Lisa See

"According to Confucius, "an educated woman is a worthless woman," but Tan Yunxian -- born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness -- is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations -- looking, listening, touching, and asking -- something a man can never do with a female...

"In a remote Chinese mountain village, Liyan and her family align their lives around the farming of tea. Life goes on as it has for generations--until a stranger appears, bringing the modern world to the lives of the Akha people. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock, she leaves her near an orphanage. While Li-yan leaves her village for an education,...

In the mid 1930's two well-educated sisters from Shanghai go to Los Angeles to become brides of the "Gold Mountain men" when their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. When the get there they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months. When one of the sisters becomes pregnant they vow that no one will ever know

Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family is betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera. Peony attends the production, watching from behind a screen, but catches sight of a handsome man and begins a journey of love and sorrow

“Lisa See begins to do for Beijing what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for turn-of-the-century London or Dashiell Hammett did for 1920s San Francisco: She discerns the hidden city lurking beneath the public facade.”
–The Washington Post Book World
In the depths of a Beijing winter, during the waning days of Deng Xiaoping’s reign, the U.S. ambassador’s son is found dead–his body entombed in a frozen lake....

“See paints a fascinating portrait of a complex and enigmatic society, in which nothing is ever quite as it appears, and of the people, peasant and aristocrat alike, who are bound by its subtle strictures.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

While David Stark is asked to open a law office in Beijing, his lover, detective Liu Hulan, receives an urgent message from an old friend imploring her to investigate the suspicious...

When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her family's antiques store in Los Angeles Chinatown. There, her grandmother and great-aunt told her intriguing, colorful stories about their family's past—stories of missionaries, concubines, long wars, glamorous nightclubs, and the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination. They spoke of how Lisa's great-great-grandfather emigrated from his Chinese

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Centuries ago, two 'sworn sisters' are isolated by their families, but stay connected through a secret language written in the folds of a white silk fan. Now in modern-day Shanghai, their descendents must draw inspiration from the past as they struggle to maintain their own eternal bond in the face of life's complications. What unfolds are two stories, generations apart, but everlasting in their universal notion of love, hope and friendship