Seoul-1964-winter By Kim Seung-ok (Hollym) Seoul in the 1960s was going through many changes. It was recovering from the war, experiencing rapid industrialization under the authoritarian government, and receiving growing number of people from the countryside who were looking for more opportunities in the nation’s capital. It was also the period where its residents first became to be aware of i...

Weary of sex scandals that have rocked all portions of our government in recent years, there’s a lot of talk on the campaign trail about getting back to the principles of our nation’s Founding Fathers. That sentiment may change if people read the new book, “One Nation Under Sex,” by Larry Flynt and historian David Eisenbach, because men such as Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jeffers...

For Kathryn Gualtieri one of the toughest tasks in writing her first novel was suppressing her natural instincts as a historian. “The hardest part was not putting in too much history,” the Capitola resident said. “You don’t move the story along like that.” Her mystery novel, “Murder in the Pines,” still packs in a lot of historical references, and much of the plot revolves around real events. ...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ― The pirates were nervous. A rookie author ― a white man from Canada ― had unexpectedly arrived in their cliff-top Somali village to ask about the captured ship anchored offshore. Locals fearing a showdown quietly melted away into a small collection of shacks. The encounter with the deadly gang forms the final chapter of “The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World,” ...

Monica Ali’s first novel, “Brick Lane,” made waves in 2003. Some hailed it as a realistic portrait of Bangladeshi life in London, while others condemned it as exaggeration and fabrication. Her fourth book, “Untold Story,” makes no pretense at realism. Instead of drawing back the curtain on immigrant lives, Ali writes a happy-ish ending for that most tragic of English roses: Princess Diana. What...

Contradictions By Yang Gui-ja (Cornell East Asia Series) Among many popular novels in the late 1990s, author Yang Gui-ja’s 1998 best selling novel “Contradictions” has managed to be an easy read while delving into the contradictions of the human condition. Jin-jin, a woman in her late 20s, is deeply influenced by the lives of her mother and her aunt. The twin sisters, who used look just like ...

Thirty years is a long time to live in the shadow of a tragedy. Those who survived the collapse of the Hyatt skywalks or who treated victims or lost a loved one have managed in their own ways to move on from that night. But for many, it has not been easy. Some escaped death, only to live a life of physical or emotional pain that challenged their spirits and altered the course of their lives. ...

The poet, whose books have been translated and published in more than 20 countries worldwide, has recently published his very first collection of love poems, “Sanghwa: Love of a Planet.” He has dedicated the book to his wife, professor Lee Sang-wha at Chung-Ang University, whom Ko calls as his goddess and savior. Ko said the phrase “love of a planet” refers to our mother earth and all of its liv...

The poet, whose books have been translated and published in more than 20 countries worldwide, has recently published his very first collection of love poems, “Sanghwa: Love of a Planet.” He has dedicated the book to his wife, professor Lee Sang-wha at Chung-Ang University, whom Ko calls as his goddess and savior. Ko said the phrase “love of a planet” refers to our mother earth and all of its liv...

Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal By Michael Van Rooy (Minotaur Books) Montgomery “Monty” Haaviko knows a lot about the criminal life, and he’s slowly learning about the straight life. But he does backslide. As if Haaviko, the hero of Michael Van Rooy’s “Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal,” isn’t busy enough. He baby-sits by day, and he’s trying to ward off a drug dealer who wants to take ...

You’re Next By Gregg Hurwitz (St. Martin’s Press) Gregg Hurwitz delivers a chilling look at one man’s efforts to save his family from his haunted past in “You’re Next.” Mike was left at a foster home when he was 4. His last memory was his father promising to return. He never did. Flash-forward to the present: Mike has an amazing wife and a wonderful 8-year-old daughter. He runs a constructio...

Rust By Yang Gui-ja (Jimoondang, 5,000 won) What happens to your dreams when you know you can never reach them? In answer, author Yang Gui-ja’s novella “Rust” presents a portrait of a middle class man who no longer wants to be what he wanted to be, and is deeply disillusioned by his old ideals and aspirations. Yi, who used to dream of becoming a journalist, was rejected for his dream job as ...

She had to kill off Precious. That was what Sapphire, the 60-year-old author of the 1996 underground classic “Push,” the novel that was the basis for the unflinching movie “Precious,” concluded. The California-born literacy teacher, poet, and author had no choice, given her commitment to social realism: An HIV-infected black woman in the 1980s would not have lived long enough to make it past th...

For much of the 1980s, beginning when I was in college, I used to read a Hemingway book a year. The point was not self-improvement but rather a kind of exploration: What was it, exactly, about his writing that I’d missed? I had read “The Sun Also Rises” in high school and had admired its spare portrayal of 1920s expatriate life. But I’d also thought of it as more than a little stilted, even melod...

Cho Joo-hee, Seoul bureau chief of ABC News, has published her first memoir “Aspire with Grace“ in Seoul this month. Having worked for both ABC News and the Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in Seoul since 1999, Cho seemed more than confident of her own accomplishments during a press conference promoting the book on Tuesday. Cho, who calls herself a “social narcissist” in the book, sai...