Most Popular
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Korea enters full election mode
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Seoul bus drivers go on general strike, cause morning rush hour delays
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Immigrant woman stabbed to death by Korean husband
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Lee Jong-sup resigns as envoy to Australia
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Official campaigning kicks off for April 10 elections
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Yellow dust engulfs S. Korea, advisory alert issued
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S. Korea to boost support for single-parent families
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Court upholds jail term for man who attempted to murder ex-girlfriend
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Kia EV9 wins world car of year
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Korea misses out on global bond index boost
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Fiction by ex-prosecutor tackles campus rape head on
“The Last Good Girl” By Allison Leotta Touchstone (288 pages, $25) Former federal sex-crimes prosecutor Allison Leotta continues her series featuring her fictional counterpart Anna Curtis in a too frighteningly real scenario in “The Last Good Girl.” College student Emily Shapiro has gone missing. She was last seen leaving a bar with a young man named Dylan, but he was chasing her down the street. The investigation reveals a video diary that Emily kept that detailed how Dylan had raped her, and
May 4, 2016
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New Spenser novel is a 5-alarm thriller
“Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn” By Ace Atkins G.P. Putnam’s Sons (320 pages, $270) A troubling series of fires in mostly abandoned Boston buildings turns deadly in “Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn,” the latest crime thriller in the long-running but still potent Spenser series. Spenser, a private detective, is called upon when the arson unit of the fire department hits dead ends investigating a fire at an old, shut down Catholic church. Three firefighters entering the church died when flames erupted
May 4, 2016
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Judy Blume talks Tumblr, possible new book
NEW YORK (AP) -- Judy Blume has many projects on her mind. She recently helped open a bookstore in Key West, Florida, where she lives much of the year. She’s starting to promote the paperback edition of her novel “In the Unlikely Event,” set in her native New Jersey in the early 1950s. She has just launched a Tumblr account (judyblumeofficial.tumblr.com), on top of her popular Twitter feed and Facebook page. And, she hasn’t ruled out a new book, despite indicating last year that “In the Unlikely
May 4, 2016
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Undeterred by rescues, novelist ready to set sail again
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- A novelist who was twice rescued from storm-battered sailboats hopes his next adventure lacks in such drama. South Carolina author Michael Hurley plans to sail around the world after using the experience of scuttling his sailboat on a failed trans-Atlantic crossing for his new book, “The Passage.” “The Passage” by Michael Hurley (Ragbagger Press) “I love the freedom of sailing on the ocean. There’s no limit. The horizon extends. There’s nothing to stop you from going w
May 4, 2016
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Proust’s personal archives headed to auction in Paris
PARIS (AFP) -- Intimate letters, personal photographs and rare manuscripts that once belonged to French writer Marcel Proust will go under the hammer in Paris, Sotheby’s auction house said Monday. The collection of some 120 items from the “Remembrance of Things Past” author’s personal archives even includes a hand-corrected proof of one of his well-known works. The trove of artefacts, being sold by the writer’s 41-year-old great-grand-niece Patricia Mante-Proust, is to be auctioned on May 31.
May 3, 2016
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Cosmo editor Joanna Coles writing guide to modern love
NEW YORK (AP) -- Cosmopolitan editor in chief Joanna Coles is working on a “no-nonsense” guide to some very old subjects in a very new world: sex and intimacy. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, told the Associated Press on Monday that it plans to release a book by Coles in 2018. The book currently is untitled. According to Harper, Coles will take on what she considers a “new sexual revolution” and offer advice for how to find “sustaining love” when all the rules have changed. “As t
May 3, 2016
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Study of body-mind mysteries wins Wellcome Book Prize
LONDON (AP) -- Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan won the medically themed Wellcome Book Prize on Monday with “It’s All in Your Head,” an exploration of the mysteries of psychosomatic illness. O’Sullivan beat five other finalists to take the 30,000 pound ($43,000) prize, which aims to bridge the gap between literature and science. The author drew on her experiences working at a London neurology hospital to probe the puzzling cases of patients whose serious symptoms have no obvious physical cause. Jo
April 27, 2016
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Irish writer O’Connor and the strange music of unhappy families
TOULOUSE, France (AFP) - When the Irish novelist Joseph O’Connor reads his books aloud he almost sings them. Like his sister, the singer Sinead O’Connor, he is forever searching for “musicality.” In the famously tumultuous O’Connor household, art was a family affair. Joseph, the eldest, began writing at 14 and published his first book at 27. His youngest sister Sinead was a pop sensation at 21, while his other sister Eimear is a well-known painter and art historian. But there was price to pay.
