Kevin Kwan
An L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist An O Magazine Best Book of the Year
"Stylish... a compelling take on the eternal question of how good people morph into criminals. Terrific."--People, Book of the Week
From the author of The Destroyers comes an "intricately plotted and elegantly structured" (Newsday) story of intrigue and deception, set in contemporary Venice and featuring a young American couple who have set their sights on a risky con.
When Nick Brink and his boyfriend Clay Guillory meet up on the Grand Canal in Venice, they have a plan in mind--and it doesn't involve a vacation. Nick and Clay are running away from their turbulent lives in New York City, each desperate for a happier, freer future someplace else. Their method of escape? Selling a collection of counterfeit antiques to a brash, unsuspecting American living out his retirement years in a grand palazzo. With Clay's smarts and Nick's charm, their scheme is sure to succeed.
As it turns out, tricking a millionaire out of money isn't as easy as it seems, especially when Clay and Nick let greed get the best of them. As Nick falls under the spell of the city's decrepit magic, Clay comes to terms with personal loss and the price of letting go of the past. Their future awaits, but it is built on disastrous deceits, and more than one life stands in the way of their dreams.
A Beautiful Crime is a twisty grifter novel with a thriller running through its veins. But it is also a meditation on love, class, race, sexuality, and the legacy of bohemian culture. Tacking between Venice's soaring aesthetic beauty and its imminent tourist-riddled collapse, Bollen delivers a "brilliantly conceived international crime story" (Good Morning America).
Kevin Kwan
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Good unclean fun . . . [a] convoluted, scandal-greased, exposed-backsides-of-the-rich-and-famous story . . . told in a confiding, breathless undertone."--Entertainment Weekly Jules Mendelson is wealthy. Astronomically so. He and his wife lead the kind of charity-giving, art-filled, high-society life for which each has been carefully groomed. Until Jules falls in love with Flo March, a beautiful actress/waitress. What Flo discovers about the superrich is not a pretty sight. And in the end, she wants no more than what she was promised. But when Flo begins to share the true story of her life among the Mendelsons, not everyone is in a listening mood. And some cold shoulders have very sharp edges. . . .
Kevin Kwan
From the bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians (the basis for the acclaimed major motion picture) comes a deliciously fun story of family, fortune, and fame in Mainland China. Book Two of the Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy It's the eve of Rachel Chu's wedding, and she should be over the moon. She has a flawless Asscher-cut diamond, a wedding dress she loves, and a fiancé willing to thwart his meddling relatives and give up one of the biggest fortunes in Asia in order to marry her. Still, Rachel mourns the fact that her birthfather, a man she never knew, won't be there to walk her down the aisle. Then a chance accident reveals his identity. Suddenly, Rachel is drawn into a dizzying world of Shanghai splendor, a world where people attend church in a penthouse, where exotic cars race down the boulevard, and where people aren't just crazy rich ... they're China rich. Look for Kevin Kwan's latest novel, Sex & Vanity!
Kevin Kwan
A tender and fierce account of boyhood and nascent homosexual desire
First published in 1945, In Youth Is Pleasure is a beautiful and unassuming coming-of-age novel by the English writer and painter Denton Welch (1915-48). Painfully sensitive and sad Orville Pym is 15 years old, and this novel recounts the summer holiday after his first miserable year at private school--but as in all of Welch's work, what is most important are the details of his characters' surroundings. Welch is a Proustian writer of uncanny powers of observation who, as William S. Burroughs wrote, "makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes." Film director John Waters includes this novel as one of his "Five Books You Should Read to Live a Happy Life If Something Is Basically the Matter with You," and writes: "Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger." Also included in this edition is the first US publication of "I Left My Grandfather's House." This first-person account of an idyllic walking tour in the British countryside undertaken when Welch was 18 makes a fascinating companion piece to the fictionalized, though no less autobiographical, In Youth Is Pleasure.
