed their youth-a youth of great energy and optimism, victim to implacable history. Hyun Woo weighs the worth of his own life, spent in prison, and that of the strong-willed artist Yoon Hee, whose involvement in rebel groups took her to Berlin and the fall of the wall. With great poignancy, Hwang Sok-yong grapples with the immortal questions-the endurance of love, the price of a commitment to causes-while depicting a generation that sacrifi ced youth, liberty, and often life, for the dream of a better tomorrow. Born in 1943, Hwang Sok-yong is a Korean writer of world renown and the recipient of numerous international awards and honors. His work, which grapples with the troubled recent history of his divided country, has been the cause of his imprisonment, his exile, and finally that rare achievement of a wide readership and appreciation in both North and South Korea. The Old Garden is, by the author's own admission, his most deeply auto biographical work.

The Old Garden

Now new and old fans can relive the magic of this beloved film as it is retold in a beautiful full-color Little Golden Book!

Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Enfant abandonné des hommes, Jeï découvre très tôt qu'il possède le don de capter, de sentir la souffrance des autres, objets, animaux ou humains. A quinze ans, vagabond dans les rues de Séoul, il s'invente un mode de vie proche de l'ascèse, se nourrissant de riz cru, lisant des livres trouvés parmi les ordures, et devient le leader d'une bande de motards. Ces motards organisent des courses illégales en plein Séoul, bravant la mort et la police, jusqu'à cette course ultime, la plus grandiose, la plus folle jamais menée, où Jeï entre dans la légende.

C'est le portrait fascinant d'un homme sans attaches, à la dimension christique. Il est le révélateur incandescent d'une société, la Corée, qui est aussi la nôtre, déchirée par ses tensions internes.

I Hear Your Voice

A groundbreaking account of the rise of North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Un, from his nuclear ambitions to his summits with President Donald J. Trump--from a former CIA analyst considered one of the leading American experts on the North Korean leader inside and outside the U.S. government.

When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea following his father's death in 2011, predictions about his imminent fall were rife. North Korea was isolated, poor, unable to feed its people, and clinging to its nuclear program for legitimacy. Surely this twentysomething with the bizarre haircut and no leadership experience would soon be usurped by his elders. Instead the opposite happened. Now in his mid-thirties, Kim Jong Un has solidified his grip on his country and brought the U.S. and the region to the brink of war. Still, we know so little about him--or how he rules. 

Enter former CIA analyst Jung Pak, whose brilliant Brookings Institution essay "The Education of Kim Jong Un" cemented her status as the go-to authority on the calculating young leader. From the beginning of Kim's reign, Pak has been at the forefront of shaping U.S. policy on North Korea and providing strategic assessments for leadership at the highest levels in the government, and in this masterly book, she traces and explains Kim's ascent on the world stage, from the brutal purges he carried out to consolidate his power to his abrupt pivot to diplomatic engagement that led to his historic--and still poorly understood--summits with President Trump. She also sheds light on how a top intelligence analyst assesses thorny national security problems, avoiding biases, questioning assumptions, and identifying risks as well as opportunities.

In piecing together Kim's wholly unique life, Pak argues that his personality, perceptions, and preferences are underestimated by Washington policy wonks who assume he sees the world as they do. As the North Korea nuclear threat grows, "Becoming Kim Jong Un "gives readers the first authoritative, behind-the-scenes look at Kim's personality and motivations, creating an insightful biography of the enigmatic man who will likely rule the Hermit Kingdom for decades--and has already left an indelible imprint on world history.

Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer's Insights into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator

The Second Korean War imagines war on the Korean peninsula in a novel that takes place in North and South Korea, China, Russia and America. The author has drawn on four years of living and working in South Korea, study at the National War College, and decades of experience working for the US government to give the reader one possible future - one he hopes can be avoided.

The Second Korean War (Russian Agents #1)

The second short-story collection by Kim Jung-hyuk, the author of Penguin News, features a total of eight short stories, including Syncopation D which won the 2nd Kim You-jeong Literary Award in 2008. They represent the many sounds sampled by the author when he recorded over 600 kinds of musical instruments. Like instruments coming together in a symphony, the stories combine to make an opus consisting of variations on a theme. While the stories begin in an upbeat fashion and work to a crescendo, they end with notes in a minor key filling the vacuum. "The Library of Musical Instruments" is a collection to contemplate on more than one occasion."

South Korea

The Vegetarian

Han Kang

Please Look After Mom

Shin Kyung-sook

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

Sun-mi Hwang

The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture

Euny Hong

White Chrysanthemum

Mary Lynn Bracht

Drifting House

Krys Lee

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

Young-Ha Kim

Taken at Dusk (Shadow Falls, #3)

C.C. Hunter

The Disaster Tourist

Yun Ko-eun

The Marriage Plot

Jeffrey Eugenides

The Guest List

Lucy Foley

I'll Be Right There

Shin Kyung-sook

No One Writes Back

Eun-Jin Jang

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Suki Kim

Nowhere to Be Found

Bae Suah

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick

Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood

Richard E. Kim

The Darkest Surrender (Lords of the Underworld, #8)

Gena Showalter

Winter in Sokcho

Elisa Shua Dusapin

The Interpreter

Suki Kim

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom

Yeonmi Park

At Least We Can Apologize

Ki-ho Lee

A History of Korea (Palgrave Essential Histories series)

Kyung Moon Hwang

A Geek in Korea: Discovering Asian's New Kingdom of Cool

Daniel Tudor

Your Republic Is Calling You

Young-Ha Kim

The Calligrapher's Daughter: A Novel

Eugenia Kim

The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation

Michael Breen

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

David Halberstam

Princess Bari

Hwang Sok-yong

The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War

Howard Bahr

Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons

Cullen Thomas

In the Shade of the Almond Trees: A Novel

Dominique Marny

Our Happy Time (Cinta Tak Pernah Salah Memilih Waktu)

Gong Jiyoung

The Old Garden

Hwang Sok-yong

Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Walt Disney Company

The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War

David Halberstam

I Hear Your Voice

Young-Ha Kim

Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer's Insights into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator

Jung H. Pak

The Second Korean War (Russian Agents #1)

Ted Halstead

The Library of Musical Instruments