Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who has honed her ability to become any man's fantasy since her start as a 'Virgin Courtesan' at the age of twelve, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her. Violet is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is...

A dazzling and ambitious debut novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time--beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past--exploring their secrets, their losses, and the ways a family makes and remakes itself across the years.

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves in The Binding Chair; or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of...

Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau runs into considerable political opposition and danger when he investigates the brutal murder of National Model Worker Guan Hongying.

"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"--

A fictionalized account of the author's experiences as a boy in Shanghai, China, during the Second World War, and in Lunghua C.A.C. (Civilian Assembly Centre), where he was interned from 1942 to 1945.

When the murder of a woman is reported to the Shanghai police while Inspector Chen is on vacation, Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. The victim, Yin Lige, a novelist known for her banned book, has been found dead in her tiny, humble room off the stairwell of a converted multi-family house. It seems that only a neighbor could have committed the crime, for the building is kept locked at night. But there is no apparent motive....

Inspector Chen's mentor in the Shanghai Police Bureau has assigned him to escort U.S. Marshal Catherine Rohn. Her mission is to bring Wen, the wife of a witness in an important criminal trial, to the United States. Inspector Rohn is already en route when Chen learns that Wen has unaccountably vanished from her village in Fujian. Or is this just what he is supposed to believe? Chen resents his role; he would rather investigate the triad killing in...

A Chinese national working for an American-owned construction company is grabbed off a Shanghai street in broad daylight, and his one-man security detail goes missing. With private investigation illegal in China, Rutherford Risk, a firm specializing in the recovery of hostages, hires two unique outsiders to do their bidding: forensic accountant Grace Chu to follow the money; and John Knox, a civilian with unparalleled training in both combat and culture....

For Anna Schoene, growing up in the magical world of Shanghai in the 1930s creates a special bond between her and her father. He is the son of missionaries, a smuggler, and a millionaire, who leads a charmed, but secretive life. When the family flees to Los Angeles in the face of the Japanese occupation, he chooses to stay, believing his connections and luck will keep him safe. He's wrong-but he survives, only to again choose Shanghai over his family...