The Orphan Master's Son

The Orphan Master's Son
Author: Adam Johnson
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812992792

The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us.

The Orphanmaster

The Orphanmaster
Author: Jean Zimmerman
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 014312353X

A love story wrapped around a murder mystery, set in seventeenth-century Manhattan In 1663 in the hardscrabble colony of New Amsterdam—today’s lower Manhattan—orphan children are going missing and residents suspect a serial killer. The list of possible culprits is long and strange. Among those looking into the mystery are a shrewd young Dutch woman, Blandine van Couvering, and a dashing Englishman, Edward Drummond, whose newfound romance is threatened by horrible accusations. In this spellbinding work of historical fiction, Jean Zimmerman relates the harsh realities of life in early Manhattan, re-creating the sights, smells, and textures of the rough settlement surrounded by wilderness and subject to political turmoil. Compulsively readable and filled with New York history, The Orphanmaster will delight fans of Caleb Carr, Hilary Mantel, and Geraldine Brooks.

The Orphanmaster

The Orphanmaster
Author: Jean Zimmerman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 014312353X

A love story wrapped around a murder mystery, set in seventeenth-century Manhattan In 1663 in the hardscrabble colony of New Amsterdam—today’s lower Manhattan—orphan children are going missing and residents suspect a serial killer. The list of possible culprits is long and strange. Among those looking into the mystery are a shrewd young Dutch woman, Blandine van Couvering, and a dashing Englishman, Edward Drummond, whose newfound romance is threatened by horrible accusations. In this spellbinding work of historical fiction, Jean Zimmerman relates the harsh realities of life in early Manhattan, re-creating the sights, smells, and textures of the rough settlement surrounded by wilderness and subject to political turmoil. Compulsively readable and filled with New York history, The Orphanmaster will delight fans of Caleb Carr, Hilary Mantel, and Geraldine Brooks.

Fortune Smiles

Fortune Smiles
Author: Adam Johnson
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2015-08-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812997484

The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The Orphan Master's Son

The Orphan Master's Son
Author: Adam Johnson
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2013
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0552778257

Pak Jun Do knows he is special He knows he must be the son of the master of the orphanage, not some kid dumped by his parents - it was obvious from the way his father singled him out for beatings. He knows he is special when he is picked as a spy and kidnapper for his country, the glorious Democratic Republic of North Korea. He knows he must find his true love, Sun Moon, the greatest opera star who ever lived, before it's too late.

Orphan Monster Spy

Orphan Monster Spy
Author: Matt Killeen
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2019-02-19
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0451478754

"Like Inglourious Basterds for tweens, this clever YA title features Sarah, a blond, blue-eyed Jewish girl in 1939 Germany."--The New York Post After her mother is shot at a checkpoint, fifteen-year-old Sarah finds herself on the run from the Nazis in Third Reich-ruled Germany. While trying to escape, Sarah meets a mysterious man with an ambiguous accent, a suspiciously bare apartment, and a lockbox full of weapons. He's part of the secret resistance against the Reich, and he needs her help. Sarah is to hide in plain sight at a boarding school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them. She must befriend the daughter of a key scientist to gain access to the blueprints for a bomb that could destroy the cities of Western Europe, and steal them. Sarah may look like the rest of the girls, innocent, blonde-haired, and young, but she refuses to become one of the monsters she's surrounded by. She's a brilliant con artist, convincing them she's one of them even as she lives in terror of being found out. And she's determined to get her revenge on them all.

Sacred Hunger

Sacred Hunger
Author: Barry Unsworth
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 647
Release: 2012-01-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307948447

Winner of the Booker Prize A historical novel set in the eighteenth century, Sacred Hunger is a stunning, engrossing exploration of power, domination, and greed in the British Empire as it entered fully into the slave trade and spread it throughout its colonies. Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.

Savage Girl

Savage Girl
Author: Jean Zimmerman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2014-03-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101616326

“An over-the-top romp through 1870s America . . . compulsively readable.” —Oprah.com Jean Zimmerman’s spectacular follow-up to The Orphanmaster has it all: Gilded Age romance, robber baron excess, detective story suspense, and a compelling female protagonist whom readers will fall in love with. In 1875, the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple on a tour of the American West, seek out a sideshow attraction called “Savage Girl.” Her handlers avow that the wild, seemingly mute Bronwyn has been raised by wolves. Presented with the perfect blank slate to explore the power of civilized nurture, the Delegates take her back east to be introduced into high society. Cleaned up, Bronwyn is blazingly smart and darkly beautiful; as she takes steps toward her grand debut, a series of suitors find her irresistible—and begin to turn up murdered.

Parasites Like Us

Parasites Like Us
Author: Adam Johnson
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2014-06-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473509068

*The debut novel by the author of THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON: winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2013 After trashing his cherry '72 Corvette, illegally breaking into an ancient burial site, and snacking on 12,000-year-old popcorn, Hank Hannah finds that he's inadvertently unleashed the apocalypse. Hank, a professor of anthropology back in the days when there were still co-eds to ogle and now one of only twelve humans still alive on earth, decides to record the last days of human civilization for whomever - or whatever - might replace us.

The Alienist

The Alienist
Author: Caleb Carr
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2006-10-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1588365409

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A TNT ORIGINAL SERIES • “A first-rate tale of crime and punishment that will keep readers guessing until the final pages.”—Entertainment Weekly “Caleb Carr’s rich period thriller takes us back to the moment in history when the modern idea of the serial killer became available to us.”—The Detroit News When The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere. The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over. Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences. Praise for The Alienist “[A] delicious premise . . . Its settings and characterizations are much more sophisticated than the run-of-the-mill thrillers that line the shelves in bookstores.”—The Washington Post Book World “Mesmerizing.”—Detroit Free Press “The method of the hunt and the disparate team of hunters lift the tale beyond the level of a good thriller—way beyond. . . . A remarkable combination of historical novel and psychological thriller.”—The Buffalo News “Engrossing.”—Newsweek “Gripping, atmospheric . . . intelligent and entertaining.”—USA Today “A high-spirited, charged-up and unfailingly smart thriller.”—Los Angeles Times “Keeps readers turning pages well past their bedtime.”—San Francisco Chronicle