NCW Libraries

"England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in Old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Now, as the world lurches towards total war, Banks realizes that the time has come for him to return to the city of his childhood and at last solve the mystery - that only by doing so will civilization...

Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her.

Enjoying her courtship with Bennett James, a businessman with ties to Shanghai, antiques dealer Precious Rafferty is stunned by a message from Lily Song, a cousin she has never met, who has a secret that she wishes to reveal during a face-to-face meeting in Venice.

"Inspector Chen is excluded from a poetry case as he awaits possible disciplinary action, leaving him to reflect on his career . . . but does his past hold a clue to the poetry case? After a number of grueling cases Chief Inspector Chen is facing mounting pressure from his superiors, many of whom are concerned with where his loyalties lie. What's more, he is excluded from an investigation into an incendiary poem posted on an online forum. Wracked...

"Shanghai, 1935. Rowland Sinclair arrives from Sydney, Australia, to represent his brother at international wool negotiations. A novice to global commerce, Rowland is under strict instructions to keep a low profile... but that soon becomes next to impossible. A beautiful Russian taxi girl - who once claimed to be the princess, Anastasia, and who danced in Rowland's arms the night before - is found slain in his suite. It's no surprise that suspicion...

"Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of...