Nancy S. Kim Books

A novel of explosive family secrets, regret, and all the little decisions that shape our lives and make us who we are. At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she her mother’s house. But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal…and uncovers a shocking family secret that forces her to question everything she thought she knew about love, regret, family, and her own path forward. As Alice comes to terms with the man her father really was, she must finally decide who she wants to be and what it will take to get there.

A searing mother-daughter story exploring the diverse and unsettling realities of being an immigrant in America.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick The Last Story of Mina Lee returns with a timely and surprising new novel about a family’s search for answers following the disappearance of their mother.1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children, Anastasia and Ronald, than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of a stranger in the backyard, carrying a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever about the stranger’s history and possible connections to their mother.1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her aloof and often-absent husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation are broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother but their very lives at risk.Both a riveting page-turner and moving family story, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores the consequences of secrets between parents and children, hus­bands and wives. It is the story of one unforgettable family’s search for home when all seems lost, and a powerful meditation on identity, migration, and what it means to dream in America.

Why do we believe in the views of a political party or leader? How can we better understand vaccine hesitancy or denial of climate change science? What drives extremist or conspiracist beliefs?This vital and timely new text provides a compelling survey of the science behind how people form beliefs and evaluate those of others, and why it is that beliefs are often so resistant to change in the face of conflicting evidence.Bringing together theories and empirical evidence from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology, Nancy S. Kim presents an engaging overview of the field and its implications for a wide range of beliefs – from moral, political, religious, and superstitious beliefs to beliefs about ourselves and our own potential. The intriguing studies discussed demonstrate how many psychological factors contribute to belief, including memory, reasoning, judgment, emotion, personality, social cognition, and cognitive development.With thoughtful questions and a range of cross-cultural case studies, this is an ideal overview for students of psychology and all readers interested in the psychology of belief.