Weary of sex scandals that have rocked all portions of our government in recent years, there’s a lot of talk on the campaign trail about getting back to the principles of our nation’s Founding Fathers. Publisher Larry Flynt attends the 2008 Directors Guild of America Honors at the DGA Theater in New York City, Oct. 16, 2008. Flynt and historian David Eisenbach have a new book, “One Nation Under Se

For Kathryn Gualtieri one of the toughest tasks in writing her first novel was suppressing her natural instincts as a historian.“The hardest part was not putting in too much history,” the Capitola resident said. “You don’t move the story along like that.”Her mystery novel, “Murder in the Pines,” still packs in a lot of historical references, and much of the plot revolves around real events. Depot

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ― The pirates were nervous. A rookie author ― a white man from Canada ― had unexpectedly arrived in their cliff-top Somali village to ask about the captured ship anchored offshore.Locals fearing a showdown quietly melted away into a small collection of shacks.The encounter with the deadly gang forms the final chapter of “The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World,” a fir

Monica Ali’s first novel, “Brick Lane,” made waves in 2003. Some hailed it as a realistic portrait of Bangladeshi life in London, while others condemned it as exaggeration and fabrication. Her fourth book, “Untold Story,” makes no pretense at realism. Instead of drawing back the curtain on immigrant lives, Ali writes a happy-ish ending for that most tragic of English roses: Princess Diana.What if

ContradictionsBy Yang Gui-ja(Cornell East Asia Series)Among many popular novels in the late 1990s, author Yang Gui-ja’s 1998 best selling novel “Contradictions” has managed to be an easy read while delving into the contradictions of the human condition.Jin-jin, a woman in her late 20s, is deeply influenced by the lives of her mother and her aunt. The twin sisters, who used look just like one anoth

Thirty years is a long time to live in the shadow of a tragedy.Those who survived the collapse of the Hyatt skywalks or who treated victims or lost a loved one have managed in their own ways to move on from that night.But for many, it has not been easy.Some escaped death, only to live a life of physical or emotional pain that challenged their spirits and altered the course of their lives.Some who

Poet Ko Un speaks to reporter Claire Lee of The Korea Herald near Nowon Art Center in northern Seoul on Friday. (Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald)Highly acclaimed poet publishes his first collection of love poemsDressed in a sky blue blazer and wearing his signature glasses with black plastic frames, poet Ko Un could not hide his spontaneous, child-like nature on Friday afternoon. “Let’s do this int

 Poet Ko Un speaks to reporter Claire Lee of The Korea Herald near Nowon Art Center in northern Seoul on Friday. (Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald) Highly acclaimed  poet publishes his first collection of love poemsDressed in a sky blue blazer and wearing his signature glasses with black plastic frames, poet Ko Un could not hide his spontaneous, child-like nature on Friday afternoon. “Let’s do this

Your Friendly Neighborhood CriminalBy Michael Van Rooy(Minotaur Books)Montgomery “Monty” Haaviko knows a lot about the criminal life, and he’s slowly learning about the straight life. But he does backslide.As if Haaviko, the hero of Michael Van Rooy’s “Your Friendly Neighborhood Criminal,” isn’t busy enough. He baby-sits by day, and he’s trying to ward off a drug dealer who wants to take over a ro

You’re NextBy Gregg Hurwitz(St. Martin’s Press)Gregg Hurwitz delivers a chilling look at one man’s efforts to save his family from his haunted past in “You’re Next.”Mike was left at a foster home when he was 4. His last memory was his father promising to return. He never did.Flash-forward to the present: Mike has an amazing wife and a wonderful 8-year-old daughter. He runs a construction company t

RustBy Yang Gui-ja(Jimoondang, 5,000 won)What happens to your dreams when you know you can never reach them?In answer, author Yang Gui-ja’s novella “Rust” presents a portrait of a middle class man who no longer wants to be what he wanted to be, and is deeply disillusioned by his old ideals and aspirations.Yi, who used to dream of becoming a journalist, was rejected for his dream job as someone els

She had to kill off Precious.That was what Sapphire, the 60-year-old author of the 1996 underground classic “Push,” the novel that was the basis for the unflinching movie “Precious,” concluded.The California-born literacy teacher, poet, and author had no choice, given her commitment to social realism: An HIV-infected black woman in the 1980s would not have lived long enough to make it past the fir

Photographer Yousef Karsh took this famous portrait of Ernest Hemingway in 1957. (MCT)For much of the 1980s, beginning when I was in college, I used to read a Hemingway book a year. The point was not self-improvement but rather a kind of exploration: What was it, exactly, about his writing that I’d missed? I had read “The Sun Also Rises” in high school and had admired its spare portrayal of 1920s

Cho Joo-hee, Seoul bureau chief of ABC News, poses at a press conference promoting her book, “Aspire with Grace,” in southern Seoul, Tuesday. (Yonhap News.)Cho Joo-hee, Seoul bureau chief of ABC News, has published her first memoir “Aspire with Grace“ in Seoul this month.Having worked for both ABC News and the Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in Seoul since 1999, Cho seemed more than con

Researcher Song Soon-ok at the Academy of Korean Studies shows a copy of the Royal Genealogy of Joseon Dynasty to the members of Korea’s jongga, the prestigious households descended from distinguished ancestors through the eldest son of each generation, at the newly opened Jangseogak Archives of the Academy of Korean Studies in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. (Claire Lee/The Korea Herald) Ne