In Japan, it is widely believed that everyone’s life is bound by the red thread of their fate. The thread connects to all those we come in contact with throughout our lives. Thus, each path in life is predestined. Terue knows this. Just as she knows that one day her red thread will guide her to Kazhua, the daughter she was forced to abandon on the day of her birth in Edo’s Floating World. But before she can find Kazhua, fate has much in store for Terue. Following her new husband, Lord Kyle, from the Highlands of Scotland to fight in the Crimea, Terue serves as a nurse, witnessing the horrors of the battlefield. Injured, kidnapped, and assumed dead, Terue must face the possibility that she might never see her beloved daughter or husband again…
In the wake of a tragedy and fueled by guilt from a secret she's kept for years, a woman discovers how delicate the thread that binds family is in this powerful novel by Lyn Liao Butler. Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin Mia are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela. With no other family around, Tam has no choice but to agree to take in the girl she hasn’t seen since the child was an infant. Overwhelmed by her life suddenly being upended, Tam must also decide if she will complete the adoption on her own and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. But when a long-concealed secret comes to light just as she and Angela start to bond, their fragile family is threatened. As Tam begins to unravel the events of Tony and Mia’s past in China, she discovers the true meaning of love and the threads that bind her to the family she is fated to have.
In Japan, it is widely believed that everyone's life is bound by the red thread of their fate. The thread connects to all those we come in contact with throughout our lives. Thus, each path in life is predestined. Terue knows this. Just as she knows that one day her red thread will guide her to Kazhua, the daughter she was forced to abandon on the day of her birth in Edo's Floating World. But before she can find Kazhua, fate has much in store for Terue. Following her new husband, Lord Kyle, from the Highlands of Scotland to fight in the Crimea, Terue serves as a nurse, witnessing the horrors of the battlefield. Injured, kidnapped, and assumed dead, Terue must face the possibility that she might never see her beloved daughter or husband again...
Terue. The girl who was plucked from obscurity to become the most sought after geisha in Edo’s Floating World. The geisha who was so beautiful and talented that one of the richest nobles in Japan desired her as his wife. But Terue wanted more from life, and was willing to risk everything to get it. Pregnant with her lover’s child and knowing that the disgrace would mean certain death for both her and her unborn child, Terue makes the devastating choice to flee Japan on the day her daughter – Kazhua, The Geisha with the Green Eyes – was born and changes both their destinies forever.
A sweeping love story through time and space. When a 90-year-old holocaust survivor begins connecting with his childhood sweetheart in a world of shared dreams, he is compelled to go on a journey across the world to rescue her from impending tragedy.
Set against the backdrop of 1830s Singapore where piracy, crime, triads, and tigers are commonplace, this historical romance follows the struggle of two lovers: Zhen, a Chinese coolie and triad member, and Charlotte, an 18-year-old Scots woman and sister of Singapore’s Head of Police. Two cultures bound together by the invisible threads of fate yet separated by cultural diversity.
The war in the Crimea is over. Delighted to be reunited with her husband, Lord Kyle, Terue thinks she will soon be home again in her beloved Scottish Highlands. But fate is not finished with her yet. Terue learns that her daughter is a geisha in Edo. Overjoyed at the chance to be reunited with her child again, she and her husband set out to find Kazhua, returning to where Terue’s life began in the Floating World. But old dangers and new foes abound. Forced to live in hiding, finding Kazhua without revealing Terue’s true identity proves more difficult than they expected. Terue is so close to finding her daughter, she can feel the red thread that binds them together pulling taught. But reaching out to Kazhua could put all their lives at risk.
"The Tiger Mom's Tale is a heartfelt, delightful read. Lyn Liao Butler's story of Taiwanese and American identity had me turning pages and laughing (and drooling over the delicious descriptions of food)."—Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, winner of the 2020 National Book Award Named one of best summer reads by Parade and PopSugar! When an American woman inherits the wealth of her Taiwanese family, she travels to confront them about their betrayals of the past in this stunning debut by Lyn Liao Butler. Lexa Thomas has never quite fit in. Having grown up in a family of blondes while more closely resembling Constance Wu, she's neither white enough nor Asian enough. Visiting her father in Taiwan as a child, Lexa thought she'd finally found a place where she belonged. But that was years ago, and even there, some never truly considered her to be a part of the family. When her estranged father dies unexpectedly, leaving the fate of his Taiwanese family in Lexa's hands, she is faced with the choice to return to Taiwan and claim her place in her heritage . . . or leave her Taiwanese family to lose their home for good. Armed with the advice of two half-sisters (one American and the other Taiwanese, who can't stand each other), a mother who has reevaluated her sexuality, a man whose kisses make her walk into walls, and her self-deprecating humor, Lexa finds the courage to leave the comfort of New York City to finally confront the person who drove her away all those decades ago. With fond memories of eating through food markets in Taiwan and forming a bond with a sister she never knew she had, Lexa unravels the truth of that last fateful summer and realizes she must stand up for herself and open her heart to forgiveness, or allow the repercussions of her family's choices to forever dictate the path of her life
In this sequel to "The Red Thread", the sexy Regency-style romance set in the exotic East, Charlotte Macleod is nineteen, pregnant, and alone in 1842. She is fleeing a scandalous liaison with her married Chinese lover, a liaison which would bring ruin on him, herself, and her brother, Robert, the police chief of Singapore. When Tigran Manouk, forty, and the richest merchant in Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies, asks for her hand in marriage, the choice is no choice. Through loss and pain, Charlotte will find a way to make a life with a man she does not love in a town she does not understand. Until she returns to Singapore, to the town where the man she loves waits for her, to face the hardest decision of her life. This is Vol.2 in "The Straits Quartet".
Young, beautiful and wealthy, widow Charlotte Macleod, leaves Batavia in the 1850s and returns to Singapore for the English education of her two young sons. She is determined not to be drawn back into a secret affair with Chinese triad-member Zhen. Drawing on the real-life historical personalities of the time, Dawn Farnham deftly mixes fact and fiction to paint a vivid portrait of mid-nineteenth century Singapore at a time when triads, piracy and crime were rife.
