The House Without a Key (1925) is a mystery novel by Earl Derr Biggers. The first in a series of novels featuring Chinese American detective Charlie Chan, The House Without a Key is notable for its nuanced depiction of race and class on the edges of American empire. Based in part on the life of Chinese Hawaiian detective Chang Apana, the character of Charlie Chan was intended by Biggers as an alternative to racist Yellow Peril stereotypes of the early...

Journeying to 1914 Hawaii as a mail-order bride, Korean-born Jin finds her hopes devastated by the realities of a rushed marriage to a bitter laborer, a situation throughout which she works to overcome limited opportunities.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cho run a successful chain of Hawai'ian plate lunch restaurants, and their adult children are finding their way in the world: 21-year-old Grace is graduating in a few months, and 25-year-old Jacob is teaching English in Seoul. They're set to take over the restaurants when Umma and Appa retire. But when Jacob is captured by the South Korean government for attempting to run across the DMZ, the Chos' peaceful lives are shattered. What could...

"[A] suspenseful trip through the rarely seen darker strata of complex, contemporary Greece." -Publishers Weekly Saint John wrote the apocalyptic Book of Revelation over 1900 years ago in a cave on Greece's eastern Aegean island of Patmos. Today, on the pristine Aegean peninsula of Mount Athos, isolated from the rest of humanity, twenty monasteries sit protecting the secrets of Byzantium amid a way of life virtually unchanged for more than 1500 years. When...

Abbe Deighton is a woman who has lost her bearings. Once a child of the African plains, she is now settled in Hawaii, married to a minister, and waging her battles in a hallway of monotony. There is the leaky roof, the chafing expectations of her husband's congregation, and the constant demands of motherhood. But in an instant, beginning with the skid of tires, Abbe's battlefield is transformed when her three-year-old daughter is killed, triggering...

Lana Rodriguez grew up along Hawaii's crystal blue shores, but for her, the picture-perfect paradise disguises the bitter truths she escaped years ago, and not without emotional scars. Now a successful blues singer, Lana's returning to Waikiki to control her own destiny when it comes to men, romance, and sex. This time, it's on her terms. Jason Koa is every woman's dream. While Lana would like to keep her distance, the passion is just too hot to ignore,...

"Quincannon's pursuit of two con men who have absconded to Hawaii with a considerable sum of his employer's assets dovetails nicely with Sabina's vision of a second honeymoon. But neither is wont to stay out of trouble, and Sabina inadvertently becomes involved in a locked room/dying message murder in Honolulu." --