Jasmine Aimaq’s stunning debut explores Afghanistan on the eve of a violent revolution and the far-reaching consequences of a young Kochi girl’s tragic death. Afghanistan, 1970s. Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul at the helm of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to eradicating the poppy fields that feed the world’s opiate addiction. But on the drive out of Kabul for an anniversary trip with his wife, Daniel accidentally hits and kills a young Kochi girl named Telaya. He is let off with a nominal fine, in part because nomad tribes are ignored in the eyes of the law, but also because a mysterious witness named Taj Maleki intercedes on his behalf. Wracked with guilt and visions of Telaya, Daniel begins to unravel, running from his crumbling marriage and escalating threats from Taj, who turns out to be a powerful opium khan willing to go to extremes to save his poppies. This groundbreaking literary thriller reveals the invisible lines between criminal enterprises and political regimes—and one man’s search for meaning at the heart of a violent revolution.

A tragic car accident plunges a US foreign aid agent into 1970s Afghanistan's thriving opium trade amidst the stirrings of a Communist coup. Born to an American mother and a late Afghan war hero-turned-magnate, Daniel Sajadi has spent his life navigating a complex identity. After years in Los Angeles, he is returning home to Kabul for the first time as the head of a US foreign aid agency dedicated to staunching the growth of the poppy fields in Fever Valley that feed the world's opiate epidemic. But on the drive back to Kabul from an anniversary trip with his wife, Rebecca, Daniel hits and kills a young Kochi girl named Telaya. Nomad tribes are ignored in the eyes of the law, and Daniel is let off with a nominal fine due to a mysterious witness at the scene--a man named Taj Maleki, who turns out to be a prominent opium khan. Wracked with guilt and visions of Telaya, Daniel begins to unravel, running from his rapidly crumbling marriage and unprecedented threats of blackmail and murder from the man who would do anything to save his poppy fields from eradication. In a powerful literary thriller debut that captures the tumultuous, sometimes violent trajectory of revolution, Jasmine Aimaq draws the often invisible lines between criminal empires and shifting political regimes.

Offers a reinterpretation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Malaysian history, revealing continuities between pre-colonial and colonial periods that have been obscured by attention given to the European intrusion.

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.

"There is star quality in this writer!" raves the Romantic Times about gifted author Gaelen Foley. Her love stories are filled with glorious settings, stunning characters, and unforgettable passion. Destiny casts its hand one perfect moonlit night when Ascencion's most elusive highwayman, the Masked Rider, chooses the wrong coach to rob. For inside is Rafael, the prince of the kingdom, renowned for his hot-blooded pursuits of women and other decadent pleasures. The failed raid leaves the equally notorious Masked Rider wounded and facing a hangman's noose. Then Rafe realizes his captive criminal is Lady Daniela Chiaramonte, a defiant beauty who torments him, awakening his senses and his heart as no woman has before. Dani can only wonder if she's been delivered to heaven or hell once she agrees to marry the most desirable man in the Mediterranean--until forces of treachery threaten to destroy their tenuous alliance and bring down the throne itself. . . .

Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains will give readers an in-depth account of one of Hawaii most intriguing personalities and the role of the Chinese in nineteenth-century Hawaii.