Kevin Kwan
Discover untold secrets with this extraordinary memoir of drama and tragedy by Anne Glenconner--a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact. A unique witness to landmark moments in royal history, Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret until her death in 2002, Anne's life has encompassed extraordinary drama and tragedy. In Lady in Waiting, she will share many intimate royal stories from her time as Princess Margaret's closest confidante as well as her own battle for survival: her broken-off first engagement on the basis of her "mad blood"; her 54-year marriage to the volatile, unfaithful Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, who left his fortune to a former servant; the death in adulthood of two of her sons; a third son she nursed back from a six-month coma following a horrific motorcycle accident. Through it all, Anne has carried on, traveling the world with the royal family, including visiting the White House, and developing the Caribbean island of Mustique as a safe harbor for the rich and famous-hosting Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Raquel Welch, and many other politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities. With unprecedented insight into the royal family, Lady in Waiting is a witty, candid, dramatic, at times heart-breaking personal story capturing life in a golden cage for a woman with no inheritance. New York Times Bestseller
USA Today Bestseller
The Sunday Times Bestseller
The Globe and Mail Bestseller
ABA Indie Bestseller
The Times (UK) Memoir of the Year
One of Newsweek's Most Anticipated Books of 2020
USA Today Bestseller
The Sunday Times Bestseller
The Globe and Mail Bestseller
ABA Indie Bestseller
The Times (UK) Memoir of the Year
One of Newsweek's Most Anticipated Books of 2020
Kevin Kwan
From author and filmmaker Sandi Tan, director of the acclaimed documentary Shirkers, comes a novel about a neighborhood of immigrants, seekers, lovers, and lurkers.
The residents of Santa Claus Lane do their best to stay out of each other's way, but desire, fury and mischief too often propel these suburban neighbors to collide. Precocious Korean American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide, and they must fight to keep their home; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; a sardonic gay horror novelist finds that aging is more terrifying than any monster; and a white hippie mom and her adopted Vietnamese daughter realize that their anger binds them rather than pushes them apart. Lurkers is an homage to the rangy beauty of Los Angeles and the surprising power that we have to change the lives of those around us.
The residents of Santa Claus Lane do their best to stay out of each other's way, but desire, fury and mischief too often propel these suburban neighbors to collide. Precocious Korean American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide, and they must fight to keep their home; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; a sardonic gay horror novelist finds that aging is more terrifying than any monster; and a white hippie mom and her adopted Vietnamese daughter realize that their anger binds them rather than pushes them apart. Lurkers is an homage to the rangy beauty of Los Angeles and the surprising power that we have to change the lives of those around us.
Kevin Kwan
From the New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians (the basis for the acclaimed major motion picture) and China Rich Girlfriend, here is the uproarious conclusion to the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy.
Book Three of the Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy When Nicholas Young hears that his grandmother, Su Yi, is on her deathbed, he rushes to be by her bedside--but he's not alone. The entire Shang-Young clan has convened from all corners of the globe to stake claim on their matriarch's massive fortune. With each family member vying to inherit Tyersall Park--a trophy estate on 64 prime acres in the heart of Singapore--Nicholas's childhood home turns into a hotbed of speculation and sabotage. As her relatives fight over heirlooms, Astrid Leong is at the center of her own storm, desperately in love with her old sweetheart Charlie Wu, but tormented by her ex-husband--a man hell bent on destroying Astrid's reputation and relationship. Meanwhile Kitty Pong, married to China's second richest man, billionaire Jack Bing, still feels second best next to her new step-daughter, famous fashionista Colette Bing. A sweeping novel that takes us from the elegantly appointed mansions of Manila to the secluded private islands in the Sulu Sea, from a kidnapping at Hong Kong's most elite private school to a surprise marriage proposal at an Indian palace, caught on camera by the telephoto lenses of paparazzi, Kevin Kwan's hilarious, gloriously wicked new novel reveals the long-buried secrets of Asia's most privileged families and their rich people problems. Look for Kevin Kwan's latest novel, Sex & Vanity!
Book Three of the Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy When Nicholas Young hears that his grandmother, Su Yi, is on her deathbed, he rushes to be by her bedside--but he's not alone. The entire Shang-Young clan has convened from all corners of the globe to stake claim on their matriarch's massive fortune. With each family member vying to inherit Tyersall Park--a trophy estate on 64 prime acres in the heart of Singapore--Nicholas's childhood home turns into a hotbed of speculation and sabotage. As her relatives fight over heirlooms, Astrid Leong is at the center of her own storm, desperately in love with her old sweetheart Charlie Wu, but tormented by her ex-husband--a man hell bent on destroying Astrid's reputation and relationship. Meanwhile Kitty Pong, married to China's second richest man, billionaire Jack Bing, still feels second best next to her new step-daughter, famous fashionista Colette Bing. A sweeping novel that takes us from the elegantly appointed mansions of Manila to the secluded private islands in the Sulu Sea, from a kidnapping at Hong Kong's most elite private school to a surprise marriage proposal at an Indian palace, caught on camera by the telephoto lenses of paparazzi, Kevin Kwan's hilarious, gloriously wicked new novel reveals the long-buried secrets of Asia's most privileged families and their rich people problems. Look for Kevin Kwan's latest novel, Sex & Vanity!
