Bill recommends...

The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson, is an adventure thriller, a coming of age story, and an almost surreal, Alice-in-Wonderland, meander through modern day North Korea. However, unlike the drab backdrop observable in current news footage - with the masses of citizens dressed in the same clothes, shoes, hairstyles, and eye glasses - the characters and landscape are rendered in vivid texture and details. (The author traveled to North Korea as a chaperoned US tourist and it shows.) Even the treatment of Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, has depth.

The novel follows the unlikely rise of Pak Jun Do, from his lowly beginnings in an orphanage, through a series of increasingly significant roles (and setbacks) in the North Korean military and political complex. Jun Do serves as a trained dark-tunnel combatant against South Korean incursion, a professional kidnapper working off the coast of Japan, and a listening-post radio operator hidden on a fishing boat. What might sound like an absurd spy-thriller or comic romp is rendered credible when set in the context of one of the most oppressive and bizarre authoritarian regimes in history, even as Jun Do emerges an eventual compatriot and romantic rival to the Dear Leader himself.

To describe OMS solely as an action adventure set in North Korea would be an extreme disservice. The moments of revelation and poignancy throughout this beautifully written literary novel are too numerous to mention and would risk ruining the impact of individual discovery. At its core, OMS serves as a treatise on love and humanity that applies to any modern society while asking the important question "What does it mean to be free?".

This semi-autobiographical Vietnam War thriller is rife in detailed battle scenes with the North Vietnamese Army and the complex politics and race relations of the late 1960s.  Written over the course of 30 years by a highly decorated veteran, this reads like an early Tom Clancy novel.

Hitchcock, "The Fugitive", and MC Escher combined in a postmodern noir thriller. Darkly funny and sexy, this debut novel is great fun. 

In 1799, Dejima is a small, artificial island in Nagasaki Harbor that serves as the sole port for a Japanese Empire sealed off from the outside world. Jacob de Zoet travels to Dejima from Holland to earn his fortune with the Dutch East India Company. Instead, he discovers a world of corruption and treachery, and is beguiled by the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor.