The June Competition [closed]

This month’s titles include:

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Drifting House, by Krys Lee

Alternating between the lives of Koreans struggling through seventy years of turbulent, post-World War II history in their homeland and the communities of Korean immigrants grappling with assimilation in the United States, Krys Lee’s haunting stories weave together intricate tales of family and love, loss and abandonment, on both sides of the Pacific.

In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants’ unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls – from the abandoned wife who enters a sham marriage to find her daughter to the makeshift family which is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door.

• Watch an interview with the author

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The Harbour, by Francesca Brill

It is the summer of 1940, and for Stevie Steiber, a young American journalist in Hong Kong, the war raging in Europe is a world away. While longing to be taken seriously as a writer, she keeps her readers informed about society gossip from the Orient, her days at the Happy Valley race-course slipping into dangerous, hedonistic nights. Major Harry Field has been charged by Her Majesty’s Government with investigating suspicious activity inside the colony. He is intrigued by the recent arrival of Jishang, a sophisticated Chinese publisher who owns a controversial political magazine. But it is Stevie, Jishang’s outspoken, beautiful correspondent who really fascinates him.

As the decadent British contingent remain oblivious to the cataclysm nearly upon them, the spy and the journalist are obsessively drawn to one another. And when the Japanese army seizes the island, they are faced with terrifying challenges. What will they sacrifice to stay alive, and how far will they go to protect each other? The Harbour is a stunning and utterly compelling debut about war, love and betrayal.

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All The Single Ladies, by Jane Costello

Jamie is loving, intelligent and, while he isn’t perfect, he’s perfect for her – in every way except one: he’s a free spirit. And after six years in one place, doing a job he despises, he is compelled to do something that will tear apart his relationship with Sam: book a one-way flight to South America.

But Sam isn’t giving up without a fight. With Jamie still totally in love with her, and torn about whether to stay or go, she has three months to persuade him to do the right thing. So with the help of her friends Ellie and Jen, she hatches a plan to make him realise what he’s giving up. A plan that involves dirty tricks, plotting, and a single aim: to win him back. But by the time the tortured Jamie finally wakes up to what he’s lost, a gorgeous new pretender has entered Sam’s life.

Which begs the question . . . does she still want him back?

• Read the extract

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Wicked Business, by Janet Evanovich

Lizzy Tucker’s once normal life as a pastry chef in Salem, Massachusetts, turns upside down as she battles both sinister forces and an inconvenient attraction to her unnaturally talented but off-limits partner, Diesel.

When Harvard University English professor and dyed-in-the wool romantic Gilbert Reedy is mysteriously murdered and thrown off his fourth-floor balcony, Lizzy and Diesel take up his twenty-year quest for the Luxuria Stone, an ancient relic believed by some to be infused with the power of lust. Following clues contained in a cryptic nineteenth-century book of sonnets, Lizzy and Diesel tear through Boston catacombs, government buildings, and multimillion-dollar residences. On their way they’ll leave behind a trail of robbed graves, public disturbances, and general mayhem.

Diesel’s black sheep cousin, Gerwulf Grimoire, also wants the Stone. His motives are far from pure, and what he plans on doing with the treasure, no one knows . . . but Lizzy Tucker fears she’s in his crosshairs. Never far and always watching, Grimoire has a growing, vested interest in the cupcake-baker-turned-finder-of-lost-things. As does another dangerous and dark opponent in the hunt–a devotee of lawlessness and chaos, known only as Anarchy.

Treasures will be sought, and the power of lust will be unmistakable as Lizzy and Diesel attempt to stay ahead of Anarchy, Grimoire, and his medieval minion, Hatchet, in this ancient game of twisted riddles and high-stakes hide-and-seek.

• Read the extract

To win, answer two simple questions…

• Question 1: What subkect does Ellie teach in All The Single Ladies?
  
• Question 2: In Wicked Business, where did Reedy live?

Terms and conditions

1. Closing date for entries: 9th July 2012.
2. Open to residents of the United Kingdom only.
3. Entry to the competition is by completion of the above form only. Anyone submitting multiple entries will be disqualified.
4. The winners will be selected at random from those correct entries received before the closing date.
5. Only the winning entrants will be contacted by Bookdiva. Our decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
6. The winner’s name(s) may be published on the Bookdiva website after the closing date of the competition.
7. The competition is not open to Bookdiva employees and their families, or to employees of Bookdiva publishers and their families.