Mandarin

✍ Scribed by Robert Elegant

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 557 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

A grand tale of intrigue in nineteenth-century China, where imperial rule is crumbling as the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion rage, from the author of Manchu.
Loyalty is put to cruel test in Shanghai, where Jewish merchant Saul Haleevie and his longtime Chinese partner, Aisek Lee, have weathered hardship and distrust to build a thriving business. When Aisek is falsely accused of "abomination" for causing his mother's suicide, their world is shattered. Now, Saul must save his friend no matter the cost, navigating a brutal and corrupt penal system that could bring about his own ruin as well.

Meanwhile, the quest for true love governs the fate of Saul's wayward daughter, Fronah. Consorting with the Westerners now thronging Shanghai but truly comfortable only in her Jewish-Asiatic identity, she ends up destroying one man and confounding another.

Love and deception also entwine in the imperial palace, where the "Virtuous Concubine"...