Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultraviolent gangsters, stallholders at the city’s many covered markets, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing.A gripping and brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice in crime fiction, The Borrowed paints a dynamic portrait of Hong Kong and reveals just how closely the past and present are connected in this fascinating city.

    Set in the rural China in which Xiao grew up, these two masterpieces expand on many themes, including the plight of peasants and the role of women in society. With a realistic style that has been said to rival "Tolstoy's sweep, FlaubertÂ�s detachment and Ba JinÂ�s compassion," Xiao gives us an unflinching, surprisingly lyrical, and often wryly humorous account of the difficult lives of these characters. This is an updated and extensively revised new edition.

    They subtly merge the world of reason with the realm of the uncanny and exemplify the period's fascination with the strange and the grotesque. They were also the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's brilliant 1953 film Ugetsu.The title Ugetsu monogatari (literally "rain-moon tales") alludes to the belief that mysterious beings appear on cloudy, rainy nights and in mornings with a lingering moon. In "Shiramine," the vengeful ghost of the former emperor Sutoku reassumes the role of king; in "The Chrysanthemum Vow," a faithful revenant fulfills a promise; "The Kibitsu Cauldron" tells a tale of spirit possession; and in "The Carp of My Dreams," a man straddles the boundaries between human and animal and between the waking world and the world of dreams. The remaining stories feature demons, fiends, goblins, strange dreams, and other manifestations beyond all logic and common sense.The eerie beauty of this masterpiece owes to Akinari's masterful combination of words and phrases from Japanese classics with creatures from Chinese and Japanese fiction and lore. Along with The Tale of Genji and The Tales of the Heike, Tales of Moonlight and Rain has become a timeless work of great significance. This new translation, by a noted translator and scholar, skillfully maintains the allure and complexity of Akinari's original prose.

    His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen’s quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own: a beautiful army major with an obsession with dangerous weaponry, and a physicist who has no place for ethical considerations in his single-minded pursuit of knowledge.Ball Lightning, by award-winning Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu, is a fast-paced story of what happens when the beauty of scientific inquiry runs up against a push to harness new discoveries with no consideration of their possible consequences.The original Chinese version was published in 2004. In 2018 the English version, translated by Joel Martinsen, was published in the US by Tor Books.

    See why readers rave about the writing, the plot twists, and the characters. NELL LILLINGTON is a spoiled, headstrong 16-year-old when she finds herself pregnant after letting a flirtation with handsome Cousin Jack get out of hand. More willing to bear the consequences of an illegitimate pregnancy than marry, she refuses to name the father and agrees to give birth in a Poor Farm and give the baby up for adoption. At the Poor Farm she meets Tess O’Dugan, a woman the world calls an imbecile but who soon becomes the sister Nell never had. MARTIN RUTHERFORD, Nell’s childhood friend, only learns of baby Sarah when Nell seeks to escape from the Poor Farm—with the child. His own aversion to marriage stems from his dark, unhappy childhood, and despite his attachment to Nell he makes no objection to her plan to move to Kansas, away from prying eyes, with Tess and Sarah. Martin, now free of family ties, has his own plans—he wishes to build a grand department store in Chicago and become one of that growing city’s merchant princes. But Nell and Martin’s plans are steered off course by the secrets and lies of other people, and their paths to happiness are strewn with murder. Nell’s story will take you from the Illinois prairie, to frontier Kansas, and back to a Chicago teeming with opportunistic new Americans and ruthless hardmen.

    For her eldest daughter Amy there is no time to feel sorry, it is all she can do to hold the family together. With no mother and a father who is useless, Amy sees little hope for the future until she meets Tim Gudgeon. Tim, who is secretly in love with Amy, believes that he has seen Agnes. Suddenly Amy is full of determination to find Agnes and discover why she left. But Agnes took with her a secret strong enough to drive a mother from her children and one that Amy may wish she had never heard...

    This book features Li Po's work which is suffused with Taoism and Zen Buddhism.

    Illustrated with woodcuts.With black-and-white drawings throughoutPart of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

    As a novelist and icon, Rushdie has embraced both 'popular' and 'high' culture; reflecting this, the Guide brings together both academic criticism and journalism to investigate the passions and preoccupations of Rushdie's many critics, steering the reader through the inflamed debates and rhetoric surrounding this much admired but controversial author.

    It is considered second only to the Tao Te Ching, but the two books coundn't be more different. Where the Tao Te Ching is distant and proverbial in style, the Chuang Tze buzzes with life and with insights, often with considerable humour behind them.

    Beginning amid the decadent glamour of China in the 1930s and ending in the 1980s in Hong Kong, this brilliant novel, which formed the basis for the award-winning movie, is the passionate story of an opera student who falls in love with his best friend, and the beautiful woman who comes between them.

     THE RED HILL A killer who can’t be stopped. A request that can’t be refused. In 1482 the Englishman Thomas Berrington is living in the last remnants of Moorish Spain. A physician, he is an unwilling friend to the most powerful man in the kingdom. Bodies are discovered, each showing the marks of a savage attack, and Thomas is asked to investigate. When one of the Sultan’s wives is brutally murdered, what begins as a reluctant task turns into a fight for survival. Together with the eunuch Jorge, Thomas attempts to hunt down the killer before they become his next victims. Except nothing is as it seems—friends turn into enemies and enemies into friends. Thomas’s investigation lays bare the secrets of the Red Hill and the people who inhabit it. His discoveries culminate in a battle not only for his own life, but for the lives of those he loves. BREAKER OF BONES March 1483, and surgeon Thomas Berrington makes a reluctant journey to Qurtuba at the request of his master. He expects only to operate on a Spanish prince and return home to Moorish al-Andalus. But fate has something else in store for him and his companion, the eunuch Jorge. A warped killer has been murdering young women to create twisted creatures from their bodies. When Thomas is tasked by Queen Isabel to hunt down the culprit he is propelled into an unfamiliar world of religious mania where it is impossible to tell the innocent from the guilty. Meanwhile Jorge is on a quest of his own—to track down the family he abandoned twenty years before. When Jorge’s new found niece is taken as the Bonebreaker’s next victim, the pair are faced with their most dangerous challenge yet. Can Thomas and Jorge expose the killer before yet another life has to pay the price for one man’s madness? THE SIN EATER Moorish Spain, 1484, and no-one is innocent. Thomas Berrington, emigre Englishman who has made the doomed city of Garnatah his home, is once again attempting to solve a series of mysterious deaths. Accompanied by his companion, the palace eunuch Jorge, Thomas struggles to discover the truth while those in power seek to distract him. As his investigation continues, his personal life splinters into chaos and he finds the Spanish once more demanding his presence. As Thomas and Jorge draw closer to their quarry, the killer’s attention turns on them and those they love. Will the pair be able to unmask the sin eater before the lives of those close to them become forfeit?

    

    Some never want to leave it--even after they're dead. Including Isla Beaumont, the cast-off child of an affluent family, a girl no one wanted to admit existed. Until the Cottonwood family needed her. If you've read Seven Sisters, you probably think you know Isla's story...but do you really? Ghost on a Swing is a Seven Sisters extra and can be read as a prequel.

     Months after killing one of her adversaries, gifted homicide detective Rachel Harroway finds herself being stalked by a spirit she can’t evade. Meanwhile, a new but unpredictable killer arrives in her small hometown. Torn between raising her daughter, catching a murderer, maintaining a double identity amidst her colleagues, and pursuing dangerous methods to banish the wayward spirit, Rachel battles to keep her head afloat as winter creeps into Highlands, North Carolina.