The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel PDF

Author: Maureen Lindley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-07-23

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1608191974

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Peking, 1914. When the eight-year-old princess Eastern Jewel is caught spying on her father's liaison with a servant girl, she is banished from the palace, sent to live with a powerful family in Japan. Renamed Yoshiko Kawashima, she quickly falls in love with her adoptive country, where she earns a scandalous reputation, taking fencing lessons, smoking opium, and entertaining numerous lovers. Sent to Mongolia to become an obedient wife, Yoshiko mounts a daring escape and eventually finds her way back to Peking high society-this time with orders from the Japanese secret service. Based on the true story of a rebellious woman who earned a controversial place in history, The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel is a vibrant reimagining of a thrilling life-a rich historical epic of palace intrigue, sexual manipulation, and international espionage.

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel

The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel PDF

Author: Maureen Lindley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780747596264

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Peking, 1914. Eight-year-old Eastern Jewel peers from behind a screen as her father, Prince Su, makes love to a servant girl. Caught spying by her thirteenth sister, Eastern Jewel's sexual curiosity sees her banished to live with distant relatives in Tokyo, then forced into a passionless marriage in freezing Mongolia. Increasingly isolated, at night she is plagued by disturbing fantasies and unsettling dreams. But she refuses to be pinned down by anyone - least of all a man - and in the dazzling city of Shanghai she puts her thrill-seeking nature to work spying for the Japanese, spurning everything she once held dear ... Based on the real-life story of Yoshiko Kawashima, Chinese princess turned ruthless Japanese spy, The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel is an intoxicating tale of sexual manipulation and self-discovery that spans three countries and a world war.

The Secrets of Jin-shei

The Secrets of Jin-shei PDF

Author: Alma Alexander

Publisher: Crossroad Press

Published: 2017-05-11

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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A group of women, the jin-shei sisterhood, form a uniquely powerful circle that transcends class and social custom. They are bound together by a declaration of loyalty that transcends all other vows, even those with the gods, by their own secret language, passed from mother to daughter, by the knowledge that some of them will have to pay the ultimate sacrifice to enable others to fulfill their destiny. The sisterhood we meet run from the Emperor's sister to the street-beggar, from the trainee warrior in the Emperor's Guard to the apprentice healer, from the artist to the traveller-girl, herself an illegitimate daughter of an emperor and seen as a threat to the throne. And as one of them becomes Dragon Empress, her determination to hold power against the sages of the temple, against the marauding forces from other kingdoms, drags the sisterhood into a dangerous world of court intrigue, plot and counterplot, and brings them into conflict with each other from which only the one who remains true to all the vows she made at the very beginning to the dying Princess Empress can rescue them. An amazing and unusual book, based on some historical fact, full of drama, adventure and conflict like a Shakespearean history play, it's a novel about kinship and a society of women, of mysticism, jealousy, fate, destiny, all set in the wonderful, swirling background of Syai, a fantasy kingdom inspired by Imperial China.

The Beloveds

The Beloveds PDF

Author: Maureen Lindley

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1501173308

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An exploration of domestic derangement, as sinister as Daphne Du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, that plumbs the depths of sibling rivalry with wit and menace. Oh, to be a Beloved—one of those lucky people for whom nothing ever goes wrong. Everything falls into their laps without effort: happiness, beauty, good fortune, allure. Betty Stash is not a Beloved—but her little sister, the delightful Gloria, is. She’s the one with the golden curls and sunny disposition and captivating smile, the one whose best friend used to be Betty’s, the one whose husband should have been Betty’s. And then, to everyone’s surprise, Gloria inherits the family manse—a vast, gorgeous pile of ancient stone, imposing timbers, and lush gardens—that was never meant to be hers. Losing what Betty considers her rightful inheritance is the final indignity. As she single-mindedly pursues her plan to see the estate returned to her in all its glory, her determined and increasingly unhinged behavior—aided by poisonous mushrooms, talking walls, and a phantom dog—escalates to the point of no return. The Beloveds will have you wondering if there’s a length to which an envious sister won’t go.

A Girl Like You

A Girl Like You PDF

Author: Maureen Lindley

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-06-06

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1408834057

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Thirteen-year-old Satomi Baker is used to being different. It is 1939 and being half-white, half-Japanese on the west coast of California gets you noticed. Although she has never felt she quite fits in, her striking looks have caught the eye of the most popular boy at school. When war is declared, Satomi's father Aaron is sent to the base at Pearl Harbor. He never returns. Now the community that has tolerated its foreign residents for decades suddenly turns on them, and along with thousands of other Japanese-American citizens Satomi and her mother are sent to a brutal labour camp in the wilderness. At Manzanar Satomi learns what it takes to survive, who she can trust, and what it means to be American. But it will be years before she will discover who she really is under the surface of her skin. A Girl Like You is her story, and the riveting and moving story of a lost generation.

