Book picks similar to
The Tale of Chun Hyang by Jae-Hyo Shin
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Fox Girl
Nora Okja Keller - 2002
At the center of the tale are two teenage girls—Hyun Jin and Sookie, a teenage prostitute kept by an American soldier—who form a makeshift family with Lobetto, a lost boy who scrapes together a living running errands and pimping for neighborhood girls. Both horrifying and moving, Fox Girl at once reveals another layer of war's human detritus and the fierce love between a mother and daughter.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Therese Anne Fowler - 2013
When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.
Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River
Young-moon Jung - 2019
In his inimitable, recursive, meditative style that reads like a comedic zen koan but contains universes, Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River recounts Korean cult writer's Jung Young Moon’s time spent at an artist’s and writers residency in small-town Texas. In an attempt to understand what a “true Texan should know,” the author reflects on his outsider experiences in this most unique of places, learning to two-step, musing on cowboy hats and cowboy churches, blending his observations with a meditative rumination on the history of Texas and the events that shaped the state, from the first settlers to Jacky Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. All the while, the author is asking what a novel is and must be, while accompanied by a fictional cast of seven samurai who the author invents and carries with him, silent companions in a pantomime of existential theater. Jung blends fact with imagination, humor with reflection, and meaning with meaninglessness, as his meanderings become an absorbing, engaging, quintessential novel of ideas.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Henry Fielding - 1749
Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature. • Includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, notes, glossary, and an appendix of Fielding's revisions • Introduction discusses narrative tecniques and themes, the context of eighteenth-century fiction and satire, and the historical and political background of the Jacobite revolutionFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Circe
Madeline Miller - 2018
But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.
The Mountain
Paul Yoon - 2017
In The Mountain, Paul Yoon displays his subtle, ethereal, and strikingly observant style with six thematically linked stories, taking place across several continents and time periods and populated with characters who are connected by their traumatic pasts, newly vagrant lives, and quests for solace in their futures. Though they exist in their own distinct worlds (from a sanatorium in the Hudson Valley to an inn in the Russian far east) they are united by the struggle to reconcile their traumatic pasts in the wake of violence, big and small, spiritual and corporeal. A morphine-addicted nurse wanders through the decimated French countryside in search of purpose; a dissatisfied wife sporadically takes a train across Spain with a much younger man in the wake of a building explosion; a lost young woman emigrates from Korea to Shanghai, where she aimlessly works in a camera sweat shop, trying fruitlessly to outrun the ghosts of her past.Hailed by New York magazine as a quotidian-surreal craft-master and a radiant star in the current literary firmament by The Dallas Morning News, Yoon realizes his worlds with quiet, insightful, and gorgeous prose. Though each story is distinct from the others, his restrained voice and perceptive observations about violence to the body, the landscape, and ultimately, the human soul weaves throughout this collection as a whole, making The Mountain a beautiful, memorable read."
Sweet Romance
Erika EverestMeredith Deichler - 2020
Love, laughter, and occasional tears - no need to turn on the Hallmark Channel this winter. Snuggle up with this feel-good anthology instead!Warning: reading this anthology may cause cravings for cider sugar donuts, French toast, pimento cheese, cherry cola, and maple syrup ice-cream, as well as happy ever afters
One Little Yes
Jamey Moody - 2021
She is so tired of being sick and alone.Angel Ruiz is a loner with a scarred heart that began with homophobic parents years ago.When Gina meets Angel at her friends’ New Year’s Eve party she feels an instant bond. She sees Angel’s damaged heart and wonders if it is as weary as hers?And then she has an idea.All Angel has to do is say yes.
Cheri and The Last of Cheri
Colette - 1926
The amour between Fred Peloux, the beautiful gigolo known as Chéri, and the courtesan Léa de Lonval tenderly depicts the devotion that stems from desire, and is an honest account of the most human preoccupations of youth and middle age. With compassionate insight Colette paints a full-length double portrait using an impressionistic style all her own."A wonderful subject [treated with] intelligence, mastery, and understanding of the least-admitted secrets of the flesh." ― André Gide
Chasing Heaven
Becca Fisher - 2012
It gets her sisters wondering when they will get married, who they'll fall in love with, or whether God has other plans for them entirely. But it becomes clear that although the Amish are simple people, their love lives are anything but.
Mail Order Bride's Baby And Her One-Arm Indian
Florence Linnington - 2020
Until circumstances give her no option but to flee – with a baby in tow. Her only hope now is a man named Motega, whom she had corresponded via letters. Motega has offered her marriage and a home in the west in Wyoming. Motega has spent most of his life living between worlds. He is from the Shoshone tribe and has been forced to live the life of a white settler because of the westward expansion of the Transcontinental Railroad. However, despite his hardworking and quiet nature, the townsfolk want nothing to do with him. When the two different worlds of Rachael and Motega cross paths, they are immediately at odds. Motega does not want a baby in his house, yet. He badly needs to tend to his farm for the impending harvest and he needs a helping hand – because he has only one arm. Surrounded by hateful townsfolk, hazardous weather and the demands of taking care of a baby, can Rachael and Motega build a relationship to survive these odds? Or are they just too different to be together?
Reawakened
Odette Beane - 2013
She's been on her own since she was abandoned as a baby—that is, until the night of her twenty-eighth birthday, when Henry, a ten-year-old boy, shows up on her doorstep. He's the son Emma gave up for adoption, and this surprise visit turns her life upside down.Henry takes Emma back to his home in Storybrooke, Maine, where, Henry claims, all the residents are actually fairy tale characters who can't remember their true identities. And if Henry's right, that means that his sweet-natured, lonely schoolteacher Mary Margaret Blanchard is really Snow White, the iconic princess ... and also Emma's long-lost mother.In Fairy Tale Land, we meet Snow White as a bandit on the run, forced into exile by her stepmother, the Evil Queen. Snow's a young woman learning to become a hero, who will do anything to live happily ever after with her one true love, Prince Charming.The closer Emma comes to Henry in Storybrooke, the harder it is for her to ignore the dark curse that haunts this small New England town and binds her to Mary Margaret. If Emma can learn to accept her destiny as Storybrooke's savior and break the curse, she just might get the family reunion she's dreamed about her entire life.
The Missing Piece
Catherine Miller - 2020
Keisha Grant learnt that the hard way.Fifteen years ago, when she was a teenager being raised by her single dad, something happened on an ordinary Wednesday. Something that imploded her world, shattering her life as she knew it. It changed her forever – the girl she used to be is nothing but a faded memory.Ever since then, Keisha’s been in survival mode. She won’t let herself cry, won’t let herself think – what happened is hidden in a little box in the far corner of her mind. Just one look into her emerald-green eyes and you can see the shadow that haunts her.The scar she covers with a tattoo is an important reminder: your heart can’t break if you don’t let it feel in the first place. It’s an insurance policy she lives by. She won’t let anyone close enough to do real damage, and when happiness taps her on the shoulder, she turns the other way.But the problem is that Keisha isn’t living – she’s simply existing. What will it take to convince her that someone out there could be her missing piece? And can she ever face up to her past, so that she can have a future?For anyone who has ever felt the pang of heartbreak and feared you might never heal, this beautiful tale teaches us how to dust ourselves off and seek happiness again. Fans of Jojo Moyes, Josie Silver and Diane Chamberlain will love this moving and uplifting story.
Poisonwood Bible (Tap Instructional Materials)
Ruth L. Van Arsdale
