The Pagan Madonna

Shanghai, 1910. In the neon dusk of the international settlement, Ling Foo lives his quiet life as a merchant, tending his shop and navigating the treacherous waters between East and West. His routine shatters when a bloodied Englishman collapses through his door, clutching a strand of glass beads of staggering value, the Pagan Madonna. Now Ling Foo is entangled in a conspiracy that stretches from the Opium Wars to the present day, with killers at his heels and a secret worth dying for. Meanwhile, Jane Norman has arrived seeking adventure, escaping the suffocating expectations of her past. She yearns for something real, something dangerous. What she finds is Ling Foo, and together they are drawn into a chase across the lawless streets of Shanghai, where every shadow hides a betrayer and the beads may be the key to a fortune that could rewrite history. This is a novel of double-crosses and desperate longing, of cultures colliding in a city that never sleeps, and of two people who discover that freedom is always more dangerous than captivity.