April 27, 2016
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‘A seder goes hilariously wrong in author Brenda Janowitz’s novel
“The Dinner Party” By Brenda Janowitz St. Martin’s Griffin (288 pages, $15.99 paper) Sylvia Gold, an upwardly mobile doctor’s wife in Greenwich, Conn., is in a tizzy. Her overachiever med student daughter Becca finally has a boyfriend -- and he’s a Rothschild. Of the Rothschilds, the richest and most powerful Jewish family on earth. And he and his parents are coming for dinner. Not just any dinner, but Passover seder. Quick, she has to redecorate the entire house, hire a chef, buy new table lin
April 27, 2016
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Polish women prisoners of Nazi camp were no lilacs
“Lilac Girls” By Martha Hall Kelly Ballantine Books (496 pages, $26) Martha Hall Kelly stumbled on the idea that would lead to her debut novel, “Lilac Girls,” when she decided to take a tour of the Bellamy-Ferriday house and garden in Bethlehem, Connecticut The historic home got the Bellamy part of its name from a reverend who gained fame through his role in the Great Awakening, America’s religious revival of the mid-18th century. About 150 years later, the 40.5-hectare farmstead was purchased
April 27, 2016
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Miami author bakes her way through life
“Life without a Recipe” By Diana Abu-Jaber Norton (272 pages, $26.95) Diana Abu-Jaber has spent years carving out a life as a successful writer, struggling to reconcile the competing voices in her head, one from a tough-minded German grandmother and the other from her exuberant Arab father. Through it all, she baked. Cookies and cakes, tarts and scones, a blizzard of confectioners’ sugar blanketing all difficulties, smoothing out rough edges, sweetening the bitter. In the kitchen and in life, s
April 27, 2016
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Millennium sequel to be written in American detective fiction style
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Swedish author David Lagercrantz, who took over the Millennium crime series from the late Stieg Larsson, said the fifth book will be written in a straight-talking style popularized by Raymond Chandler. But in an interview with the Swedish daily newspaper DN published Tuesday, Lagercrantz admitted that finding his voice in this new style was tough. “It's so much harder to write hard-boiled fiction than I thought. Good hard-boiled prose needs rhythm. You have to vary the sentence
April 21, 2016
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Beverly Cleary at 100: A salute
When we first meet Ramona Quimby, she’s only 4 years old and already showing signs of greatness. She can secretly summon 15 friends to her house without her mother suspecting a thing -- at least until the children start arriving on the doorstep, expecting a party. She can ruin two birthday cakes in a single day, turn the house upside down with only a box of apples, and make herself the center of attention anywhere, any time -- with or without the paper Easter bunny ears she proudly dons for, say
April 20, 2016
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‘Love will always win,’ says Syrian artist whose graphic novel tells of war’s hell
PARIS (AFP) - Two nights after the Paris attacks in November, a young couple stripped to their waists and kissed in the rain on the Place de la Republique as crowds gathered to grieve and share their shock at the killings. She was French and he Syrian, and the photo of them holding a handwritten placard saying “Love will always win” went viral. “I knew it was bad when my friends began calling me from Syria asking if I was OK,” said artist Hamid Sulaiman, of the jihadist attacks in which 130 peop
April 20, 2016
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An intricate novella of the mundane, the otherwordly
“Springtime: A Ghost Story” By Michelle de Kretser Catapult (85 pages, $11.95) Disturbing ripples run through this novella from an award-winning Sri Lankan author who grew up in Australia. We join the life of lead character Frances as she moves to modern-day Sydney to pursue her studies of elements of composition in 18th-century art. She’s a keen observer of details, researching the significance not only of what’s in a painting, but what’s not. Her story is both simple and intricate. Our first
April 20, 2016
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Understated novel observes family dynamics
“Miller’s Valley” By Anna Quindlen Random House (257 pages, $28) When society’s volume seems cranked to 11, there’s something to be said about a quiet book. Understated almost to a fault, Anna Quindlen’s eighth novel pulls together themes of rural life, Vietnam, mental illness, eminent domain, abortion and ambition in prose that never shouts, yet still explores a family’s depths. We meet Mimi Miller as a child growing up in Miller Valley, the family history flowing across the land as surely as
April 20, 2016
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Novelist Han Kang shortlisted for Man Booker Prize
Korean writer Han Kang has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her novel “The Vegetarian,” becoming the first Korean writer to be considered for the prestigious literary accolade. The award body announced the six final nominees for this year’s prize on its website on Thursday. The five other nominated works are “A Strangeness in My Mind” by Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk; “A General Theory of Oblivion” by Angola’s Jose Eduardo Angualusa; “The Story of th
April 14, 2016
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New book offers comprehensive study of Dokdo sovereignty
The territorial dispute between Korea and Japan over Dokdo Islets in the East Sea, dates back to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, explains Park Hyun-jin in his new book, “A Study of Dokdo Sovereignty,” which is by Kyungin Publishing and cost 59,000 won. Although records show that Korea obtained the original right to the Dokdo Islets during the Silla Kingdom period (57 BC-935 AD), Japan has been attempting to claim sovereignty over the Dokdo Islets after using it as a naval base during the war aga
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Pervading sense of passivity dominates ‘The Hole’
“The Hole” By Pyun Hye-young Moonji Publishing (210 pages, 13,000 won, $11) After a devastating car accident, 40-something university professor Oh-gi wakes up to find his wife dead and his own body completely paralyzed in a hospital bed, capable of no other movement than blinking. His whole existence seems to have collapsed and disappeared into nothing, he says in a monologue. He is recognizable to himself only through a nametag that a nurse placed at the foot of his bed. “The Hole,” the f
April 13, 2016
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[New Books] Veteran TV reporter releases coverage of his own life
“And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East” By Richard Engel Simon & Schuster (241 pages, $27) In his 20 years of reporting from some of the most volatile hot spots in the Middle East, Richard Engel has survived bombings and uprisings, been kidnapped and spent many nights sleeping on the floor, a mattress shoved against the window in case of an explosion. Engel’s accounting of his two-decade rise from young freelancer to NBC’s chief foreign correspondent is often as exhausti
April 13, 2016