Central to the story is one Chinese family: Claude, raised to be more British than the British and ashamed of his own heritage; his father, Humphrey, whose Anglophilia blinds him to possible defeat and his wife's dalliances; and the redoubtable Grandma Siok, whose sage advice falls on deaf ears. Expatriates, spies, fifth columnists, and nationalists—including the elusive young woman Ling-Li—mingle in this exotic culture as the Japanese threat looms. Beset by the horror of war and betrayal and, finally, torture, Claude must embrace his true heritage. In the extraordinary final paragraphs of the novel, the language itself breaks into Chinese. With penetrating observation, Vyvyane Loh unfolds the coming-of-age story of a young man and a nation, a story that deals with myth, race, and class, with the ways language shapes perceptions, and with the intrigue and suffering of war. Reading group guide included.

    Louise Vemet. Raised in the slums of Paris. Coming of age around the splendor and corruption of the Second Empire. She ruled the world of fashion, clothing the most fabled women of title and of pleasure in a society where even sin had to have style. She took as her lover a nobleman she could never wed -- and gave a name to their child by entering into a passionless marriage. Sweeping from the Paris of Louis Napoleon to the England of Queen Victoria... and from the depths of despair to the heights of joy and fulfillment... this is the unforgettable saga of a woman of daring and destiny -- and the dazzling world of French haute couture she helped create....

    The young heroine, Otama, is forced by poverty to become a moneylender's mistress. Her dawning consciousness of her predicament brings the novel to a touching climax.

    I've always wanted to write one but until now have been afraid to do so. The reason is simple enough: most men in my experience have very little idea of what really goes on in a woman's heart or head. Now, at the age of 74, I just might know enough and have sufficient courage to write on the subject - the way of a man with a woman, of a woman with a man.My story is set in the Pacific, although not in the paradise we've always been led to believe exists there. It is 1942 in Java and the Japanese are invading the islands like a swarm of locusts.I have tried to capture the essence of love - how in a world gone mad with malice and hate, it has the ability to forgive and to heal. As it is in this story, love is always hard earned but, in the end, a most wonderful and necessary emotion. Without love, life for most of us would lack true meaning.Sincerely,Bryce Courtenay

    in an ancient land of breathtaking beauty and exotic surprise ... a courageous woman triumphs over her world's ultimate tragedy.Behind the garden walls of the House of Chang, pampered daughter Spring Moon is born into luxury and privilege. But the tempests of change sweep her into a new world -- one of hardship, turmoil, and heartbreak, one that threatens to destroy her husband, her family, and her darkest secret love. Through a tumultuous lifetime, Spring Moon must cling to her honor, to the memory of a time gone by, and to a destiny, foretold at her birth, that has yet to be fulfilled.

    Someone in the Australian Intelligence Bureau is trading secrets and it's up to Stella and her uncompromising superior officer, Lieutenant Nick Ross, to find the traitor.When Eric's team is scheduled to be deployed in a dangerous mission to the South West Pacific, Stella races to uncover the truth or risk not only Eric's life, but the security of Australia itself. Torn between protecting the ones she loves and her duty to her country, Stella chooses to pursue the truth at all costs.Even if it means putting herself in the firing line...

    So when Paul Vogel, a German prisoner of war, is assigned as the new farmhand, Lorna is appalled. How can she possibly work alongside the enemy when her own brothers are risking their lives for their country?But as Lorna reluctantly spends time with Paul, she feels herself changing. The more she learns about him—from his time in the war to his life back home in Germany—the more she sees the boy behind the soldier. Soon Lorna is battling her own warring heart. Loving Paul could mean losing her family and the life she’s always known. With tensions rising all around them, Lorna must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice before the end of the war determines their fate.

    Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land.Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it.

    Jemima Ashton is desperate to discover her real identity. With scant information and the burning question 'who am I?', she embarks on an incredible journey of detection. On learning of her late mother Stella's disappearance during WWII, she retraces her footsteps across the globe and at a distant vineyard, unearths a family she had no idea existed. While treading a path of narrow-minded bigotry, scandalous revelations emerge of two families inextricably linked by one woman and the drastic steps they took to hide the truth. ‘A powerful story of love and loss spanning two generations’ Frances di Plino - author of the Paolo Storey Crime Series

      When twenty-eight-year-old Joji first lays eyes upon the teenage waitress Naomi, he is instantly smitten by her exotic, almost Western appearance. Determined to transform her into the perfect wife and to whisk her away from the seamy underbelly of post-World War I Tokyo, Joji adopts and ultimately marries Naomi, paying for English and music lessons that promise to mold her into his ideal companion. But as she grows older, Joji discovers that Naomi is far from the naïve girl of his fantasies. And, in Tanizaki’s masterpiece of lurid obsession, passion quickly descends into comically helpless masochism.

    No one has a good time on a pirate ship. No one, that is, but the pirates. Yet there she was, Merry Wilding - kidnapped in error, taken from a ship bound from New York to England, spirited away in a barrel and swept aboard the infamous Black Joke....There she was, trembling with pleasure in the arms of her achingly handsome, sensationally sensual, golden-haired captor - Devon. From the storm-tossed Atlantic to the languid waters of the Gulf Stream, from a smuggler's den to a gilded mansion, Merry struggled to escape...to escape the prison of her own reckless passions, the bondage of sweet, bold desire...

    Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.

    Georgia Briscoe, a young woman from a good family, is unwillingly betrothed to businessman Drew Kemp when she falls for handsome British sailor Ellis Cowper. Drew had the charm to dazzle everyone around him, but when the couple are married, it soon transpires that Drew's charm is only skin-deep, and that he is in fact a greedy gambling addict with a penchant for other women, including Georgia's maid Maura and jealous sister Prudence. When Georgia and Maura become pregnant, both women decide to escape to be with the men they love, providing Prudence with an opportunity to seize Drew -- and much more besides. London, 1948. When Chrissie Kemp travels to the Lake District to visit her grandmother Georgia, she is not prepared for the shocking revelation that is about to throw her family into turmoil. As a last act of vengeance on her death bed, Prudence claims that Chrissie's mother Vanessa and her late father Aaran are brother and sister. As the truth unfurls, the passion, emotion and astounding love that occurred in San Francisco forty years ago is revealed, and three generations of the family are tested to their limits.

    Set against the backdrop of Italy between 1939 to 1944 - the months of anxiety before the country entered the war, through to the tension following the Allied victory - "All Our Yesterdays" follows the lives of two families during the period of great turbulence.

    A magnificent love story unfolds against a backdrop of exotic splendor and stirring deeds as a young Englishwoman Laura Hewitt journeys to the East to the fabled fiefdom of the Zemindar, Guardian of the Earth.