The Printed Page

I’m a very visual person and love beautiful, or interesting, cover art. It entices, and invites, me to stop and take a peek instead of walking right on by. This week’s Cover Attraction is:
Title: Red Lotus and The Concubine’s Daughter
Author: Pai Kit Fai
Release date: Sept ’09 (both books)

A novel set in China in the 1920s about Siu Sing, the daughter of a Chinese mother and the foreign devil ship’s captain who rescued her from death. Raised until the age of twelve by an elderly Taoist sage who is master of the White Crane and trained as one of his last disciples, she is sold into slavery after he’s assassinated. After spending her teenage years in an opium den, she begins a quest to find Ben Deverill, the father she never knew, and to reclaim her birthright.

Perhaps a 70-year-old spice farmer in southern China in 1907, should know better than to purchase a 15-year-old concubine, especially one who has the presumption to read and write. Still, she is beautiful, an exquisite plaything to replenish his youth and give him more sons….

When the concubine gives birth to a daughter, she kills herself, believing that the child will be put to death as a useless girl. But Li X’ia survives, at the mercy of her father, who sees her only as a source of future profit. When the farmer orders his wives to bind the girl’s feet to increase her value, Li outwits them and escapes the bandages. At the age of eight she is sold to the silk weavers at Ten Willows, where she faces a life of degradation—but Li manages to escape that too, and finds a way to continue the studies that mattered so much to her lost mother. In time she marries an English sea captain, Ben Devereax, only to be murdered by his enemies on the day she gives birth to their daughter.

That daughter, Siu Sing, is spirited to safety by the Fish, a devoted old servant of her parents’. The Fish takes Sing to Master To, a great teacher who watches over the child and trains her in spiritual wisdom and martial arts. But when Sing is approaching young womanhood, the Master is slain by a jealous former pupil, who sells Sing into slavery. Finding temporary refuge at an opium den where she is tutored in the arts of pleasing men, Sing refuses to settle for life as a concubine. Determined to find her English father, she calls upon all her courage and wisdom to embark on an adventure that will take her from great peace to great danger, and from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Shanghai and Hong Kong on the eve of World War II.

I fell in love with both covers. The story lines read as if these are two different novels but the main character has the same name in each so I’m a bit confused. Amazon UK is releasing both in September and has them listed a two separate novels, one paperback, one hardback and two different release dates. Here in the US & Canada only The Concubine’s Daughter is being released. I know where some of my Amazon $$$ will be going unless I can find a way to snag copies before September.

If someone has insider knowledge about whether this is the same or two different novels please let me know.
♦♦♦

What’s your favorite cover attraction this week? Don’t forget to leave a link to your Cover Attraction post.

If you enjoy Cover Attraction Vote It Up (BookBlips)