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The Porcelain Thief
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Download or read book The Porcelain Thief written by Huan Hsu and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist travels throughout mainland China and Taiwan in search of his family’s hidden treasure and comes to understand his ancestry as he never has before. In 1938, when the Japanese arrived in Huan Hsu’s great-great-grandfather Liu’s Yangtze River hometown of Xingang, Liu was forced to bury his valuables, including a vast collection of prized antique porcelain, and undertake a decades-long trek that would splinter the family over thousands of miles. Many years and upheavals later, Hsu, raised in Salt Lake City and armed only with curiosity, moves to China to work in his uncle’s semiconductor chip business. Once there, a conversation with his grandmother, his last living link to dynastic China, ignites a desire to learn more about not only his lost ancestral heirlooms but also porcelain itself. Mastering the language enough to venture into the countryside, Hsu sets out to separate the layers of fact and fiction that have obscured both China and his heritage and finally complete his family’s long march back home. Melding memoir, travelogue, and social and political history, The Porcelain Thief offers an intimate and unforgettable way to understand the complicated events that have defined China over the past two hundred years and provides a revealing, lively perspective on contemporary Chinese society from the point of view of a Chinese American coming to terms with his hyphenated identity.
Download or read book The Falcon Thief written by Joshua Hammer and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “well-written, engaging detective story” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to stop him. On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a “vivid tale of obsession and international derring-do” (Publishers Weekly), following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey. “Masterfully constructed” (The New York Times) and “entertaining and illuminating” (The Washington Post), The Falcon Thief will whisk you away from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It’s a story that’s part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure—and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.
Book Synopsis The Affair of the Porcelain Dog by : Jess Faraday
Download or read book The Affair of the Porcelain Dog written by Jess Faraday and published by Bold Strokes Books Inc. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London 1889. For Ira Adler, former rent-boy and present plaything of crime lord Cain Goddard, stealing back the statue from Goddard's blackmailer should have been a doddle. But inside the statue is evidence that could put Goddard away for a long time under the sodomy laws, and everyone's after it, including Ira's bitter ex, Dr. Timothy Lazarus. No sooner does Ira have the porcelain dog in his hot little hands, than he loses it to a nimble-fingered prostitute. As IraÕs search for the dog drags him back to the mean East End streets where he grew up, he discovers secrets about his own past, and about Goddard's present business dealings, which make him question everything he thought he knew. An old friend turns up dead, and an old enemy proves himself a friend. Goddard is pressing Ira for a commitment, but every new discovery casts doubt on whether Ira can, in good conscience, remain with him. In the end, Ira must choose between his hard-won life of luxury and standing against a grievous wrong.
Book Synopsis The Last Tea Bowl Thief by : Jonelle Patrick
Download or read book The Last Tea Bowl Thief written by Jonelle Patrick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three hundred years, a stolen relic passes from one fortune-seeker to the next, indelibly altering the lives of those who possess it. In modern-day Tokyo, Robin Swann’s life has sputtered to a stop. She’s stuck in a dead-end job testing antiquities for an auction house, but her true love is poetry, not pottery. Her stalled dissertation sits on her laptop, unopened in months, and she has no one to confide in but her goldfish. On the other side of town, Nori Okuda sells rice bowls and tea cups to Tokyo restaurants, as her family has done for generations. But with her grandmother in the hospital, the family business is foundering. Nori knows if her luck doesn’t change soon, she’ll lose what little she has left. With nothing in common, Nori and Robin suddenly find their futures inextricably linked to an ancient, elusive tea bowl. Glimpses of the past set the stage as they hunt for the lost masterpiece, uncovering long-buried secrets in their wake. As they get closer to the truth—and the tea bowl—the women must choose between seizing their dreams or righting the terrible wrong that has poisoned its legacy for centuries.
Download or read book Peking Story written by David Kidd and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two years before and after the 1948 Communist Revolution, David Kidd lived in Peking, where he married the daughter of an aristocratic Chinese family. "I used to hope," he writes, "that some bright young scholar on a research grant would write about us and our Chinese friends before it was too late and we were all dead and gone, folding into the darkness the wonder that had been our lives." Here Kidd himself brings that wonder to life.
Book Synopsis French Twist by : Roxanne St. Claire
Download or read book French Twist written by Roxanne St. Claire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-02-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following her white-hot debut novel, Tropical Getaway, Roxanne St. Claire captures the passion and intrigue of France in a dazzling romantic suspense adventure. Janine Coulter has just gotten her big chance to prove herself, managing a prestigious exhibit at the Palace of Versailles -- and Luc Tremont, the security specialist, is clearly trouble. He's making decisions without her, under-cutting her authority. He's also too smooth, too virile, too dangerously handsome, too...well...French! And Janine has the uneasy suspicion he's not all that he seems. Luc resolutely ignores the powerful sizzle of attraction he feels when he meets Janine -- the quintessential California girl with her blond hair, blue eyes, and legs that seem to go on forever. But when thieves steal priceless treasures from the exhibit, and Luc and Janine give chase across the lush Burgundy countryside, their forced intimacy ignites the passion both have tried to ignore. Luc wonders what will happen when Janine learns his true identity -- but with dangerous men pursuing them, they may not live to find out....
Book Synopsis The Watermight Thief by : Jordan Rivet
Download or read book The Watermight Thief written by Jordan Rivet and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to Pendark, a city of murky canals, brutal gladiator fights, and sorcerers who feud over access to the silvery magical substance known as Watermight. Tamri is a scrappy magic thief who's trying to get her grandmother out of this festering swamp of a city. But when a quick score involving a dragon goes wrong, she's shipped off to a distant mountaintop kingdom where the legendary Fire Queen is starting a school for magic wielders. Tamri's not just going there to learn. The King of Pendark suspects the Fire Queen is up to something more dangerous than training young wielders, and he orders Tamri to find out the truth. If she fails, neither she nor her grandmother will survive the school year. Return to the world of Steel and Fire in this all new adventure set five years after Night of Flame. AUTHOR'S NOTE: You don't need to read the Steel and Fire books to enjoy The Watermight Thief, but it does contain spoilers for the original series.
Book Synopsis Mark of the Thief (Free Preview Edition) by : Jennifer A. Nielsen
Download or read book Mark of the Thief (Free Preview Edition) written by Jennifer A. Nielsen and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sneak peek at an electrifying tale of greed and power, magic and destiny, and one boy's courage at the heart of it all, from Jennifer A. Nielsen, the New York Times bestselling author of the Ascendance Trilogy. When Nic, a slave in the mines outside of Rome, is forced to enter a sealed cavern containing the lost treasures of Julius Caesar, he finds much more than gold and gemstones: He discovers an ancient bulla, an amulet that belonged to the great Caesar and is filled with a magic once reserved for the Gods -- magic some Romans would kill for. Now, with the deadly power of the bulla pulsing through his veins, Nic is determined to become free. But instead, he finds himself at the center of a ruthless conspiracy to overthrow the emperor and spark the Praetor War, a battle to destroy Rome from within. Traitors and spies lurk at every turn, each more desperate than the next to use Nic's newfound powers for their own dark purposes. In a quest to stop the rebellion, save Rome, and secure his own freedom, Nic must harness the magic within himself and defeat the empire's most powerful and savage leaders.
