DON’T CRY, TAI LAKE by Qiu Xiaolong

This book is the 7th in the wonderful Inspector Chen series, and is quite different from the previous books in that most of the action takes place away from Shanghai, a city which is otherwise an integral part of the whole wonderful persona of the charming, honest, poetry loving, slightly …

VILLANELLE:SHANGHAI by LUKE JENNINGS

The problem with Kindle Singles is that I devour them far too quickly, and promptly end up wanting more. Such was the case with “Villanelle : Shanghai,” the third in this gripping series about a beautiful killing machine. Codename Villanelle. Set in Shanghai, where – great fun – I am headed …

BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS by DAI SIJIE

This slim, charming novel about one of the darkest periods in recent Chinese history, the Cultural Revolution, manages to combine ugliness and brutishness with a life-saving thread of hope and young love and dreams. It is 1971, and 2 young men, teenaged sons of then-reviled intellectuals, are sent off to …