Book picks similar to
Shanghai Station by Bartle Bull


historical-fiction
china
fiction
russia

The Wolf's Hour


Robert R. McCammon - 1989
    Able to change shape with lightning speed, to kill silently or with savage, snarling fury, he proved his talents against Rommel in Africa. Now he faces his most delicate, dangerous mission: to unravel the secret Nazi plan known as Iron Fist. From a parachute jump into occupied France to the lush corruption of Berlin, from the arms of a beautiful spy to the cold embrace of a madman's death machine, Gallatin draws ever closer to the ghastly truth about Iron Fist. But with only hours to D-Day, he is trapped in the Nazis' web of destruction....

The Brahmin


Ravi Shankar Etteth - 2018
    Men of peace are spreading the message of the Buddha even as monks are being tortured in the dungeons of Pataliputra. In Magadha, all talk is about the impending war against Kalinga. While King Ashoka plots the movements of his ships and cavalry, Queen Asandhimitra broods over the growing unrest in the kingdom. There is only one man they can both trust to take them through this period of uncertainty and looming danger: the enigmatically named Brahmin, skilful spymaster and custodian of Magadha’s best-kept secrets. Lush with historical detail and unforgettable characters, The Brahmin is an intricately plotted novel that seeks to recreate a near-mythical period in India’s past.

The Diplomat's Daughter


Karin Tanabe - 2017
    She feels hopeless until she meets handsome young Christian Lange, whose German-born parents were wrongfully arrested for un-American activities. Together, they live as prisoners with thousands of other German and Japanese families, but discover that love can bloom in even the bleakest circumstances.When Emi and her mother are abruptly sent back to Japan, Christian enlists in the US Army, with his sights set on the Pacific front—and, he hopes, a reunion with Emi—unaware that her first love, Leo Hartmann, the son of wealthy of Austrian parents and now a Jewish refugee in Shanghai, may still have her heart.Fearful of bombings in Tokyo, Emi’s parents send her to a remote resort town in the mountains, where many in the foreign community have fled. Cut off from her family, struggling with growing depression and hunger, Emi repeatedly risks her life to help keep her community safe—all while wondering if the two men she loves are still alive.As Christian Lange struggles to adapt to life as a soldier, his unit pushes its way from the South Pacific to Okinawa, where one of the bloodiest battles of World War II awaits them. Meanwhile, in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, as Leo fights to survive the squalor of the Jewish ghetto, a surprise confrontation with a Nazi officer threatens his life. For each man, Emi Kato is never far from their minds. Flung together by war, passion, and extraordinary acts of selflessness, the paths of these three remarkable young people will collide as the fighting on the Pacific front crescendos. With her “elegant and extremely gratifying” (USA Today) storytelling, Karin Tanabe paints a stunning portrait of a turning point in history.

Passing Under Heaven


Justin Hill - 2004
    Set in the 9th century, Passing Under Heaven tells the tragic love story of Lily, a Chinese poet and documents a time when Chinese women enjoyed a window of unprecedented personal freedom - including the freedom to fall in love. But when Lily pushes that freedom to its limits disaster ensues, leaving her child and husband to forever mourn her loss.Based on historical fact, Passing Under Heaven is more than the story of the end of a love affair, this book also chronicles the passing of the Chinese golden age into civil war and ruin.

The Kennedy Rifle


J.K. Brandon - 2012
    His claim triggers years of research by his son. As a court-certified expert on firearms and ballistics, Michael Cole writes a book about a second Dallas assassin and the weapon likely used. Cole is ridiculed, his reputation nearly destroyed. Finally, with the death of his father and the passing of five decades, Cole abandons his search for the truth. Meanwhile, his book attracts some unwanted attention from those originally involved.One day a woman comes to his office with killer looks and an unbelievable story. Kate Marlowe says she has proof of a JFK assassination conspiracy, that her uncle was bodyguard and driver for the assassin on the Grassy Knoll. After JFK's murder in 1963, he drove to Arizona to lay low and hide the sniper rifle. Now near death, he confesses his crime and the rifle's location to her. Go get the rifle, he tells her. Show the world what really happened. Kate travels to Arizona to enlist the help of Michael Cole and locate the true assassin's rifle.Before they can find it, rumors surface of the Kennedy Rifle and a mysterious auction on the fiftieth anniversary. Billionaire collectors, criminal arms-dealers, and coup d'etat participants join the hunt. Some want the truth, some want the truth buried, but all want the rifle...and Kate and Cole dead. Thanks to the miracle of Kindle publishing, this is a modified version with additional new material and a different ending from the original release.

A Daughter’s Courage


Kitty Neale - 2018
    But then an unexpected pregnancy puts everything at risk, and Dorothy is left alone – with Robbie nowhere to be seen.Heartbroken, Dorothy picks up the pieces of her life as a working girl in Battersea helping to support her mother and father. But before long, things start to become difficult. Her father’s health is worsening, money is tight and worst of all, Robbie hasn’t come back for her.Can Dorothy find a way back to happiness in the face of real adversity? Will she have the courage to make it on her own – or is someone else waiting in the wings to save her?Gritty and moving, this is the perfect read for fans of Dilly Court and Maggie Hope.

Master-at-Arms


Rafael Sabatini - 1940
    He sets off for France, and enters a life of confusion, mystery and suspense - and bloody execution.

Jack of Spies


David Downing - 2013
    Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city—Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York—he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty's Secret Service, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing but a shoestring budget and the very tenuous protection of a boss in far-away London. He knows, though, that a geopolitical catastrophe is brewing, and now is both the moment to prove himself and the moment his country needs him most. Unfortunately, this is also the moment he begins to realize what his aspiration might cost him. He understands his life is at stake when activities in China suddenly escalate from innocent data-gathering and casual strolls along German military concessions to arrest warrants and knife attacks. Meanwhile, a sharp, vivacious American suffragette journalist has wiled her way deep into his affections, and it is not long before he realizes that her Irish-American family might be embroiled in the Irish Republican movement Jack's bosses are fighting against. How can he choose between his country and the woman he loves? And would he even be able to make such a choice without losing both?

Clark and Division


Naomi Hirahara - 2021
    Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. Inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime fiction plot with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.

The Witchfinder's Sister


Beth Underdown - 2017
    With a heavy heart, Alice Hopkins returns to the small town she grew up in. Widowed, with child, and without prospects, she is forced to find refuge at the house of her younger brother, Matthew. In the five years she has been gone, the boy she knew has become a man of influence and wealth--but more has changed than merely his fortunes. Alice fears that even as the cruel burns of a childhood accident still mark his face, something terrible has scarred Matthew's soul.There is a new darkness in the town, too--frightened whispers are stirring in the streets, and Alice's blood runs cold with dread when she discovers that Matthew is a ruthless hunter of suspected witches. Torn between devotion to her brother and horror at what he's become, Alice is desperate to intervene--and deathly afraid of the consequences. But as Matthew's reign of terror spreads, Alice must choose between her safety and her soul.Alone and surrounded by suspicious eyes, Alice seeks out the fuel firing her brother's brutal mission--and is drawn into the Hopkins family's past. There she finds secrets nested within secrets: and at their heart, the poisonous truth. Only by putting her own life and liberty in peril can she defeat this darkest of evils--before more innocent women are forced to the gallows.Inspired by the real-life story of notorious "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins, Beth Underdown's thrilling debut novel blends spellbinding history with harrowing storytelling for a truly haunting reading experience.

The House of a Thousand Lanterns


Victoria Holt - 1974
    . . the house where her worst nightmares were about to come true. . . . The House of a Thousand Lanterns.Jane Lindsay never dreamed she would be wealthy. Nor that she would fall in love with a man she could not trust. Against the background of nineteenth- century England and Hong Kong, Victoria Holt unfolds the story of a young Englishwoman who found a strange new world . . . .

The Gandy Dancer


Jeff Andrews - 2012
    His ex-wife is demanding more money. A woman he can’t even remember accuses him of fathering her child. Newspaper reporter Mitch Corsini shrugs and takes another drink. However, when his estranged teenaged daughter mysteriously disappears, his life finally has a purpose: find the child he's neglected for too long and rekindle the love they once shared. Mitch’s quest takes him to the Virginia mountains and his ancestral home. There, he finds himself locked in a life or death struggle to save his daughter as seventy-year-old family secrets and the fate of a long-forgotten railroad worker combine to shatter the very foundations of his world.

In Pursuit of Platinum: The Shocking Secret of World War II


Vic Robbie - 2012
    Now you can read the real story about the attempt to smuggle a fortune in platinum out of Paris in the legendary Bullion Bentley. But the Bentley is carrying an even more valuable human cargo, a mysterious Frenchwoman with a secret that could change the course of the Second World War. Alena and American Ben Peters are targets of Hitler’s ruthless investigator Ludwig Weber, whose family will be executed if he fails. His orders are to silence Alena before she can reveal her secret; capture her young son and take him back to Berlin; and recover the Banque de France’s platinum. As they flee their hunter, they experience the stark and tragic realities of war and the raw emotions of two brave people living on the edge of fear. And not everything is as it seems. Who is Alena and what is her secret that could destroy everything the Nazi movement stands for?

I Must Betray You


Ruta Sepetys - 2022
    Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force. Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe. Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the number one New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.

Vengeance Road


Erin Bowman - 2015
    What she finds are untrustworthy strangers, endless dust and heat, and a surprising band of allies, among them a young Apache girl and a pair of stubborn brothers who refuse to quit riding in her shadow. But as Kate gets closer to the secrets about her family, a startling truth becomes clear: some men will stop at nothing to get their hands on gold, and Kate’s quest for revenge may prove fatal.