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Sixty-eight-year-old Hattie Kong, descendant of Confucius, daughter of an American missionary, has lived to see both her husband and her best friend die back-to-back in a single year: 'It was like having twins' She got to book the same church with the same pianist for both funerals and did think she should have gotten some sort of twofer from the crematorium.' But two years later, it's time for Hattie to start over. She moves to a small New England town where she is soon joined by a Cambodian American family and an ex-lover now a retired neuroscientist all of them looking for their own new lives. What Hattie makes of this situation and of the changing town of Riverlake challenged as it is, in 2001, by fundamentalist Christians, struggling family farms, and unexpected immigrants lies at the center of a novel that asks deep and absorbing questions about religion, home, and what 'worlds' we make of the world. Moving, humorous, and broad-ranging, World and Town is rich in character and brilliantly evocative of its time and place. This is a masterful novel from one of our most admired writers. 'Jen's prose is unique, dense, and enthralling, and her characters are marvels of authenticity.''Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Gish Jen (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)
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Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
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."
Suki Kim (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)
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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Newbery Honor Winner In the Valley of Fruitless Mountain, a young girl named Minli spends her days working hard in the fields and her nights listening to her father spin fantastic tales about the Jade Dragon and the Old Man of the Moon. Minli's mother, tired of their poor life, chides him for filling her head with nonsense. But Minli believes these enchanting stories and embarks on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man of the Moon and ask him how her family can change their fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest. Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat, returns with a wondrous story of happiness, family, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless adventure story in the classic tradition of The Wizard of Oz. From the Compact Disc edition.
Grace Lin (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)
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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
This stunning fantasy inspired by Chinese folklore is a companion novel to Starry River of the Sky and the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award finalist When the Sea Turned to Silver In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer. Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz and Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.
Grace Lin (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)
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Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
Coming this October: Killing Commendatore, the much-anticipated new novel from Haruki Murakami In this haunting work of journalistic investigation, Haruki Murakami tells the story of the horrific terrorist attack on Japanese soil that shook the entire world. On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.
Haruki Murakami (Author), Feodor Chin, Ian Anthony Dale, Janet Song (Narrator)
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For the first time, Euna Lee-the young wife, mother, and film editor detained in North Korea-tells a harrowing, but ultimately inspiring, story of survival and faith in one of the most isolated parts of the world. On March 17, 2009, Lee and her Current TV colleague Laura Ling were working on a documentary about the desperate lives of North Koreans fleeing their homeland for a chance at freedom when they were violently apprehended by North Korean soldiers. For nearly five months they remained detained while friends and family in the United States were given little information about their status or conditions. For Lee, detention would prove especially harrowing. Imprisoned just TK miles from where she was born and where her parents still live in Seoul, South Korea, she was branded as a betrayer of her Korean blood by her North Korean captors. After representing herself in her trial before North Korea's highest court, she received a sentence of twelve years of hard labor in the country's notorious prison camps, leading her to fear she might not ever see her husband and daughter again. The World Is Bigger Now draws us deep into Euna Lee's life before and after this experience: what led to her arrival in North Korea, her efforts to survive the agonizing months of detainment, and how she and her fellow captive, Ling, were finally released thanks to the efforts of many individuals, including Bill Clinton. Lee explains in unforgettable detail what it was like to lose, and then miraculously regain, life as she knew it. The World Is Bigger Now is the story of faith and love and Euna Lee's personal conviction that God will sustain and protect us, even in our darkest hours.
Euna Lee, Lisa Dickey (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)
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There are three rules in the Walled City: Run fast. Trust no one. Always carry your knife. Right now, my life depends completely on the first. Run, run, run. Jin, Mei Yee, and Dai all live in the Walled City, a lawless labyrinth run by crime lords and overrun by street gangs. Teens there traffic drugs or work in brothels--or, like Jin, hide under the radar. But when Dai offers Jin a chance to find her lost sister, Mei Yee, she begins a breathtaking race against the clock to escape the Walled City itself.
Ryan Graudin (Author), Eugene Kim, Janet Song (Narrator)
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A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams - invasive images of blood and brutality - torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. Its a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice thats become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one womans struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her. From the Hardcover edition.
