Alarms go off all over the world at once, and the signal traces to China. Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung pull a dissident mother and her estranged daughter into the crisis.
Readical Key Points
- A standalone political thriller, co-written by the author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels with journalist Mellissa Fung, per the publisher
- Reviewed in Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal
- Settings run from Washington, D.C., to Ohio and Hong Kong
- Hardcover, 400 pages, Minotaur Books, 2026
Alice Li, a first-generation Chinese American and one-time food blogger, has spent years in her mother's shadow. Vivien Li is a Tiananmen Square dissident who became an internationally known human rights activist. When the alarms trace to China, Washington summons both of them, hoping Vivien can read what Beijing intends, and why Alice has been brought in is not clear. Vivien warns that if China is not behind the attack, someone more dangerous is, and mother and daughter have to set aside years of distance while an old legend and a secret language made by women for women come into play.
Readers of political and espionage thrillers will find the international stakes, and readers of Penny's mysteries will find a book with no Gamache in it. The crisis reaches from Washington to Hong Kong. At its center are two women who have not been close for years.
About the Authors
Louise Penny wrote the Chief Inspector Gamache novels and, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, State of Terror; her publisher reports sales of more than eighteen million copies, and she has received the Order of Canada and l'Ordre national du Québec. Her publisher describes Mellissa Fung as a veteran journalist and award-winning filmmaker; her first book, Under an Afghan Sky, grew out of her reporting in Afghanistan, and she was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada in 2024.
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