For fans of Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a deeply moving novel that follows two Korean sisters separated by World War II. Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home. South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness? Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.

She was a perfect baby, and she had a perfect name. Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum loved her name—until she started school. A terrific read-aloud for the classroom and libraries!

For fans of Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a deeply moving novel that follows two Korean sisters separated by World War II. Korea, 1943. Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a “comfort woman” in a Japanese military brothel. But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home. South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness? Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph over the grim evils of war.

The Chrysanthemum Palace introduces Bertie Krohn, the only child of Perry Krohn, creator of TV's longest running space opera, Starwatch: The Navigators (which counts Jennifer Aniston and Donald Rumsfeld among its obsessed fans). Bertie recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two companions: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary movie star, long dead. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers; between them, as Bertie says, "there was more than enough material to bring psychoanalysis back into vogue." As the incestuous clique attempts to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents over a two-week filming of a Starwatch episode in which they costar, Bertie scrupulously chronicles their highs and lows -- as well as their futile struggles against the ravenous, narcissistic, Convulsive and poignant, The Chrysanthemum Palace is a tragic tale of friendship and fate writ large -- a tour de force by a major writer whose narrative delivers devastating emotional impact.

Judy Nunn' s latest bestselling novel will take you from the cotton mills of England to the magnificent theatres of Melbourne, on a scintillating journey through the golden age of Australian showbusiness.' So, Will, are you going to come with me and my team of merry performers to the sunny climes of Australia, where the crowds are already queuing and the streets are paved with gold?' In the second half of the 19th century, Melbourne is a veritable boom town, as hopefuls from every corner of the globe flock to the gold fields of Victoria.And where people crave gold, they also crave entertainment.Enter stage right: brothers Will and Max Worthing and their wives Mabel and Gertie. The family arrives from England in the 1880s with little else but the masterful talents that will see them rise from simple travelling performers to sophisticated entrepreneurs.Enter stage left: their rivals, Carlo and Rube. Childhood friends since meeting in a London orphanage, the two men have literally fought their way to the top and are now producers of the bawdy but hugely popular ' Big Show Bonanza' . The fight for supremacy begins.

In One Chrysanthemum, it is 1964 and Misako Imai is a young Tokyo housewife with a secret. When she was a child living in her grandfather’s dark, wartime Buddhist temple in the northern prefecture of Niigata, she became aware of a special sensitivity that allowed her to see visions of things that were currently happening—but in another place—or that had happened in the past. Now, after five years of marriage and no children, Misako is living the life of a full-time maid to her husband’s widowed mother, who blames her for not producing a son to carry on the family name. One evening, she has the very clear vision of her husband making love to another woman and realizes that he has taken a mistress. Her marital problems unresolved, Misako is summoned by her grandfather to Niigata when his temple receives the ashes of a young girl’s bones that were found in a nearby garden pond. The old priest remembers his granddaughter playing in that garden as a child and telling him that she saw a girl fall into the pond. At that time there had been no evidence the sighting was anything more than the child’s over-active imagination. But, after meeting a most unusual Zen priest who tells him about something called clairvoyance, he realizes that his own granddaughter may have had such a gift when she was a child. The old priest becomes obsessed with the possible connection between the bones found in the pond and Misako’s childhood vision. Feeling that he can give into a bit of fool-hardiness in his old age, he plans an unorthodox memorial service in the garden where the bones were found and arranges for both the Zen priest and his granddaughter to attend. What he does not realize is that the combination of the two priests’ limited knowledge and his granddaughter’s powerful sensitivity would be a dangerous combination bound to end in disaster.

From the author of The Calligrapher's Daughter comes the riveting story of two sisters, one raised in the United States, the other in South Korea, and the family that bound them together even as the Korean War kept them apart.

Aboriginal motherhood - Pioneers - Mothers of sons - Mothers of daughters - Life and death - Living now._