To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor's wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate facade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor's son. Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.
- ISBN10 0747568332
- ISBN13 9780747568339
- Publish Date 3 January 2005 (first published 1 January 2004)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Format Paperback
- Pages 352
- Language English
- URL http://bloomsbury.com/Trade/