Shanghai Girls

Meet Rose and Ruby: sisters, best friends, confidantes, and conjoined twins. Since their birth, Rose and Ruby Darlen have been known simply as "the girls." They make friends, fall in love, have jobs, love their parents, and follow their dreams. But the Darlens are special. Now nearing their 30th birthday, they are history's oldest craniopagus twins, joined at the head by as pot the size of a bread plate. When Rose, the bookish sister, sets out to write her autobiography, it inevitably becomes the story of her short but extraordinary life with Ruby, the beautiful one. From their awkward first steps -- Ruby's arm curled around Rose's neck, her foreshortened legs wrapped around Rose's hips -- to the friendships they gradually build for themselves in the small town of Leaford, this is the profoundly affecting chronicle of an incomparable life journey. As Rose and Ruby's story builds to an unforgettable conclusion, Lansens aims at the heart of human experience -- the hardship of loss and struggles for independence, and the fundamental joy of simply living a life. This is a breathtaking novel, one that no reader will soon forget, a heartrending story of love between sisters.

Two sisters leave Shanghai to find new lives in 1930s Los Angeles in this fresh, fascinating adventure.

Nineteen-year-old Joy Louie has run away from her home in 1950s America to start a new life in China. Idealistic and unafraid, she believes that Chairman Mao is on the side of the people, despite what her family keeps telling her. How can she trust them, when she has just learned that her parents have lied to her for her whole life, that her mother Pearl is really her aunt and that her real father is a famous artist who has been living in China all these years? Joy arrives in Green Dragon Village, where families live in crowded, windowless huts and eke out a meagre existence from the red soil. And where a handsome young comrade catches her eye... Meanwhile, Pearl returns to China to bring her daughter home - if she can. For Mao has launched his Great Leap Forward, and each passing season brings ever greater hardship to cities and rural communes alike. Joy must rely on her skill as a painter and Pearl must use her contacts from her decadent childhood in 1930s Shanghai to find a way to safety, and a chance of joy for them both. Haunting, passionate and heartbreakingly real, this is the unforgettable new novel by the internationally acclaimed Lisa See.

Courtesans, desire & the denizens of the Shanghai underworld are just some of the elements in Han Bangqing's novel of late imperial China, published in 1892 & now available in English for the first time.

Across two critically acclaimed linked novels, now together in this eBook bundle, Lisa See unfolds a captivating saga of the bonds between women—mothers and daughters, sisters and friends—while illuminating the events of China’s tumultuous history. SHANGHAI GIRLS “As in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, [See] has . . . created ordinary women who, through willfulness and resiliency, accomplish extraordinary things.”—Miami Herald In 1937 Shanghai—the Paris of Asia—twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth. To repay his debts, he must sell the girls as wives to suitors from Los Angeles. As Pearl and May set out from the Chinese countryside to the shores of America, they face impossible choices and confront a life-changing secret, but through it all the two sisters hold fast to who they are—Shanghai girls. DREAMS OF JOY “Astonishing . . . a story with characters who enter a reader’s life, take up residence, and illuminate the myriad decisions and stories that make up human history.”—Los Angeles Times Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Pearl’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy, runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—an artist with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime. Terrified for Joy’s safety, Pearl returns to Shanghai, determined to save her daughter. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives. Praise for Lisa See “Explores the bonds of sisterhood while powerfully evoking the often nightmarish American immigrant experience.”—USA Today, on Shanghai Girls “As compulsively readable as it is an enlightening journey.”—The Denver Post, on Shanghai Girls “See is a gifted historical novelist. . . . The real love story, the one that’s artfully shown, is between mother and daughter, and aunt and daughter.”—San Francisco Chronicle, on Dreams of Joy “See’s research feels impeccable, and she has created an authentic, visually arresting world.”—The Washington Post, on Dreams of Joy

In the book, Shanghai-based American Mina Hanbury-Tenison learns from her friend Lan Lan the secrets of how Shanghai ladies use their feminine wiles to nab the desirable and wealthy. A classic example of a Shanghai Girl who has reached stellar heights from humble beginnings, Lan Lan has been married three times, each time to a husband who was "richer than the previous," (she would like to point out), but is currently single.

A thrilling new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter who has been adopted by an American couple. Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate—the first automobile any of them have seen—and a stranger arrives. In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. In her biggest seller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, See introduced the Yao people to her readers. Here she shares the customs of another Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha, whose world will soon change. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates for the stranger and is among the first to reject the rules that have shaped her existence. When she has a baby outside of wedlock, rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city. After mother and daughter have gone their separate ways, Li-yan slowly emerges from the security and insularity of her village to encounter modern life while Haley grows up a privileged and well-loved California girl. Despite Haley’s happy home life, she wonders about her origins; and Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. They both search for and find answers in the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for generations. A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

Lily is the daughter of a humble farmer, and to her family she is just another expensive mouth to feed. Then the local matchmaker delivers startling news: if Lily's feet are bound properly, they will be flawless. In nineteenth-century China, where a woman's eligibility is judged by the shape and size of her feet, this is extraordinary good luck. Lily now has the power to make a good marriage and change the fortunes of her family. To prepare for her new life, she must undergo the agonies of footbinding, learn nu shu, the famed secret women's writing, and make a very special friend, Snow Flower. But a bitter reversal of fortune is about to change everything.