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The Courtesan

Alexandra Curry · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Bound

Donna Jo Napoli · 189 pages

YOUNG XING XING IS BOUND. Bound to her father's second wife and daughter after Xing Xing's father has passed away. Bound to a life of servitude as a young girl in ancient China, where the life of a woman is valued less than that of livestock. Bound to be alone and unmarried, with no parents to arrange for a suitable husband. Dubbed "Lazy One" by her stepmother, Xing Xing spends her days taking car

Imperial ChinaOrphansHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden · 456 pages

A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a n

Human TraffickingDeath of a ParentHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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Imperial ChinaHuman TraffickingHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Spring Pearl: The Last Flower

Laurence Yep · 218 pages

Called boyish by her new family for being able to read and write, twelve-year-old, orphaned Spring Pearl's "odd ways" help save the family during the 1857 Opium War in Canton, China.

Imperial ChinaOrphansHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Peach Blossom Pavilion

Mingmei Yip · 421 pages

Imperial ChinaHuman TraffickingHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini · 416 pages

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an

OrphansDeath of a ParentHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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Dragon Keeper

Carole Wilkinson · 339 pages

set in China in 141 B.C. In a remote western palace, Ping, a slave girl of unknown origin, serves the emperor's Dragon Keeper, an incompetent drunkard who neglects the two last-known dragons in his charge. When one of them dies and an evil hunter threatens to kill the other for his magical body parts, the old dragon, Danzi, escapes with the girl. He entrusts Ping with his precious and beautiful pu

Imperial ChinaOrphansFemale Lead
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Sandalwood Death

Mo Yan · 409 pages

Sun Meiniang interacts with the three men in her life during the Boxer Rebellion, including Sun Bing, her father and a leader of the rebellion, who is destined to come to a cruel end.

Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Moonraker's Bride

Madeleine Brent · 571 pages

The stranger she married that night was gone by morning. But she could never forget she was "Moonraker's Bride." Set against the exotic backdrop of China and England at the turn of the century, this breathtaking novel unfolds a fascinating tale of love, intrigue and mystery--of a man who trusted no one and a woman who trusted too much.

Imperial ChinaOrphansHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Peony in Love

Lisa See · 304 pages

"I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret."For young Peony, 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, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle f

Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Orphan Train

Christina Baker Kline · 400 pages

Close to aging out of the foster care system, Molly Ayer takes a position helping an elderly woman named Vivian and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. When 17-year-old Molly Ayer is sent to perform community service at elderly Vivian Daly's home in order to avoid juvenile hall, she discovers the two are very much alike, despite the

Death of a ParentOrphansHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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The Bonesetter's Daughter

Amy Tan · 353 pages

LuLing Young is in her eighties, and finally beginning to feel the effects of old age. Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write down all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. Meanwhile, her daughter Ruth, a ghostwriter for authors of self-help books, is losing the ability to speak up for herself in front of the man she lives with. LuLing can only look on, help

Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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West of the Moon

Margi Preus · 226 pages

In nineteenth-century Norway, fourteen-year-old Astri, whose aunt has sold her to a mean goatherder, dreams of joining her father in America. In nineteenth-century Norway, fourteen-year-old Astri, whose aunt has sold her to a mean goat herder, dreams of joining her father in America. The plot contains violence and sexual references.

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Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters

Pearl S. Buck · 316 pages

A los cuarenta años, Madame Wu, esposa de un miembro de una de las dinastías de terratenientes más consideradas de China, abandona voluntariamente la vida matrimonial y busca una concubina para su marido. Su decisión cambia la vida de todos los que la rodean... A las puertas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la familia se enfrenta a la encrucijada entre tradición, comunismo y pensamiento occidental, c

Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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Becoming Abigail

Chris Abani · 120 pages

Human TraffickingDeath of a ParentLiterary FictionFemale Lead
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The Book of Aron

Jim Shepard · 272 pages

Aron, the narrator, is an engaging if peculiar young boy whose family is driven from the countryside into the Warsaw Ghetto. As his family is slowly stripped away from him, Aron and a handful of boys and girls risk their lives, smuggling and trading things through the "quarantine walls" to keep their people alive, hunted all the while by blackmailers and by Jewish, Polish, and German police (not t

OrphansDeath of a ParentHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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Love and Other Consolation Prizes

Jamie Ford · 336 pages

A half-Chinese orphan whose mother sacrificed everything to give him a better chance is raffled off as a prize at Seattle's 1909 World's Fair, only to land in the ownership of the madam of a notorious brothel where he finds friendship and opportunities, in a story based on true events.

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This Tender Land

William Kent Krueger · 464 pages

Death of a ParentOrphansHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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The Debt of Tears

Cao Xueqin · 400 pages

Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionLiterary Fiction
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The Wolf Den

Elodie Harper · 464 pages

Human TraffickingDeath of a ParentHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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Empress Orchid

Anchee Min · 346 pages

From the master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the splendid heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young Chinese concubine who becomes China's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seizes power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enem

Imperial ChinaHistorical FictionFemale Lead
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The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

Lars Mytting · 403 pages

"By Norway's bestselling novelist and the author of NORWEGIAN WOOD, a family story of epic scale. Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery - he has never been told how or where it took place and has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that

OrphansDeath of a ParentLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction
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When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro · 320 pages

'You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction.' Sunday TimesEngland, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Moving between London and Shanghai o

Imperial ChinaOrphansLiterary Fiction

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