Manchuria, 1908. In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman's identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they've remained tantalizingly out...

"1925. London. When Alice Diamond, AKA "Diamond Annie," is elected the Queen of the Forty Elephants, she's determined to take the all-girl gang to new heights. She's ambitious, tough as nails, and a brilliant mastermind, with a plan to create a dynasty the likes of which no one has ever seen. Alice demands absolute loyalty from her "family"--it's how she's always kept the cops in line. Too bad she's now the target for one of Britain's first female...

"Bolivian-Argentinian Inez Olivera belongs to the glittering upper society of nineteenth century Buenos Aires, and like the rest of the world, the town is steeped in old world magic that’s been largely left behind or forgotten. Inez has everything a girl might want, except for the one thing she yearns the most: her globetrotting parents―who frequently leave her behind. When she receives word of their tragic deaths, Inez inherits their massive...

From the acclaimed author of The Mosquito Coast and The Bad Angel Brothers comes a riveting new novel exploring one of English literature's most beloved and controversial figures--George Orwell--and the early years as an officer in colonial Burma that transformed him from Eric Blair, the British Raj policeman, into Orwell the anticolonial writer. At age nineteen, young Eton graduate Eric Blair set sail for India, dreading the assignment ahead. Along...

"April,1912: It's the perfect finale to a Grand Tour of Europe--sailing home on the largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built. For the Fortune sisters, the voyage offers a chance to reflect on the treasures of the past they've seen--magnificent castles and museums in Italy and France, the ruins of Greece and the Middle East--and contemplate the futures that await them. For Alice, there's foreboding mixed with her excitement. A fortune teller...

"Bookish suffragist Catriona Campbell is busy: An ailing estate, academic writer's block, and a tense time for England's women's rights campaign--the last thing she needs is to be stuck playing host to her father's distractingly attractive young colleague. Deeply introverted Catriona lives for her work at Oxford and her fight for women's suffrage. She dreams of romance, too, but since all her attempts at love have ended badly, she now keeps her desires...

"When Adebimpe is ten, she is sold with her mother, Sanite, to plantation owner John du Marche. He soon renames her Ady but Sanite never lets her daughter forget who she really is - a person who can read and write and understand numbers. Most importantly, Sanite reminds Ady that she must never reveal these abilities to a white person, especially not her true name. Tasked with maintaining du Marche's home in vibrant New Orleans, Ady takes in the city...

"Once it was one of the most famous events in early American history. Today, it has been nearly forgotten. In an obscure, two-hundred-year-old museum in a little village in western Massachusetts, there lies what once was the most revered but now totally forgotten relic from the history of early New England--the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre. This impregnable barricade--known to early Americans...

Takes us into every room of Hampton Court Palace-the stage of some of the most important events in British history, such as the commissioning of King James's version of the Bible and Queen Elizabeth II's coronation ball, illustrating what was at play politically, socially and economically at the time.

"'Ruth Bass is SO GOOD at this! In her captivating prequel to Sarah's Daughter she returns us to an earlier time of (mostly) benevolent country folk, furnished with barns, square dances, quilting needles, and dinners of beans and biscuits, capturing the joys and sorrows, the struggles and hopes of the past with absolute authenticity and freshness. (-Judith Viorst, best-selling author).'"--Page 4 of cover.