The peak of the hot season, 1942: In a Vietnamese fishing village, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her family. The day Tuyet meets Japanese major Takeshi is inauspicious and stifling, with no relief from the sand-stirring wind. But to her surprise, she feels not fear or wariness, but a strange kinship. A wounded veteran with a good heart, Takeshi grows to resent the Empire for what it has taken—and the promises it’s failed to keep. As the Viet Minh begin to battle the French and Takeshi risks his life for the Resistance, Tuyet and her family are drawn into the conflict, with devastating consequences.

Twilight Territory by Andrew X. Pham is a lushly panoramic historical fiction novel that offers a fascinating perspective on Vietnam’s struggles to break free of its French colonial past. At its heart is one woman’s search for independence and her country’s liberation.

“An engrossing story set amid a rich historical background.” - Kirkus Reviews

As part of the Libby app’s digital book club, Big Library Read, you can check out the ebook and audiobook of Twilight Territory from your local library from July 11 - 25 with no waitlists or holds.

💳 So grab your library card (or stop by your library to get one) and download the free Libby app on your phone or tablet to get started!

More ways to participate—and win!

💬 Share your thoughts on the discussion board.
✨ Check out bonus material like a letter from the author and reader group guide for your book club
📱 Use #biglibraryread on social media for a chance to win prizes, including:

• A copy of Twilight Territory
• Travel journal
• Vietnamese Coffee Brew Kit
• Library Card tote
• JBL Bluetooth speaker

Finished and ready for more? Check out these read-alikes

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
🎧 Audiobook

When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.

At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
🎧 Audiobook

Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land.

Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?

The Mermaid from Jeju by Sumi Hahn
🎧 Audiobook

In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to allow her to make the Goh family’s annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms and earth. While there, she falls in love with mountain boy Yang Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when Junja returns one day later, it's just in time to see her mother take her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in Junja’s place.

Spiraling in grief, Junja sees her younger siblings sent to live with their estranged father. Everywhere she turns, Junja is haunted by the loss of her mother. She has only her grandmother and herself. But the world moves on without Junja.

The political climate is perilous. Still reeling from Japan’s forced withdrawal from the peninsula, Korea is forced to accommodate the rapid establishment of U.S. troops. Junja’s canny grandmother, who lived through the Japanese invasion that led to Korea’s occupation, understands the signs of danger all too well. When Suwol is arrested for working with and harboring communists, and the perils of post-WWII overtake her homelands, Junja must learn to navigate a tumultuous world unlike anything she’s ever known.

Street Corner Dreams by Florence Reiss Kraut
🎧 Audiobook

Just before WWI, Golda comes to America yearning for independence, but she tosses aside her dreams of freedom and marries her widowed brother-in-law after her sister dies giving birth to their son, Morty.

In the crowded streets of Brooklyn where Jewish and Italian gangs demand protection money from local storekeepers and entice youngsters with the promise of wealth, Golda, Ben, and Morty thrive as a family. But in the Depression, Ben, faced with financial ruin, makes a dangerous, life-altering choice. Morty tries to save his father by getting help from a gangster friend but the situation only worsens. Forced to desert his family and the woman he loves in order to survive, Morty is desperate to go home. Will he ever find a safe way back? Or has his involvement with the gang sealed his fate?

*Title availability may vary by library & region.

The next Libby book club pick will be announced in November. Stay up to date on the newest book club picks by subscribing to Libby Life.

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