I have been to every province in China, and the book is made up of travel stories about the places I have been and the experiences I have had. For instance, I have been hosted in first-class establishments in Shanghai, been drunk with miners in Inner Mongolia, wandered out in the Gobi desert, and nearly been sick on the embalmed body of Chairman Mao. This book is about being a Western expat adjusting to life in Asia, first in Hong Kong and then in Shanghai. It is about negotiating with local people on whether prostitutes are required after dinner, singing Chinese songs in the middle of meetings, and finding the only spot in the country without an army of tourists spoiling the photos. I wish to share travel and living stories from Hong Kong and every province in China, through the eyes of one fascinated, curious, worried, reckless, adventurous, queasy, stunned, and quite tired English expat.

I have lived in China for 13 years, and my daughter was born there. This book is made up of my experiences – not just about becoming a parent for the first time, but then about bringing up a child in China. For instance, I have had to deal with traditional medicine treatments that I could not even pronounce, been embarrassed when my daughter at age two spoke more Chinese than I did, and worked out that stairwells are great places for shadow boxing when you find yourself as the only man staying in a maternity centre. Just do not punch a nurse when they walk past you. This book is about being a Western father adjusting to parenting in Shanghai. It is about negotiating with our carer to actually get to hold my daughter, learning to sing Chinese lullabies using roughly the right Mandarin tones, and wondering if I could rob a bank with an ice cream. I wish to share parenting and living stories from all over China, through the eyes of one proud, curious, worried, adventurous, shocked, confused, and really quite tired English Dad.

This Cinderella goes from ashes to ashes in the new Victorian-era Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery by the author of Snow White Red-Handed . . . Variety hall actress Ophelia Flax’s plan to reunite her friend Prue with her estranged—and allegedly wealthy—mother, Henrietta, is met with a grim surprise. Not only is the marquise’s Paris mansion a mouse-infested ruin, but Henrietta has inexplicably vanished, leaving behind an evasive husband, two sinister stepsisters, and a bullet-riddled corpse in the pumpkin patch decked out in a ball gown and one glass slipper—a corpse that also happens to be a dead ringer for Prue. Strangely, no one at 15 rue Garenne seems concerned about who plugged this luckless Cinderella or why, so the investigation is left to Ophelia and Prue. It takes them through the labyrinthine maze of the Paris Opera, down the trail of a legendary fairy tale relic, into the confidence of a wily prince charmless, and makes them vulnerable to the secrets of a mysterious couturière with designs of her own on Prue’s ever-twisting family history.