"A Chinatown Christmas" refers to the saying that you can always find a restaurant open on Christmas day in Chinatown when all the other restaurants are closed.Billionaire Jake Austin, has spent the last five years working through Christmas as he built his start up to a billion-dollar corporation. Every year, he's spent Christmas Day eating at the Chen Family Cuisine Restaurant, located in his local Chinatown down the street from his house. It was the only...

This Element examines the tombstone for Andrew of Perugia (d. 1332?), the sole surviving object from the 14C Franciscan mission in China. The narrative begins in Zayton, where diverse groups brought to this maritime entrepot old antagonisms and new alliances. The discovery of Andrew's tombstone and that of other Christian monuments over the centuries, demonstrate how various Christian churches interacted with their host society from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Relying to t...

"A Chinatown Christmas" refers to the saying that you can always find a restaurant open on Christmas day in Chinatown when all the other restaurants are closed.Billionaire Jake Austin, has spent the last five years working through Christmas as he built his start up to a billion-dollar corporation. Every year, he's spent Christmas Day eating at the Chen Family Cuisine Restaurant, located in his local Chinatown down the street from his house. It was the only...

Major crimes intersect in this nail-biting installment of the Timber Creek K-9 mysteries by award-winning author Margaret Mizushima.A routine welfare check becomes a nightmare when Deputy Mattie Walker finds a young mother dead and a hysterical toddler, possibly the only witness to a brutal crime. Before the investigative team can start piecing together what happened, Mattie discovers another criminal act in Timber Creek.During a traffic stop for speeding, ...

Second chances do exist.Five former sorority sisters, all in their 50's, undertake the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious invite reunites them at an exclusive resort set on a private island.Olivia was the quiet one. Her divorce from her alcoholic husband freed her in many ways but caused a rift with her daughter that seems impossible to heal.Amanda was the perfect one. Widowed and desperately broke but hiding it, she needs a new start more than anyone can ima...

Being a gargoyle isn't easy. Tiffany wasn’t even born one, but now she has wings, and in the gargoyle world it means she’ll have to fight ghosts. A scary proposition for someone who was once one of the living, especially when all she wants to do is get home and see her parents again.Enter the Hollow Mountain, a place caught somewhere between life and death, where Tiffany’s inner light—if she can learn to harness it—can bring her the power needed to face the monsters she thought onl...

Hirai is in a rut. Nearing 40, disillusioned by dating and drifting through her office job, she's starting to feel like she might just disappear. When she agrees to move in with her older colleague, Suganuma, people raise eyebrows, but the two women quickly settle into their own soothing domestic routines.Yet escaping the pressures of romantic love isn't easy. When a crisis jolts her back into the world of dating apps, Hirai meets more painfully adequate men and frets about freezing...

After the sudden death of her ex-husband, Brian, Lauren helps Brian’s much-younger widow, Jessica, arrange the funeral and settle his affairs. Although they were once adversaries in the battle for Brian’s heart, Lauren agrees to pitch in for the sake of their troubled sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily. But Lauren gets much more than she bargained for when information comes to light about Brian’s shady business deals with his old college friend Jordan Connors and the crime lord Jorge Arena, ...

Mei and Yun Wu have always been different from the other kids in the village.They’ve learned not to talk about why.But now, as this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, the twelve-year-olds find that they are exactly like everyone else: bursting with excitement.That’s because word of their grandfather’s incredible mooncakes has reached the Emperor of China himself. And on festival night, the emperor’s son will arrive to sample Grandpa’s mooncakes and report back t...

Bernardine Szold Fritz arrived in Shanghai in 1929 to marry her fourth husband. Only thirty-three years old, she found herself in a time and place like no other. Political intrigue and scandal lurked on every street corner. Art Deco cinemas showed the latest Hollywood flicks, while dancehall owners and jazz musicians turned Shanghai into Asia's top nightlife destination.Yet from the night of their wedding, Bernardine's new husband did not live up to his promises. Instead of feeling...

This collection of short stories and poems by Ada Hoffmann traverses extraordinary universes packed with faeries, cyborgs, talking otters, punitive gods, lovestruck sea creatures, fossil hunters, extraterrestrials, and much more.Exploring themes of love and self-existence, community and otherness, and perseverance, Resurrections is a wondrous blend of genres and literary forms.In “Jenny’s House,” a young girl brings a slimy souvenir from a playdate gone wrong to show-and-te...

In the shadows of war and history, the mirror between man and monster breaks …From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw … in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy of World War II Shanghai … out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe … down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things ...