Alexandra O'Karma

"The unassuming young heroine of Rebecca finds her life changed overnight when she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome and wealthy widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. Rescuing her from an overbearing employer, de Winter whisks her off to Manderley, his isolated estate on the windswept Cornish coast--but there things take a chilling turn. Max seems haunted by the memory of his glamorous first wife, Rebecca, whose legacy is...

The last decades of the nineteenth century were a violent period in China's history, marked by humiliating foreign incursions and domestic rebellions and ending in the demise of the Ch'ing Dynasty. The only constant during this tumultuous time was the power wielded by one woman, the resilient, ever-resourceful Tsu Hsi -- or Empress Orchid, as readers came to know her in Anchee Min's critically acclaimed, best-selling novel covering her rise to power....