Arcadia Public Library

"My Brilliant Life interweaves the past and present of a tight-knit family, finding joy and happiness in even the most difficult times. Areum lives life to its fullest, vicariously through the stories of his parents, conversations with Little Grandpa Jang - his sixty-year-old neighbor and best friend - and through the books he reads to visit the places he would otherwise never see. For several months, Areum has been working on a manuscript, piecing...

Kim Ki-teak's family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family's luck changes. One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park's home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle.

Taking a sweatshop job in Seoul to support her family, a teenaged girl endures a life of extreme exploitation that contributes to Korea's economic rise in the 1970s. She works long, sunless days on a stereo-assembly line, struggling through night school every evening in order to achieve her dream of becoming a writer.

"Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was an adult when her mother revealed a family secret: she was separated from her sister during the Korean War. It's not an uncommon story--the peninsula was split down the 38th parallel, dividing one country into two. As many fled violence in the north, not everyone was able to make it south. Her mother's story inspired Gendry-Kim to begin interviewing her and other Koreans separated by the war; that research fueled a deeply...

Beautiful Catherine Holly is committed to a mental institution after witnessing the horrible death of her cousin at the hands of cannibals. Her rich aunt tries to influence a young neurosurgeon to surgically end Catherine's haunting hallucinations. By utilizing injections of truth serum, the neurosurgeon discovers that Catherine's delusions are in fact true and must confront the rich aunt about her own involvement in her son's violent death.