GenevaBookClub: he book deals with intertwined themes of propaganda, identity and state power in North Korea. The novel was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Jun Do is The Orphan Master's Son, a North Korean citizen with a rough past who is working as a government-sanctioned kidnapper when we first meet him. He is hardly a sympathetic character, but sympathy is not author Johnson's aim. In a totalitarian nation of random violence and bewildering caprice's poor, gray place that nonetheless refers to itself as "the most glorious nation on earth" an unnatural tension exists between a citizen's national identity and his private life. Through Jun Do's story we realize that beneath the weight of oppression and lies beats a heart not much different from our own one that thirsts for love, acceptance, and hope, and that realization is at the heart of this shockingly believable, immersive, and thrilling novel.

GenevaBookClub: This, the fifth Bond novel, was Fleming's last chance to rescue what was seen by his publishers as a series that had run its course. It is different to all of the previous novels in its structure and its level of intensity, and it set the tone for all the Bond novels that followed. It also lead, due its huge success and critical acclaim, to the creation of the Bond movie franchise.

GenevaBookClub: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the climax of the series of Cold War espionage novels written by British author and former spy John le Carré. As in the previous books in the series, the protagonist is George Smiley, a taciturn, middle-aged intelligence officer who has been in and out of the "Circus" (MI6) more times than most people can count. But when the head of the Circus, aka Control, sends his best field agent behind the Iron Curtain to learn the identity of a mole within the upper echelon of the Circus things go very badly and the mole escapes detection again.

GenevaBookClub: A murder thriller set in 1930s Brighton. The title is a reference to a confectionery traditionally sold at seaside resorts, used as a metaphor for human character. The novel ties into Greene's earlier 'entertainment' A Gun for Sale, Raven's murder of mob boss Kite, mentioned in A Gun For Sale, allows Pinkie to take over his mob and thus sets the events of the novel in motion.