Empress Orchid

Empress Orchid PDF

Author: Anchee Min

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2005-04-11

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0547347200

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“A fascinating novel, similar to Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha . . . A revisionist portrait of a beautiful and strong-willed woman” (Houston Chronicle). A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year From Anchee Min, a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes China’s last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of the country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this “absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao,” readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min’s lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world (The New York Times). “Superb . . . [An] unforgettable heroine.” —People “A sexually charged, eye-opening portrayal of the Chinese empire . . . with heart-wrenching scenes of desperate failure and a sensuality that rises off its heated pages.” —Elle

The House of Paper

The House of Paper PDF

Author: Carlos María Domínguez

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 9780151011476

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Immersed in a volume of poetry, Bluma Lennon is hit by a car while crossing the street. Her successor in Cambridge's English department travels to Buenos Aires to track down the source of a novel encrusted in cement that was sent to the late Bluma in this tale--part mystery, part social comedy, and part examination of bibliomania.

The Last Empress

The Last Empress PDF

Author: Anchee Min

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2008-04-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0547346905

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“Admirers of Empress Orchid will be interested in this sequel. Others may find the introduction to relatively modern Chinese history a revelation” (Rocky Mountain News). During the tumultuous end of the nineteenth century in China, the only constant was the power wielded by one person: the resilient, ever-resourceful Tzu Hsi, Lady Yehonala—or Empress Orchid—as readers came to know her in Anchee Min’s critically acclaimed novel covering the first part of her life. In The Last Empress, Orchid moves from the intimacy of the concubine quarters into the spotlight of the world stage. Devastating personal losses take their toll, leaving her yearning to step aside, but only she—allied with the progressives, but loyal to the conservative Manchu clan of her dynasty—can hold the nation’s rival factions together. Anchee Min offers a powerful revisionist portrait based on extensive research of one of the most important figures in Chinese history. Viciously maligned by the western press of the time as the “Dragon Lady,” a manipulative, blood-thirsty woman who held onto power at all costs, the woman Min gives us is a compelling, very human leader who assumed power reluctantly, and who sacrificed all she had to protect those she loved and an empire that was doomed to die. “The vision of an empress who very nearly had it all: vulnerability and strength, motherhood and power, earthiness and dignity, compassion and ambition.” —The Washington Post “Invokes the intrigue and opulence of nineteenth-century China while telling the story of its improbably dominant ruler.” —Los Angeles Times

Good Hunting

Good Hunting PDF

Author: Jack Devine

Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 142994417X

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"A sophisticated, deeply informed account of real life in the real CIA that adds immeasurably to the public understanding of the espionage culture—the good and the bad." —Bob Woodward Jack Devine ran Charlie Wilson's War in Afghanistan. It was the largest covert action of the Cold War, and it was Devine who put the brand-new Stinger missile into the hands of the mujahideen during their war with the Soviets, paving the way to a decisive victory against the Russians. He also pushed the CIA's effort to run down the narcotics trafficker Pablo Escobar in Colombia. He tried to warn the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, that there was a bullet coming from Iraq with his name on it. He was in Chile when Allende fell, and he had too much to do with Iran-Contra for his own taste, though he tried to stop it. And he tangled with Rick Ames, the KGB spy inside the CIA, and hunted Robert Hanssen, the mole in the FBI. Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story is the spellbinding memoir of Devine's time in the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served for more than thirty years, rising to become the acting deputy director of operations, responsible for all of the CIA's spying operations. This is a story of intrigue and high-stakes maneuvering, all the more gripping when the fate of our geopolitical order hangs in the balance. But this book also sounds a warning to our nation's decision makers: covert operations, not costly and devastating full-scale interventions, are the best safeguard of America's interests worldwide. Part memoir, part historical redress, Good Hunting debunks outright some of the myths surrounding the Agency and cautions against its misuses. Beneath the exotic allure—living abroad with his wife and six children, running operations in seven countries, and serving successive presidents from Nixon to Clinton—this is a realist, gimlet-eyed account of the Agency. Now, as Devine sees it, the CIA is trapped within a larger bureaucracy, losing swaths of turf to the military, and, most ominous of all, is becoming overly weighted toward paramilitary operations after a decade of war. Its capacity to do what it does best—spying and covert action—has been seriously degraded. Good Hunting sheds light on some of the CIA's deepest secrets and spans an illustrious tenure—and never before has an acting deputy director of operations come forth with such an account. With the historical acumen of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and gripping scenarios that evoke the novels of John le Carré even as they hew closely to the facts on the ground, Devine offers a master class in spycraft.

What the River Washed Away

What the River Washed Away PDF

Author: Muriel Mharie Macleod

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-06-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1780742355

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I ain’t know nothing except he’s a bad man Mambo.’ Inspired by real-life events, this is the remarkable and uncompromising story of one young woman’s refusal to accept her fate in 1920s Louisiana Jobs and Jesus from the big town don't ever seem to make it out here. Not down through the hackberry woods to the shack where I live with my Mambo. Not now Pappy’s gone. No, here’s where the old ways squat, where devil’s work heals and some say harms. That don’t mean the big town don’t visit though – white folks with their shirt sleeves, liquor stink, and nasty ways. More dark in them than even Mambo can hold off. But I got me a friend now, fierce and vengeful, and we got a powerful secret that’s gonna change everything.