The Fox Wife: an enchanting historical mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger and a previous Reese’s Book Club pick

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Reviews
What a brilliant book! Loved the story, characters, folk mythology and setting, Manchuria 1908 near the end of China's last imperial dynasty. Historical detective novel, vengeance quest and love story, a magical tale beautifully told that left me wanting to find out more about the far northern part of China, its history and fascinating legends of foxes who turn into beautiful, beguiling people while remaining outsiders in the human world, perpetual Others. Foxes of course also feature large in Western European fairytales and lore, sly, cunning, tricky manipulators. In this book they are more nuanced. Meeting one has lasting...
Read more...I loved the author’s previous novel, and so was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it just didn’t have the same impact . This was a delightful tale, but I found the different timelines and viewpoints hard work, especially during the first half of the book, and had to keep backtracking to refresh my memory. In fairness this may have been due to my only being able to ‘dip’ into the book due to time constraints . As the novel progressed the different strands converged, making for a much easier read.
I found "The Fox Wife" to be a very good read. The setting for this historicl mystery was China in last of the Qing Empire (early 1900's). A well dressed young courtesan is found frozen to death in the doorway. Bao is a middle-aged detective who is hired to find out who she is and why she died in this fashion. Since he was a child, Bao has had the uncanny ability to know when someone is telling the truth. Snow is a not quite beautiful but sosmehow alluring servant girl who is...
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