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.

The exhilarating novel of an elegant woman's subversive new chapter in life. At forty, Madame Wu is beautiful and much respected as the wife of one of China's oldest upper-class houses. Her birthday wish is to find a young concubine for her husband and to move to separate quarters, starting a new chapter of her life. When her wish is granted, she finds herself at leisure, no longer consumed by running a sixty-person household. Now she's free to read...

Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate -- the first automobile any of them have seen -- and a stranger arrives. In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates...