Tzi Ma

Eleven year-old Akeelah Anderson's life is not easy: her father is dead, her mom ignores her, her brother runs with the local gangbangers. She is a smart girl, but her environment threatens to strangle her aspirations. Responding to a threat by her school's principal, Akeelah decides to participate in a spelling bee to avoid detention for her many absences. Much to her surprise and embarrassment, she wins. Her principal asks her to seek coaching from...

Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds...

Cullen Bohannon finds himself a stranger in a strange land, the mountain town of Truckee, California, home to the Central Pacific Railroad. This rough railroad town teems with thousands of Chinese workers, foreign in language, culture and traditions. Despite the challenges of corralling his new workforce, Cullen leads the Herculean effort to tunnel through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, sometimes achieving only inches a day in the race to complete the...

"On the verge of signing a huge business deal with China, American attorney Jack Moore is on top of the world. But elation soon comes tumbling down after he spends the night with a beautiful woman-- and is then accused of her brutal murder! At the mercy of the strict Chinese court system--where one is guilty until proven innocent--Jack finds himself completely alone. But when his defense attorney unearths puzzling contradictions in the case, she acts...