Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her.

Ah Mei has always been close to her French grandmother, Nainai, and is proud to look like her. But in their home city of Shanghai, many people are suspicious of their European heritage and looks. Politics and war make 1960s Shanghai a difficult place to grow up, especially when the family silk business is given over to the government and they are left with their beloved home and little else. Ah Mei and her grandmother suffer, but they are resourceful...

In 1939 Romy and her family leave Austria to settle in Shanghai as Jewish refugees and Romy forms a deep friendship with Li, and in 2016, Romy's granddaughter Alexandra transfers to Shanghai to search for clues about her mother's history.

A dazzling and ambitious debut novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time—beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past—exploring their secrets, their losses, and the ways a family makes and remakes itself across the years.

"Shanghai begins when Daniel Lohr, sensing the Nazis closing in on the Jews of Berlin, leaves his dying father and agrees to flee to Shanghai on an Italian passenger ship. His passage is dependent upon him agreeing to deliver a package to his shady uncle upon arrival. Aboard the ship he will meet a woman, Leah, also a Jew fleeing the Nazis. They conduct a passionate but brief shipboard affair and then the passenger ship arrives. Will Dan ever see...

“[A] smart and utterly diverting spy trade masterwork” from the acclaimed author of The Tears of Autumn (NPR).
 
When two people collide on their bikes on an empty road, the meeting can hardly be by chance—especially when one of the people in question is working for the shadowy American espionage organization known as HQ, and the other seems to be involved in a similarly secretive Chinese operation....

"The legendary Nian monster has returned at Chinese New Year. Nian is intent on devouring Shanghai, starting with young Xingling! But Xingling is clever and thinks quickly to outwit him with Chinese New Year traditions"--

Tale of espionage and international intrigue set in Shanghai in 1931--an electrifying, decadent world of love, violence, and betrayal filled with femmes fatales, criminals, revolutionaries, and spies.