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Always Orchid

Always Orchid
  • Author(s): Carol Van Den Hende
  • Location(s): China, New York City (NYC)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Present Day

Shortlisted for the 2023 Hawthorne Prize for Fiction He almost let her go. Her past could tear them apart. But a love like theirs is worth fighting for… Phoenix Walker will never be the same. Nine months after a...

Chinese Sprin

Chinese Sprin
  • Location(s): China, Hong Kong
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 2012

Hong Kong, 2012. Dimitri Johnson learns that he is dying. Stunned by his doctor’s prognosis, he nevertheless makes his ritual annual pilgrimage to the candlelight vigil for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. But this year, he thinks,...

Ghost Girl, Banana

Ghost Girl, Banana
  • Author(s): Wiz Wharton
  • Location(s): Hong Kong, South London
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1960s/70s+1997

A powerful debut novel about family secrets and what it costs to belong, for fans of Brit Bennett and Clare Chambers. ‘An astounding debut … written with emotion and astuteness, this deserves to be on book prize lists’ PRIMA...

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
  • Author(s): Lisa See
  • Location(s): Wuxi
  • Genre(s): Historical, Fiction
  • Era(s): 15th Century

In 15th-century China two women are born under the same sign, the Metal Snake. But life will take the friends on very different paths. According to Confucius, ‘an educated woman is a worthless woman’, but Tan Yunxian – born...

Ninth Building

Ninth Building
  • Author(s): Zou Jingzhi, Jeremy Tiang (Author)
  • Location(s): Beijing (Peking), China
  • Genre(s): Biography, Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): 20th Century

Ninth Building is a fascinating collection of vignettes drawn from the author’s experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside. Zou poetically captures a side...

On Borrowed Time

On Borrowed Time
  • Author(s): Graeme Hall
  • Location(s): Hong Kong, Shanghai
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Mystery
  • Era(s): 1997

e On Borrowed Time is set in Hong Kong and Shanghai over the period 1996/1997 – including the handover of Hong Kong to China. The novel explores the choices that people have to make; in particular between doing what...

Paper Names

Paper Names
  • Author(s): Susie Luo
  • Location(s): China, New York City (NYC)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Turn 21st Century

Taut, panoramic and powerful; Paper Names is an unforgettable debut about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effects of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference. Outside a New York apartment building, an...

River East, River West

River East, River West
  • Author(s): Aube Rey Lescure
  • Location(s): China, Qingdao, Shanghai
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Coming of Age
  • Era(s): 1985 / 2007

A darkly glittering debut that traces a mixed family’s troubled trajectory through developing China. Shanghai, 2007: feeling betrayed by her American mother’s engagement to their rich landlord Lu Fang, fourteen-year-old Alva begins plotting her escape. But the exclusive American...

Shanghai Grand

Shanghai Grand
  • Author(s): Taras Grescoe
  • Location(s): Shanghai
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Later 1930s

On the eve of the Second World War, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century’s most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the illustrious Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn arrived there...

Shanghai Immortal

Shanghai Immortal
  • Author(s): A Y Chao
  • Location(s): Shanghai
  • Genre(s): Fantasy, Fiction
  • Era(s): Early 20th Century (Jazz Age)

Half vampire. Half fox-spirit. All trouble. Pawned by her mother to the King of Hell as a child, Lady Jing is half-vampire, half-hulijing fox-spirit and all sasshole. As the King’s ward, she has spent the past ninety years running...

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