Download or read book Thief! written by Margaret V. Delashmit and published by Inspiring Voices. This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1959 when thirteen-year-old Claire McGlaughlin's parents leave for Kenya on a missionary trip. She is sent to live with her grandmother in boring old Holly Springs, Mississippi-where nothing interesting ever happens. Soon, Claire finds she has a friend in local boy Ralphie. Even better, she discovers that the small town has a mystery, and then Holly Springs becomes anything but dull. A rash of burglaries and rumors of a cold case murder send this budding writer into investigative mode. The nice folk of Holly Springs would never admit to anything bad happening in their hometown, especially bad things perpetrated by one of their own. They go so far as to deny a murder ever occurred, but Claire is sure they must be hiding something. With the help of her new pal, Claire sets out to solve the mystery. Along the way, Claire and Ralphie make the acquaintance of vicious dogs, a shotgun-waving crazy lady, and an angry sheriff . What's more, an unknown Mary Cassatt painting and a dog with mysterious powers may be the keys to unraveling a mystery that has haunted the town of Holly Springs for much too long. "This inspiring novel of teenage angst set in a small Southern town captures the emotions of doubt, rejection, and love. It provides a convincing demonstration of the resilience of teenagers who are so often dismissed by adults who cannot see beyond their myopic preconceptions of adolescence (and have forgotten their own teenage years)." -B. C. Crawford, Educator, Oxford, Mississippi
Download or read book The Malta Exchange written by Steve Berry and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The next in New York Times top 5 bestseller Steve Berry's Cotton Malone series involves the Knights of Malta, papal conclave, and lost documents that could change history. A deadly race for the Vatican’s oldest secret fuels New York Times bestseller Steve Berry’s latest international Cotton Malone thriller. The pope is dead. A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the 4th century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is at Lake Como, Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that disappeared in 1945 and could re-write history. But someone else seems to be after the same letters and, when Malone obtains then loses them, he’s plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta. The knights have existed for over nine hundred years, the only warrior-monks to survive into modern times. Now they are a global humanitarian organization, but within their ranks lurks trouble — the Secreti — an ancient sect intent on affecting the coming papal conclave. With the help of Magellan Billet agent Luke Daniels, Malone races the rogue cardinal, the knights, the Secreti, and the clock to find what has been lost for centuries. The final confrontation culminates behind the walls of the Vatican where the election of the next pope hangs in the balance.
Book Synopsis The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by : Chris Ewan
Download or read book The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam written by Chris Ewan and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Great Britain: Long Barn Books, 2007.
Download or read book The White Road written by Edmund de Waal and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted. Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with the Amber Eyes. In The White Road, bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"-sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with the Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.
Book Synopsis Summary of Edmund de Waal's The White Road by : Everest Media,
Download or read book Summary of Edmund de Waal's The White Road written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-06-21T22:59:00Z with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was able to find shards of porcelain in the dirt near the farmer’s house. They were the base of a twelfth-century wine cup, a fine tapering stem holding a jagged bowl, a thumb’s breadth across. It was impossibly thin. #2 The kilns were long gone, but the bricks were used for a shed or pigsty, and the slopes were useful for building into. The bamboo and these long flat grasses were cut for packing finished pots to carry down to the river. #3 The Chinese city of Jingdezhen was the center of porcelain production for the world. It was a beautiful puzzle of a landscape, and somehow people and happenstance combined to make it the center of porcelain production for the world. #4 Porcelain is made of two types of mineral. The first is petunse, or porcelain stone, which provides the flesh of the porcelain. It gives translucency and supplies the hardness of the body. The second is kaolin, or porcelain clay, which gives plasticity.
Download or read book 鯉躍龍門 written by Teresa Canepa and published by Ad Ilissvm. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book celebrates the most important collection of 17th-century Chinese porcelain in the world, assembled by the distinguished British diplomat Sir Michael Butler. His passion for porcelain is clearly reflected in the over eight hundred pieces he collected and lived with at his home and private museum in Dorset. The pots (as Sir Michael called them), many of extreme rarity or exquisite quality, give testimony to the incredible depth of knowledge he acquired over five decades and his outstanding contribution to research and education in this previously neglected field of study. This lavish and comprehensive collection covers most types of porcelain produced at Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, during the 17th century. The variety of the pieces carefully acquired by Sir Michael reflects the great innovative spirit of the highly skilled Jingdezhen potters and painters at a time when they were released from the controls of Imperial patronage, between the end of the reign of the Ming Emperor Wanli in 1620 and the re-establishment of the Imperial kilns by the Qing Emperor Kangxi in 1683. It is a study collection of porcelain unrivalled in its breath and rarity that demonstrates the stylistic and qualitative evolution which occurred in Chinese porcelain production during the 17th century. An introduction written by Katharine Butler tells the fascinating story of the circumstances that encouraged her father to acquire, collect and passionately study Chinese porcelain of the 17th century; how he found rare pieces with dates, interesting inscriptions, seal marksor narrative scenes; and how the collection and his scholarly publications came to be internationally renowned. The core of the book is composed of nine sections presenting the main categories of porcelains in the collection: Late Ming, High Transitional, Shunzhi, Early Kangxi, Mid-Late Kangxi, Monochromes and Famille Verte, as well as disputed pieces. Some of the highlights are the extremely rare High Transitional pieces painted only in overglaze enamels dating to the Chongzhen reign, c.1640-43; the first piece acquired by Sir Michael, a green enamel winepot, dating to the early Kangxi reign, c.1665-70; a group of rare dated Zhonghe Tang pieces painted in underglaze blue and red, and an early Kangxi basin finely painted in underglaze blue and red with a Master of the Rocks landscape, dating to c.1670-75. Leaping the Dragon Gate refers to the symbolic metamorphosis from a humble carp to a mighty dragon - the most powerful of the Four Divine Creatures - that a student would undergo on succeeding in the Jinshi or Imperial civil service examinations. Passing these examinations required years, sometimes decades, of enormous effort to acquire the requisite educational merit and success was very rare. It is a worthy metaphor for Sir Michael's scholarly achievement. This 384-page book with over 600 colour illustrations is a catalogue raisonné of almost his entire 17th century porcelain collection, including many previously unpublished pieces. In the spirit of keeping the family legacy of acquisition and scholarship alive, the authors have included a few important, recently purchased pieces and also have revised and expanded the list of all known dated pieces of 17th Century Chinese porcelain in the world that Sir Michael compiled in his 1992 USA exhibition catalogue.
