Book cover of Yang Shen

Book description

Only one man dared fight to defend Shanghai from rebel hordes - the American adventurer who called up a ragtag band of deserters to defeat armies of thousands. "A master in hell before a minion in Heaven. I'll be a prince in China, and lord over these heathen beggars, or…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Yang Shen as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Also set during the Taiping Rebellion, Lande’s engrossing story begins as a sea adventure which drew me in like a Chinese version of Moby Dick, with swashbuckling characters who yell and curse in the eloquent twang of Shakespearean lowlifes.

The action shifts inland along the Yangtze River as protagonist Fletcher Thorson Wood (based on historical figure Frederick Townsend Ward) organizes a mercenary force with Western weaponry to fight off the Taiping.

There is no love story—the central characters are too busy for that—but it’s the texture of the prose, the sheer scintillating, rhythmic mastery of language, and the huge…

If you love Yang Shen...

Book cover of The Rosewood Penny

The Rosewood Penny by J.S. Fields,

2023 Queer Indie Award Nominee!

The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.

On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…

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