Han Kang (Author), Janet Song, Stephen Park (Narrator)
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From the bestselling author of Daughters of the Dragon comes an epic novel of a star-crossed couple who must defy tradition, war, and prejudice to keep their love alive. At the urging of a Los Angeles detective, international rights lawyer Anna Carlson assists in a murder investigation. It’s a personal request from Suk-bo Yi, a ninety-nine-year-old woman questioned in a mysterious death at a Koreatown nursing home. A stranger to Anna, Suk-bo has a tale to tell. For reasons of her own, she’s chosen Anna—only Anna—to hear it… Suk-bo’s story begins in 1937, when the Japanese occupying Korea force her to marry one of their own, named Hisashi. In spite of their differences, they fall madly in love, pitting them against two violently opposing cultures. When Hisashi joins the Japanese Imperial Army and disappears, Suk-bo embarks on a quest through years of war, bigotry, and poverty to find him. But Suk-bo’s unfolding history reveals more than Anna can imagine: an heirloom comb bearing an intricately carved two-headed dragon binding her to Suk-bo’s past. Soon Anna will discover her own legacy at the heart of Suk-bo’s epic love story.
William Andrews (Author), Emily Woo Zeller, Janet Song (Narrator)
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The Language of Solitude: A Novel
Brooding expat and journalist Paul Leibovitz is beginning to imagine a new life for himself in Hong Kong, one in which the grief over a recent family tragedy doesn't consume him and his love for Christine Wu brings him great joy. When Christine gets an unexpected and emotionally-charged letter from her estranged brother, Paul journeys with her to a remote village outside Shanghai, where a mysterious illness is affecting the locals. Paul discovers a powerful chemical conglomerate is polluting a nearby lake, and Chinese officials are doing nothing to stop it. The victims demand justice, but taking legal action could prove even more dangerous than the strange disease itself. Government intimidation and political corruption threaten to suppress even the most passionate and audacious environmental activists. If Paul doesn't walk away, he could pull the woman he loves back into a world she escaped from decades ago-putting their relationship and their lives at risk. Suspenseful and rife with the page-turning storytelling that defines Sendker's remarkable work and harks back to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, The Language of Solitude offers a peerless look into contemporary China. Translated by Christine Lo
Jan-Philipp Sendker (Author), George Newbern, Janet Song (Narrator)
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See paints a fascinating portrait of a complex and enigmatic society, in which nothing is ever quite as it appears, and of the people, peasant and aristocrat alike, who are bound by its subtle strictures. -San Diego Union-Tribune While David Stark is asked to open a law office in Beijing, his lover, detective Liu Hulan, receives an urgent message from an old friend imploring her to investigate the suspicious death of her daughter, who worked for a toy company about to be sold to Davids new client, Tartan Enterprises. Despite Davids protests, Hulan goes undercover at the toy factory in the rural village of Da Shui, deep in the heart of China. It is a place that forces Hulan to face a past she has long been running from. Once there, rather than finding answers to the girls death, Hulan unearths more questions, all of which point to possible crimes committed by Davids client. Suddenly Hulan and David find themselves on opposing sides: One of them is trying to expose a company and unearth a killer, while the other is ethically bound to protect his client. As pressures mount and danger increases, Hulan and David uncover universal truths about good and evil, right and wrong -and the sometimes subtle lines that distinguish them. [See] illuminates tradition and change, Western and Eastern cultural differences. . . . All this in the middle of her thriller which is also about greed, corruption, abuse of the disadvantaged, the desperation of those on the bottom of the food chain, and love. -The Tennessean Sophisticated . . . graceful . . . Sees picture of contemporary Chinas relationship with the United States is aptly played out through her characters. -Los Angeles Times Immediate, haunting and exquisitely rendered. -San Francisco ChronicleFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
Lisa See (Author), Janet Song (Narrator)
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As tensions rise on the Korean peninsula, US diplomat Nate Simon is sent to Seoul to gauge the political situation and advise the president. He also needs to find out why someone sent the president an ancient, intricately carved comb with an ivory inlay of a two-headed dragon. Though familiar with Korea's language and culture, Nate knows little of its troubled history. Beautiful and mysterious embassy aide Anna Carlson believes it's time he learns, starting with the extraordinary story of Korea's last queen. Seoul, 1866. The beautiful orphan Ja-young is chosen to be the child bride of Gojong, Korea's boy king. Highly intelligent but shy, Ja-young faces a choice: she can be a stone queen-silent and submissive-or she can be a dragon queen and oppose enemies and empires that try to rule Korea during the age of Imperialism. Her choice leads her to forge a legend that will endure far beyond her lifetime. The more Nate discovers, the more he comes to realize that Queen Min's story is still relevant today. Now the choice is up to him: be submissive and accepting . . . or change the world.
William Andrews (Author), Janet Song, Todd McLaren (Narrator)
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