Book Synopsis The Next Factory of the World by : Irene Yuan Sun
Download or read book The Next Factory of the World written by Irene Yuan Sun and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Business Book of 2017 -- The Financial Times China is now the biggest foreign player in Africa. It's Africa's largest trade partner, the largest infrastructure financier, and the fastest-growing source of foreign direct investment. Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding into the continent, investing in long-term assets such as factories and heavy equipment. Considering Africa's difficult history of colonialism, one might suspect that China's activity there is another instance of a foreign power exploiting resources. But as author Irene Yuan Sun vividly shows in this remarkable book, it is really a story about resilient Chinese entrepreneurs building in Africa what they so recently learned to build in China--a global manufacturing powerhouse. The fact that China sees Africa not for its poverty but for its potential wealth is a striking departure from the attitude of the West, particularly that of the United States. Despite fifty years of Western aid programs, Africa still has more people living in extreme poverty than any other region in the world. Those who are serious about raising living standards across the continent know that another strategy is needed. Chinese investment gives rise to a tantalizing possibility: that Africa can industrialize in the coming generation. With a manufacturing-led transformation, Africa would be following in the footsteps of the United States in the nineteenth century, Japan in the early twentieth, and the Asian Tigers in the late twentieth. Many may consider this an old-fashioned way to develop, but as Sun argues, it's the only one that's proven to raise living standards across entire societies in a lasting way. And with every new Chinese factory boss setting up machinery and hiring African workers--and managers--that possibility becomes more real for Africa. With fascinating and moving human stories along with incisive business and economic analysis, The Next Factory of the World will make you rethink both China's role in the world and Africa's future in the globalized economy.
Download or read book The Kingdom written by Fuminori Nakamura and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zen-Noir master Nakamura returns to the Tokyo of The Thief, where a young grifter named Yurika finds herself in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the shadowy crime lord Kizaki. Yurika is a freelancer in the Tokyo underworld. She poses as a prostitute, carefully targeting potential johns, selecting powerful and high-profile men. When she is alone with them, she drugs them and takes incriminating photos to sell for blackmail purposes. She knows very little about the organization she's working for, and is perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, as long as it means she doesn't have to reveal anything about her identity, either. She operates alone and lives a private, solitary life, doing her best to lock away painful memories. But when a figure from Yurika's past resurfaces, she realizes there is someone out there who knows all her secrets: her losses, her motivations, her every move. There are whispers of a crime lord named Kizaki--"a monster," she is told--and Yurika finds herself trapped in a game of cat and mouse. Is she wily enough to escape one of the most sadistic men in Tokyo?
Book Synopsis Death (and Further Adventures) of Silas Winterbottom: The Body Thief by : Stephen M. Giles
Download or read book Death (and Further Adventures) of Silas Winterbottom: The Body Thief written by Stephen M. Giles and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lured to their sick Uncle Silas's home under the pretense of becoming heirs to his vast fortune, cousins Adele, Isabella, and Milo soon learn that the old man has a diabolical plan to prevent his own death.
