In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misunderstanding arises, their friendship threatens to tear apart....

As a spirit of nationalism inspired by Chiang Kai-shek's leadership begins to sweep through China, the river gunship San Pablo is ordered to patrol the region and to protect U.S. citizens. The crew of the ship is soon drawn into an international conflict when the Chinese Nationalists begin trying to expel the "foreign devils" from their shores. The conflict not only serves to illustrate the divide between east and west but also causes a rift between...

Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father, the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime.

"At a high-society Shanghai wedding, the reluctant bride and her two best friends, each with their own personal motives and fed up with the way society treats women, forge a plan to steal all the gift money on the big day"--

After a series of disastrous choices and rejections, seventeen-year-old Chinese American Iris Wang is thrust into the decadent world of Beijing high society as her cousin's English tutor.

"Alex Cohen, a twenty-six-year-old Jewish Bostonian, is living in southern China, where his father runs their family-owned shoe factory. Alex reluctantly assumes the helm of the company, but as he explores the plant's vast floors and assembly lines, he comes to a grim realization: employees are exploited, regulatory systems are corrupt and Alex's own father is engaging in bribes to protect the bottom line. When Alex meets a seamstress named Ivy, his...

The exhilarating novel of an elegant woman's subversive new chapter in life. At forty, Madame Wu is beautiful and much respected as the wife of one of China's oldest upper-class houses. Her birthday wish is to find a young concubine for her husband and to move to separate quarters, starting a new chapter of her life. When her wish is granted, she finds herself at leisure, no longer consumed by running a sixty-person household. Now she's free to read...

"Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school...When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power--she'll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price. But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it's worth losing her conscience--or...

Enduring privation when Japan declares war on England, a teacher at a British missionary school in China is sent to a distant internment camp, where she provides support and instruction to incarcerated children taken from their parents. China, December 1941. Elspeth Kent left England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status. When...

Ex-Navy Seal Nolan Kilkenny is still grieving a personal tragedy when he is unexpectedly called to the Vatican, where the dying Pope Leo XIV has a secret mission for him: rescue Chinese religious prisoner Yin Daoming, who-unbeknownst to the rest of the world-has been a secret cardinal for 20 years. Entrusted with the dangerous truth about an unreported atrocity committed against the underground Church in China and its link to the mysterious Yin Daoming,...