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Best Books of the Month: August 2017

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All News & Interviews | Popular this month

Giveaways

The Alienist
by Caleb Carr (Goodreads Author)

Release date: Nov 21, 2017

Enter to win a TV tie-in edition of the bestselling book The Alienist.

Don't miss the premiere of the TV adaptation on TNT January 22, 2018!

Enter Giveaway

Format: Print book

Giveaway ends in: a

Availability: 75 copies available, 6353 people requesting

Giveaway dates: Nov 27 - Dec 31, 2017

Countries available: US

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Top Reviews This Week

Emily May's review of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

They don’t stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love.

A painfully human look at North Korea (mostly) through the eyes of defectors now living in South

They don’t stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love.

A painfully human look at North Korea (mostly) through the eyes of defectors now living in South Korea or China.

Demick peels back the layers of propaganda, parades and leader worship to expose the people and lives underneath. If you're anything like me, you'll find it hard not to be fascinated by this exceptionally secretive country and wonder what everyday life can really be like living in one of the strictest regimes on earth.

Of course, even in the darkest places there are love stories, hopes, dreams and family dynamics. We see a young couple courting in secret over many years, a woman who loses everything during the devastating famine of the 1990s - a famine which killed anywhere between a few hundred thousand and several million people - and a man sent to a hard labor camp for petty crimes. Families of defectors, no matter how innocent, are rounded up and shipped off to camps that may as well be called death camps.

Its was extremely interesting to get a look inside this closed country, and perhaps even more interesting to see the outside world through the eyes of those who escaped. I can't even imagine what it must be like to cross a border and discover that the world is nothing like you always believed.

I recently really enjoyed the fictional Korean story in Pachinko, which begins before the country's division and during the Japanese colonization, so it was great to see the history that so intrigued me expanded upon here. For one thing, I had no idea that traditional dress for Korean women was a head-to-toe veil, not unlike the burka. There were lots of small facts like this that I found fascinating.

Nothing to Envy reminds us of something important. That underneath all the craziness that is this regime and its deified leader, there are more than 20 million people just trying to feed their families, live their lives, and not get killed for it.

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Romance Author Interviews

Ilona Andrews

Turn up the heat with White Hot, Ilona Andrews' sizzling new paranormal romance. The husband-and-wife writing team answers your questions about magical abilities and character names.

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