China Women

When ex-lawyer and herb-shop proprietor China Bayles’s friend Jo dies of an apparent suicide, China looks behind the quaint façade of her new home of Pecan Springs, Texas, and takes a suspicious look at everyone. And though she finds lots of friendly faces, China is sure that one of them hides the heart of a killer.

The Chinese police have once more been forced to enlist the services of American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell, this time to investigate a series of four horrific ritual executions in Beijing. Detective Li Yan is determined to discover just how one of the victims in particular, an American diplomat, became caught up in the slaying. And he is arguably even more determined to have nothing to do with Campbell, whom he finds simultaneously too foreign and too... familiar. The personal polarity that once attracted Yan and Campbell again strengthens their professional partnership.

Ex-lawyer and herb-shop proprietor China Bayles is investigating the mystery of a retired Texas Ranger shot dead with his wife’s gun...while also trying to sort out some mysteries about her own relationship after she overhears a suspicious phone conversation.

Before Constance Wu, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, or Lucy Liu, there was Anna May Wong. In her time, she was a legendary beauty, witty conversationalist, and fashion icon. Plucked from her family’s laundry business in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong rose to stardom in Douglas Fairbanks’s blockbuster The Thief of Bagdad. Fans and the press clamored to see more of this unlikely actress, but when Hollywood repeatedly cast her in stereotypical roles, she headed abroad in protest. Not Your China Doll showcases the vibrant, radical life of a groundbreaking artist.

Herbalist China Bayles' latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book - A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s - is missing, and Dorothea is under suspicion.

When her teenage son discovers some skeletal remains of the suspicious kind, lawyer-turned-herbalist China Bayles finds herself hunting a killer from the past, who is about to strike in the present.

The story of Tzu Hsi is the story of the last empress in China. In this audiobook, Pearl S. Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rules during a time of intense turbulence. Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of 17 to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort.

Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.

There was rarely a time when Phoenix Yuan-Whyller’s mother, Rain, didn’t live with her. Even when Phoenix got married, Rain, who followed her from China to Toronto, came to share Phoenix’s life. Now at the age of eighty-three, Rain’s unexpected death ushers in a heartrending separation.

When a prominent animal researcher is found hanged in the midst of angry protests against his experiments, suspicion falls on biology professor Dottie Riddle. Known as the Cat Lady of Pecan Springs, Dottie's sympathy for strays—and the victim's distaste for them—gives the police reason to think she may be capable of murder. But China Bayles doesn't think so. She hires a lawyer for Dottie and starts looking around for clues. But she soon discovers that digging up old evil is a dirty and dangerous business...

In search of respite, China takes off to St. Theresa's Monastery with her friend Maggie, a former nun. The goal is a brief, tranquil retreat—but there's a conflict at the convent. The Mother Superior has recently died, and a battle over the future of St. Theresa's suggests that her sudden demise might not have been accidental. Now, China's quest for a replenished spirit takes second place to a more earthbound pursuit: catching a killer.

It's mid-April in Pecan Springs, and China is renting her guest cottage to Kelly Kaufman, who needs a temporary place to live as she contends with a very acrimonious divorce from her husband, Rich. One nasty point of dispute is her part ownership of the Comanche Creek Brewing Company, which she is refusing to sell. At the same time, as a nurse employed by a local hospice, Kelly has discovered instances of suspicious practices.

In the exciting new mystery from the New York Times best-selling author, China Bayles fears for her husband's life as an escaped convict targets him. A killer McQuaid put away years ago has busted out of Huntsville Prison and appears to be headed for Pecan Springs. China wants to stay by her husband's side and keep him from harm, but McQuaid insists that she get out of town and go to the Last Chance Olive Ranch, where she's agreed to teach a workshop on herbs.

This 19th mystery in the China Bales series is a cozy herbal treat from national best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert. While Pecan Springs bustles back to life in the warmth of spring, one woman’s life is tragically brought to an end. Assigned to cover the story, an intern from the local paper gets too deeply involved. When she disappears, China is determined to find her—before the young journalist becomes headlines herself.

Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep, and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter.

His victims are young, beautiful, and coldly mutilated. He calls himself the Beijing Ripper. Li Yan, head of Beijing's serious crime squad, must stop him. Just as pathologist Margaret Campbell finds an insight into the killer's cruel signature, Li receives a letter from the killer, betraying his cruel intentions. There's no way Li can misinterpret the Ripper's motives: He wants to tear Li and Campbell's lives apart, and write the darkest chapter in Beijing's history.

When the body of an American archaeologist is found floating in the Yangzi River, Ministry of Public Security agent Liu Hulan and her husband, American attorney David Stark, are dispatched to Site 518 to investigate. As Hulan scrutinizes this death—or is it a murder?—David, on behalf of the National Relics Bureau, tries to discover who has stolen from the site an artifact that may prove to the world China’s claim that it is the oldest uninterrupted civilization on earth.

A prodigious Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Days later, a champion weightlifter suffers a fatal heart attack prior to competition. Detective Li Yan senses a conspiracy surrounding the fatalities and finds a female athlete willing to talk. But she will trust only one person: Li's fiancée, Margaret Campbell. When Campbell's contact herself vanishes, the gun is fired on a race against time. And Li must now outrun - and outwit - an enemy bent on pushing him beyond endurance.

The gay 1890s aren't always. Gay that is. Sometimes life is dangerous, especially if you're next on someone's murder list. In 1896, there aren't many career choices for a young lady. China Bohannon has fled one bad situation, and is looking to start her life over as a strong, independent woman in the wild and woolly town of Spokane, Washington. Convincing Gratton Doyle to take her seriously as a bookkeeper is hard enough, and when it comes to working as an investigator in the Doyle & Howe Detective Agency, it's well - nigh impossible.

The history of the Yan family is inseparable from the history of China over the last century. One of the most influential businesswomen of China today, Lan Yan grew up in the company of the country's powerful elite, including Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and other top leaders. In recounting her family history, Lan Yan brings to life a century of Chinese history from the last emperor to present day, including the Cultural Revolution which tore her childhood apart. The little girl who was crushed by the Cultural Revolution has become one of the most active businesswomen in her country.