Kevin Kwan
Wharton's sly and delicious novel about the ambitious social ascent of Undine Spragg, now in a Penguin Vitae edition, with a foreword by Sofia Coppola A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition Considered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton's second full-length work is a scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly fascinating, and through a most intricate and satisfying plot that follows Undine's marriages and affairs, she conveys a vision of social behavior that is both supremely informed and supremely disenchanted.
Kevin Kwan
NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW - "The Woks of Life did something miraculous: It reconnected me to my love of Chinese food and showed me how simple it is to make my favorite dishes myself."--KEVIN KWAN, author of Crazy Rich Asians The family behind the acclaimed blog The Woks of Life shares 100 of their favorite home-cooked and restaurant-style Chinese recipes in "a very special book" (J. Kenji López-Alt, author of The Food Lab and The Wok) ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, Simply Recipes
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Food & Wine, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Delish, Epicurious This is the story of a family as told through food. Judy, the mom, speaks to traditional Chinese dishes and cultural backstory. Bill, the dad, worked in his family's Chinese restaurants and will walk you through how to make a glorious Cantonese Roast Duck. Daughters Sarah and Kaitlin have your vegetable-forward and one-dish recipes covered--put them all together and you have the first cookbook from the funny and poignant family behind the popular blog The Woks of Life. In addition to recipes for Mini Char Siu Bao, Spicy Beef Biang Biang Noodles, Cantonese Pork Belly Fried Rice, and Salt-and-Pepper Fried Oyster Mushrooms, there are also helpful tips and tricks throughout, including an elaborate rundown of the Chinese pantry, explanations of essential tools (including the all-important wok), and insight on game-changing Chinese cooking secrets like how to "velvet" meat to make it extra tender and juicy. Whether you're new to Chinese cooking or if your pantry is always stocked with bean paste and chili oil, you'll find lots of inspiration and trustworthy recipes that will become a part of your family story, too.
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Food & Wine, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Delish, Epicurious This is the story of a family as told through food. Judy, the mom, speaks to traditional Chinese dishes and cultural backstory. Bill, the dad, worked in his family's Chinese restaurants and will walk you through how to make a glorious Cantonese Roast Duck. Daughters Sarah and Kaitlin have your vegetable-forward and one-dish recipes covered--put them all together and you have the first cookbook from the funny and poignant family behind the popular blog The Woks of Life. In addition to recipes for Mini Char Siu Bao, Spicy Beef Biang Biang Noodles, Cantonese Pork Belly Fried Rice, and Salt-and-Pepper Fried Oyster Mushrooms, there are also helpful tips and tricks throughout, including an elaborate rundown of the Chinese pantry, explanations of essential tools (including the all-important wok), and insight on game-changing Chinese cooking secrets like how to "velvet" meat to make it extra tender and juicy. Whether you're new to Chinese cooking or if your pantry is always stocked with bean paste and chili oil, you'll find lots of inspiration and trustworthy recipes that will become a part of your family story, too.
Andrea Dunlop
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The international bestselling sensation that was the basis for the acclaimed major motion picture. - "There's rich, there's filthy rich, and then there's crazy rich ... A Pride and Prejudice-like send-up about an heir bringing his Chinese-American girlfriend home to meet his ancestor-obsessed family." --People
When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she hopes to marry. But Nick has failed to give his girlfriend a few key details. One, that his childhood home looks like a palace; two, that he grew up riding in more private planes than cars; and three, that he just happens to be the country's most eligible bachelor.
On Nick's arm, Rachel may as well have a target on her back the second she steps off the plane, and soon, her relaxed vacation turns into an obstacle course of old money, new money, nosy relatives, and scheming social climbers.
Zibby's Book Club
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A Good Morning America Book Club Pick The author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians takes you from Capri to NYC, where Lucie Tang Churchill finds herself torn between two men--and two very different cultures. On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can't stand him. She can't stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can't stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can't stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin Charlotte. The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment building, and, ultimately, herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world--and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures.