Chinese Pirates

She was sold into sexual slavery at age seven. By thirty-five, she commanded 80,000 pirates and negotiated with empires as an equal. In 1801, Shi Yang was property—a flower boat prostitute in Canton with no future and no hope. By 1810, she was Zheng Yi Sao, the Pirate Queen, commander of the largest criminal fleet in history. This is the true story of how one woman transformed herself from victim to victor, building an empire on the South China Sea that neither the Chinese government nor European powers could destroy. Starting with nothing but intelligence and ruthless pragmatism, Shi ...

She didn’t just survive the pirate king. She became one. Canton, 1801. In the humid, decaying splendor of the Pearl River, Shih Yang is a prized commodity. A high-ranking courtesan on the floating "flower boats," she trades in more than just flesh. She trades in secrets—cultivating a mental ledger of every corrupt official and smuggler who enters her silk-draped cage. But Shih Yang isn't waiting for a savior. She's waiting for an empire. When the notorious pirate warlord Zheng Yi raids the harbor, it isn't a stroke of misfortune. Shih Yang orchestrated the attack herself to escape a ...

In the grand sweep of Chinese history, the woman warrior is both ever-present and curiously obscured. She appears in poems and operas, in dynastic chronicles and martial folklore, yet she is rarely centered in the official narratives of empire. She is often remembered not by name, but by role: the filial daughter, the loyal wife, the grieving mother, the rebel widow. And yet, she endures. From the legendary Hua Mulan to the pirate queen Ching Shih, from the drum-beating general Liang Hongyu to the revolutionary matron Mother Lü, Chinese history is threaded with women who took up arms—not...

A former US Navy intelligence officer, David Locke Hall was a federal prosecutor when a bizarre-sounding website, CRACK99, came to his attention. It looked like Craigslist on acid, but what it sold was anything but amateurish: thousands of high-tech software products used largely by the military, and for mere pennies on the dollar. Want to purchase satellite tracking software? No problem. Aerospace and aviation simulations? No problem. Communications systems designs? No problem.

Camilla, Lucille and Vanessa are three indivisible friends: every summer they gather in Sandy Point to spend the three months of summer together, and they are a real bundle of mischief. But this year, one of them has found out an old forgotten map that talks about a hidden treasure: the fabulous treasure of Piratess Morgana...