Apricot’s Revenge is an absorbing detective novel and more. Song Ying uses an ingenious plot to investigate social problems in modern China, which makes the book a profound and captivating read, leaving readers thinking long after reaching the last page. A business tycoon in China is found dead; he apparently suffered a heart attack while swimming. His body is washed onto a beach in a popular resort known as the Hawaii of the East. But soon it becomes clear that he was murdered. Three immediate beneficiaries of his death become the suspects: the vice president of the company, Zhou, who is in line to take over his position; his young widow, Zhu, who stands to inherit a huge amount of wealth; and his arch business rival, Hong, who is competing in a bid over a piece of hot property. Nie Feng, a young investigative reporter for a magazine, interviewed the victim just a few days before he died. Through his own research, Nie Feng discovers a new suspect who is not on the police’s radar.
Lavinia Maud craves the moment the last wisps of life leave her victim's bodies--to behold the effects of her own poison creations. Believing confession erases the sin of murder, her morbid desires are in unity with faith, though she could never justify her skill to the magistrate she loves.At the start of the 16th century in Tudor England, Lavinia's marks grow from tavern drunks to nobility, but rising prestige brings increased risk. When the magistrate suspects her ruse, he pressures the priest into breaking her confessional seal, pitting Lavinia's instincts as an assassin against the tenets of love and faith. She balances revenge with her struggle to develop a tasteless poison and avoid the wrath of her ruthless patron.With her ideals in conflict, Lavinia must decide which will satisfy her heart: love, faith, or murder--but the betrayals are just beginning.
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Well, those Apricot Marmalade guys are at it again! In this sequel to Apricot Marmalade and the Edmondson Transmittal, Special Agents Reynolds, Bonner, Wilson, Dunn, and Cooper are again matching wits with KGB spies and other enemy agents in Thailand during the Vietnam War, with the battleground practically next door. Ed Reynolds faces new challenges that keep him on his toes but seemingly just one step ahead of a court martial. Irv Bonner gets a new assignment in the northern part of the country that puts his life at risk but also brings him a chance at a meaningful romance. The team's biggest challenge in this go-around is to track down a physics graduate student who is intent on developing a nuclear device. His plan: to threaten a major Thai city with extinction, unless his demands are met. The group is racing against the clock to stop tens of thousands of innocent people from being vaporized. Satire is alive and well in Apricot Marmalade and the Sangsuwan Equation. ______________________________________________________________________________ PRAISE FOR APRICOT MARMALADE AND THE EDMONDSON TRANSMITTAL This book "is a hilarious tale of dysfunctional alphabet intelligence agencies operating in Vietnam-era Thailand . . . Written in a comedic satirical style reminiscent of Catch 22 . . . -San Francisco Book Review "What sets the book apart is Orey's sharp pen, comic timing, and crack dialogue, as its scruffy band tracks its marks, deals with GRU agents and arms smugglers, and tries to maybe even see some justice get done. That dialogue and crisp descriptive action are well balanced throughout . . ." -BookLife (an affiliate of Publishers Weekly) "Fantastic read . . . I loved this book . .. . I'd recommend Apricot Marmalade and the Edmondson Transmittal to all lovers of historical fiction. All in all, I'd rate it four out of four stars." -OnlineBookClub.org "I enjoyed this book. Frankly, it was a delight to read . . . The characters in this story were well developed and memorable . . . fresh and engaging . . . such a good and satisfying story." -Manhattan Book Review
Vengeance permeates English Renaissance drama - for example, it crops up in all but two of Shakespeare's plays. This book explores why a supposedly forgiving Christian culture should have relished such bloodthirsty, vengeful plays. A clue lies in the plays' passion for fairness, a preoccupation suggesting widespread resentment of systemic unfairness - legal, economic, political and social. Revengers' precise equivalents - the father of two beheaded sons obliges his enemy to eat her two sons' heads - are vigilante versions of Elizabethan law, where penalties suit the crimes: thieves' hands were cut off, scolds' tongues bridled. The revengers' language of 'paying' hints at the operation of revenge in the service of economic redress. Revenge makes contact with resistance theory, justifying overthrow of tyrants, and some revengers challenge the fundamental inequity of social class. Woodbridge demonstrates how, for all their sensationalism, their macabre comedy and outlandish gore, Renaissance revenge plays do some serious cultural work.
Concerning itself with the complex interplay between iconoclasm against images of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England and stage representations that evoke various 'Marian moments' from the medieval, Catholic past, this collection answers the call for further investigation of the complex relationship between the fraught religio-political culture of the early modern period and the theater that it spawned. Joining historians in rejecting the received belief that Catholicism could be turned on and off like a water spigot in response to sixteenth-century religious reform, the early modern British theater scholars in this collection turn their attention to the vestiges of Catholic tradition and culture that leak out in stage imagery, plot devices, and characterization in ways that are not always clearly engaged in the business of Protestant panegyric or polemic. Among the questions they address are: What is the cultural function of dramatic Marian moments? Are Marian moments nostalgic for, or critical of, the 'Old Faith'? How do Marian moments negotiate the cultural trauma of iconoclasm and/or the Reformation in early modern England? Did these stage pictures of Mary provide subversive touchstones for the Old Faith of particular import to crypto-Catholic or recusant members of the audience?
In remote parts of China, bride price and borrowing seeds were considered quite the norm. The custom gives families a new lease of life especially the coveted baby boys but more often than not, such custom leads to many tragedies of forbidden love. Scented Apricot Flowers is about this story--- one that spans generations of love, lost and found through tribulations. “An amazing love story. Good Characterization, Interesting and well-described settings, and Authentic-sounding dialogue.” By Cynthia Sherman “The book on romance. Wang Yongli’s epic ‘Scented Apricot Flowers’ is the novel that shows true love do move heaven and earth.” By Boudenwijn Heeren
