Korean American Fiction

From the bestselling author of Almond, The Devil Wears Prada meets The Office in this witty, humane, and ultimately transformative story of a group of young workers who rebel against the status quo. Jihye is an ordinary woman who has never been extraordinary. In her administrative job at the...

Long overshadowed by Japan and China, South Korea is a small country that happens to be one of the great national success stories of the postwar period. From a failed state with no democratic tradition, ruined and partitioned by war, and sapped by a half-century of colonial rule, South Korea transformed itself in just 50 years into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. With no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule, Korea managed to accomplish a second Asian miracle.

Riley Oh can't wait to see her sister get initiated into the Gom clan, a powerful lineage of Korean healing witches their family has belonged to for generations. Her sister, Hattie, will earn her Gi bracelet and finally be able to cast spells without adult supervision. Although Riley is desperate to follow in her sister's footsteps when she herself turns 13, she's a saram - a person without magic. Riley was adopted, and despite having memorized every healing spell she's ever heard, she often feels like the odd one out in her family and the gifted community.

Elena Soo has always felt overshadowed. Whether by her more successful older sisters, her more popular twin brother, or her more outgoing best friend, everyone except Elena seems to know exactly who they are and what they want. But she is certain about one thing—she has no interest in going to prom. While the rest of the school is giddy over corsages and dresses, Elena would rather spend her time working to save the local community center. So when international K-pop superstar Robbie Choi shows up at her house to ask her to prom, Elena is more confused than ever.

Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.

From the National Book Award winning author, an extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation. In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-cheol was a running prodigy and a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. But he...

A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present—loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social media “Your view of twentieth-century history will be enlarged and altered...

“This story of the unlikely meeting of two vulnerable women is a beautifully woven page turner. The battle-weary woman and the pin-up girl who meet, connect, separate: each changed by the brief union.” --Heather Morris, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz A...

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last. Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother had warned her that the women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But beyond these ghosts, Elsa also faces a more earthly fate.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years “A wonderfully resplendent evocation of a newcomer’s America” (Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker) by the father of Korean American literature A Penguin Classic Having fled Japanese-occupied Korea for the gleaming...

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC’S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS The debut novel from critically acclaimed and New York Times–bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and My Year Abroad. In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From master storyteller and historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II. At the height of the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman...

Ken Hideyoshi is the new guy in Halawa Correctional Institute. He’s tough looking, a hard case. His cellmate is Cal—the mute tattoo artist of the prison who murdered his own wife. Ken, already inked with a gang symbol and a Japanese emblem, eventually asks Cal to create an elaborate tattoo on his back, in kanji script, of Musashi’s Book of the Void.

Told from three diverse points of view, this story of life and love after loss is one Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, believes "will stay with you long after you put it down." We've lost everything...and found ourselves. Loss pulled Autumn, Shay, and Logan apart. Will music bring them...

Gary Pak has emerged as one of the most important Asian Hawaiian writers of our time. In this new collection, Pak expertly crafts a memorable cast of Hawai'i's Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Native Hawaiians, amplifying our cross-cultural understanding of Hawaiian life today.

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep-sea diver in her family. She urges her mother to allow her to make their annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade sea delicacies for pork. A sea-village girl, Junja has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth, and it is there she falls in love with mountain-boy Yang Suwol. But when Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja's place.

Korean-American adoptee Siobhan O'Brien has spent much of her life explaining her name and her family to strangers, but a more pressing problem is whether to carry on the PI agency that her dead boss unexpectedly left to her. Easing into middle age, Siobhan would generally rather have a glazed donut than a romance, but when an old friend asks Siobhan to find her daughter who has disappeared from her dorm, the rookie private detective's search begins at Llewellyn College.

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life.

An Instant USA TODAY bestseller! “Spectacular! Full of Susan Lee’s trademark humor and vulnerability, but with swoonworthy spice!" —Ali Hazelwood, New York Times bestselling author of Problematic Summer Romance “Introspective, funny, relatable, sexy—it’s an absolutely perfect romance...

The sweeping, unforgettable story of an interracial couple in 1990s New York City who are determined to protect their love against all odds—a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet “Triumphant . . . sensuous, tender, and faceted like cut glass.”—Cathy Park Hong, award-winning author...