'It's a clever book ... [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous' M.W. Craven _______________ Sometimes work can be murder... The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for… restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder. The ‘natural deaths’ he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people. Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly begins to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder... But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him? The electrifying first novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-Sun – now in English for the first time – combines the tension of the best crime fiction with searing social criticism to present a searing take-down of global corporate life.

A death, a lie, a secret. For twenty-six summers he didn't have the courage to face the past. Lee Hanjo is an artist at the peak of his fame, envied and celebrated. Then, on his forty-third birthday, he awakens to find that his devoted wife has disappeared, leaving behind a soon-to-be-published novel she'd secretly written about the sordid past and questionable morality of an artist with a trajectory similar to Hanjo's. It's clear to him that his life is about to shatter and the demons from his past will come out. But why did his wife do it? Why now? The book forces Hanjo to reflect on a summer from his youth when a deadly lie irreversibly and tragically determined the fates of two families. From master storyteller J. M. Lee, one of Korea's most renowned authors, comes an unforgettable novel of hidden truths, denials, and their inevitable repercussions. Everyone still left standing from that terrible summer so long ago must finally reckon with the deceptions that started it all and, twist after shocking twist, reap both the suffering and the vindication that comes with revenge.

From the author of The Picture Bride, two women’s lives and identities are intertwined — through World War II and the Korean War — revealing the harsh realities of class division in the early part of the 20th century. Can’t I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century. When the daughter’s suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her father’s Japanese employees and shipped off to the United States. At the same time, her maidservant is sent in her mistress’s place to be a comfort woman to the Japanese Imperial army. Years of hardship, survival, and even happiness follow. In the aftermath of WWII, the women make their way home, where they must reckon with the tangled lives they’ve led, in an attempt to reclaim their identities, and find their place in an independent Korea. 

Could you marry a man you've never met? Three Korean women in 1918 make a life-changing journey to Hawaii, where they will marry, having seen only photographs of their intended husbands. Different fates await each of these women. Hong-ju, who dreams of a marriage of 'natural love', meets a man who looks twenty years older than his photograph; Song-hwa, who wants to escape from her life of ridicule as the granddaughter of a shaman, meets a lazy drunkard. And then there's Willow, whose 26-year-old groom, Taewan, looks just like his image ... Real life doesn't always resemble a picture, but there's no going back. And while things don't turn out quite as they'd hoped, even for Willow, they do find something that makes their journey worthwhile - each other.

'It's a clever book ... [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous' M.W. Craven _______________ Sometimes work can be murder... The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for… restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder. The ‘natural deaths’ he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people. Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly begins to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder... But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him? The electrifying first novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-Sun – now in English for the first time – combines the tension of the best crime fiction with searing social criticism to present a searing take-down of global corporate life.