The Red Princess Mysteries Series

LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan combines ancient myth with contemporary anxieties of religious fanaticism and terrorism to tell “an absorbing story” (The San Diego Union-Tribune) of love, betrayal, history, ecology, greed—and gory murder.

“Stays with you long after the conventional thriller is forgotten.”—The Washington Post Book World

Liu Hulan, an inspector for China’s Ministry of Public Security, and her American husband, attorney David Stark, are traveling to one of the most beautiful places on earth: the Three Gorges, where China’s biggest engineering project since the building of the Great Wall is taking place.

Hulan is there to investigate the death of an American archaeologist found floating in the waters of the Yangzi River; David is trying to figure out who’s stealing artifacts from Site 518 and selling them on the international art market. Haunting the investigation is the possibility that an artifact has been found that could very well alter the history of civilization. Together, David and Hulan unearth more scandals, confront more murderers, and revive tragic memories that shake their tormented marriage to its core as they struggle to solve a mystery as big, unruly, and complex as China itself.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A murder investigation at a toy factory forces a detective to confront her own morality in this “immediate, haunting, and exquisitely rendered” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

“See paints a fascinating portrait of a complex and enigmatic society, in which nothing is ever quite as it appears, and of the people, peasant and aristocrat alike, who are bound by its subtle strictures.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

While David Stark is asked to open a law office in Beijing, his lover, detective Liu Hulan, receives an urgent message from an old friend imploring her to investigate the suspicious death of her daughter, who worked for a toy company about to be sold to David’s new client, Tartan Enterprises.

Despite David’s protests, Hulan goes undercover at the toy factory in the rural village of Da Shui, deep in the heart of China. It is a place that forces Hulan to face a past she has long been running from. Once there, rather than finding answers to the girl’s death, Hulan unearths more questions, all of which point to possible crimes committed by David’s client. Suddenly Hulan and David find themselves on opposing sides: One of them is trying to expose a company and unearth a killer, while the other is ethically bound to protect his client. As pressures mount and danger increases, Hulan and David uncover universal truths about good and evil, right and wrong—and the sometimes subtle lines that distinguish them.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • An American attorney and a Chinese detective must join forces to unravel a globe-spanning conspiracy in this “fascinating . . . thriller that enlightens as well as it entertains” (San Diego Union-Tribune) from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

“Lisa See begins to do for Beijing what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for turn-of-the-century London or Dashiell Hammett did for 1920s San Francisco: She discerns the hidden city lurking beneath the public facade.”—The Washington Post Book World

In the depths of a Beijing winter, during the waning days of Deng Xiaoping’s reign, the U.S. ambassador’s son is found dead—his body entombed in a frozen lake. Around the same time, aboard a ship adrift off the coast of Southern California, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Stark makes a startling discovery: the corpse of a Red Prince, a scion of China’s political elite.

The Chinese and American governments suspect that the deaths are connected and, in an unprecedented move, they join forces to see justice done. In Beijing, David teams up with the unorthodox police detective Liu Hulan. In an investigation that brings them to every corner of China and sparks an intense attraction between the two, David and Hulan discover a web linking human trafficking to the drug trade to governmental treachery—a web reaching from the Forbidden City to the heart of Los Angeles and, like the wide flower net used by Chinese fishermen, threatening to ensnare all within its reach.

Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery