Showing results by narrator "Nancy Wu" in All Categories

A bandit walks into a coffeehouse, and it all goes downhill from there. Guet Imm, a young votary of the Order of the Pure Moon, joins up with an eclectic group of thieves (whether they like it or not) in order to protect a sacred object, and finds herself in a far more complicated situation than she could have ever imagined.

This revelatory account of the ways silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with “white metal” held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to China’s economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the 16th century. However, due to the early adoption of paper money in China, silver was not formed into coins but became a cumbersome “weighing currency”....

When Americans think of freedom, they often picture the open road. Yet nowhere are we more likely to encounter the long arm of the law than in our cars. Sarah Seo reveals how the rise of the automobile led us to accept - and expect - pervasive police power. As Policing the Open Road makes clear, this radical transformation in the nature and meaning of American freedom has had far-reaching political and legal consequences.

Many believe that those who are destined to be together are connected by an invisible red thread. If that is so, the fates of Chai and Josi are weaved together and tied with a knot that cannot be broken. Chai has been the self-appointed protector of her best friend, Josi, since their toddler days. Their lives are as far from extravagant as can be imagined - but they don’t need material things to be content.

It's hard not to notice Terra Cooper. She's tall, blond, and has an enviable body. But with one turn of her cheek, all people notice is her unmistakably "flawed" face. Terra secretly plans to leave her stifling small town in the Northwest and escape to an East Coast college, but gets pushed off-course by her controlling father. When an unexpected collision puts Terra directly in Jacob's path, the handsome but quirky Goth boy immediately challenges her assumptions about herself and her life, and she is forced in yet another direction.

Remy Tsai used to know how her story would turn out. But now, she doesn’t even know what tomorrow will look like. She was happy once. Remy had her boyfriend, Jack, and Elise, her best friend - her soul mate - who understood her better than anyone else in the world. But now, Jack is dead, shot through the chest...and it was Elise who pulled the trigger. Was it self-defense? Or something darker than anything Remy could have imagined?

When Kong-sang was a young boy in Hong Kong, he enjoyed practicing martial arts with his dad but hated going to school. He was eventually enrolled in the China Drama Academy, where he improved his martial arts skills and became a stuntman. That training led to a successful career as an actor. Kong-sang, now known as Jackie Chan, never gave up on his passion for screwball physical comedy.

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island.

Hope Chen and her husband are raising her nine-year-old nephew, Luca, in the wake of his troubled mother’s death. Luca finally has a safe home in a neighborhood where kids play in the streets and nobody locks their doors. Then one day, Luca and his dog disappear without a trace. Guilt-ridden, fearing the worst but praying for the best, Hope finds her imagination running wild.

Soy Sauce for Beginners reveals the triumphs and sacrifices that shape one woman’s search for a place to call home, and the unexpected art and tradition behind the brewing of a much-used but unsung condiment. The result is a foodie love story that will give listeners a hearty appreciation for family loyalty and fresh starts.

At the southern end of the Japanese archipelago lies Okinawa, host to a vast complex of US military bases. A legacy of World War II, these bases have been a fraught issue in Japan for decades - with tensions exacerbated by the often volatile relationship between islanders and the military, especially after the brutal rape of a 12-year-old girl by three servicemen in the 1990s. But the situation is more complex than it seems. In Night in the American Village, journalist Akemi Johnson takes listeners deep into the “border towns” surrounding the bases....

Sura Neelin is on the run from her creditors, from her past, and her father's murderers. She can't get a job, she can't get a place to live, she can't even walk down the street: the total surveillance society that is mid-21st-century America means that every camera and every pair of smart glasses is her enemy. But Sura might have a chance in the alternate reality of the games. People can disappear in the LARP game worlds, into the alternate economy of Notchcoin and blockchains.

Manhattan is in the hands of the evil Magneto and his Acolytes as he executes the first step in creating the Mutant Empire. Half the X-Men have been captured, and Magneto's law is enforced by an ever-growing army of mutants and the powerful robotic Sentinels. The remaining X-Men must stop Magneto by turning the reprogrammed Sentinels against him to defeat the man himself. To do that, they must join forces with the US government - who view the X-Men as being as much of a menace as Magneto - and with one of their oldest foes, the Juggernaut!

Magneto, the X-Men's oldest, deadliest foe, has taken over the entire island of Manhattan and declared it a haven for mutants. Ruled by Magneto and his Acolytes and enforced by reprogrammed Sentinels - powerful, giant robots - the haven is the first step in Magneto's ultimate goal of world domination: the Mutant Empire. Now, only the X-Men stand between Magneto and that goal. But the road to victory will not be an easy one, as half the X-Men are trapped in space - and mutants from all over the world are flocking to Manhattan and taking Magneto's side against the X-Men.

A book unlike any other, Women in Clothes is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities - famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old - on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than 50 questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style.

These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.

Zhu Xiao-Mei was three years old when she saw her first piano. Soon after, the child began to play, developing quickly into a prodigy who immersed herself in the work of such classical masters as Bach and Brahms. Her astonishing proficiency earned her a spot at the Beijing Conservatory at the tender age of 11, where she began laying the foundation for a promising career as a concert pianist. But in 1966, with the onset of the Cultural Revolution, life as she knew it ended abruptly.

When failed scholar Yên is sold to Vu Côn, one of the last dragons walking the earth, she expects to be tortured or killed for Vu Côn's amusement. But Vu Côn, it turns out, has a use for Yên: she needs a scholar to tutor her two unruly children. She takes Yên back to her home, a vast, vertiginous palace-prison where every door can lead to death. Vu Côn seems stern and unbending, but as the days pass Yên comes to see her kinder and caring side.

All her life, Zephyr has tried to rise above her humble origins as a no-name orphan. Now, she is a god in a warrior's body, and never has she felt more powerless. The warlordess Xin Ren holds the Westlands, but her position is tenuous. In the north, the empress remains a puppet under Miasma's thumb. In the south, the alliance with Cicada is in pieces.

From the National Book Award “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Bestiary comes startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women. In “Auntland,” a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughters “Dog.” In “The Chorus of Dead Cousins,” ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm chaser.