When Marshal Hong breaks the seals which generations of Taoist Masters have placed on the temple doors to hold back 108 incarcerated Demon Princes, powerful forces of disorder are released. One after another, brave men fall out with officialdom and are obliged to join the brotherhood of the rivers and lakes─the mixed company of heroes and vagabonds who live by their wits and their fighting skills. The story of The Broken Seals branches this way and that, following first one hero, then anot...

The “unparalleled master of the historical saga" (Newsweek) and internationally bestselling author of Paris and New York takes on an exhilarating new world with his trademark epic style in China: The NovelIn China: The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd brings his renowned talents to the Middle Kingdom, when the clash of East and West in the nineteenth century shattered the stability of the two-thousand-year-old empire. This epic ...

"A pleasing collection of short stories about Chinese detective Judge Dee—an actual historical personage of the T'ang Dynasty."— Kirkus ReviewsA Dutch scholar, linguist, and diplomat who grew up immersed in Asian culture, Robert van Gulik discovered and translated an eighteenth-century Chinese crime novel he'd found in an antiquarian bookstore. Its success led him to write multiple mysteries featuring the same character. Based on a historical magistrate an...

Based upon the historical bandit Song Jiang and his companions, The Water Margin is an epic tale of rebellion against tyranny that will remind Western readers of the English classic Robin Hood and His Merry Men.This edition of the classic J. H. Jackson translation brings a story that has been inspiring readers for hundreds of years to life for modern audiences. It features a new preface and introduction by Edwin Lowe, which gives the history of th...

This collection of tales opens up a magical world far from our customary haunts. Ghost stories, romances, fables, and heroic sagas: the forms are familiar, but the characters we meet surprise us at every turn. For those who know and love the tales of the Grimms and Andersen, the universal themes of fairy tale literature emerge in these classic stories, but with a sophistication that is uniquely Chinese and altogether entrancing.With black-and-white drawings throughout

Peace, war, internal strife; You Miao has lived through it all—but not without his loyal Quanrong slave-turned-husband, Li Zhifeng. Theirs is a story of undying devotion that combats racial boundaries in a time when the ethnic tribes of the north clashed with the Han empire. Together, they ruled the world! (Behind the scenes, of course.)As friends, as foes, as friends turned foes and foes turned friends, the epic continues its song, and the most beautiful moonlight of the great des...

This exciting new translation of the Chinese classic is designed to delight modern readers.The Three Kingdoms is an epic Chinese novel written over six centuries ago. It recounts in vivid historical detail the turbulent years at the close of the Han Dynasty when China broke into three competing kingdoms and over half the population was killed or driven from their homes. readers will experience the loyalty and treachery, the brotherhood and rivalry of China...

Western China, 1196: Yun Cai, a handsome and adored poet in his youth, is now an old man, exiled to his family estates. All that is left to him are regrets of a growing sense of futility and helplessness and the irritations of his feckless son and shrewish daughter-in-law. But the 'poison dragons' of misfortune shatter his orderly existence. First, Yun Cai's village is threatened with destruction by a vicious civil war. His wayward second son, a brutal rebel officer seems determined to rui...

Central China, 1264. When Mongol armies storm into the Middle Kingdom, the descendents of Yun Cai (Taming Poison Dragons) are trapped in a desperate siege that will determine the fate of the Empire. Guang and Shih are identical twins, one a heroic soldier idolised by the city he defends, the other a humble doctor. In the midst of war, jealous conflicts over Shih's wife and concubine threaten to tear the brothers apart. Enemies close in on every side - some disturbingly close to home. Can the ...

“The greatest novel of physical love which China has produced.” — Pearl S. BuckA saga of ruthless ambition, murder, and, famously, Chinese erotica, The Golden Lotus (also known as The Plum in the Golden Vase) has been called the fifth Great Classical Novel in Chinese Literature and one of the Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel. Admired in its own time for its literary qualities and biting indictment of the immorality and cruelty of its age, this C...

The second installment in Pearl S. Buck's acclaimed Good Earth trilogy: the powerful story of three brothers whose greed will bring their family to the brink of ruinSons begins where The Good Earth ended: Revolution is sweeping through China. Wang Lung is on his deathbed in the house of his fathers, and his three sons stand ready to inherit his hard-won estate. One son has taken the family's wealth for granted and become a landlord; another is a t...

Marking the debut of a stunning new literary talent, Lisa Huang Fleischman's extraordinary saga -- inspired by her grandmother's life as an early feminist, political activist, and friend of Mao Zedong -- is a masterpiece about one clever and resourceful woman, growing up amidst the turmoil of twentieth-century China.Born in 1890, the privileged and sheltered daughter of a high-ranking imperial official, Jade Virtue spends her childhood enclosed by the towering walls of her...