The year is 1883. China is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. In the countryside antagonism against foreigners and missionaries is growing and the warlords are at large.

Li Ling, a young peasant girl in China, flees to Malaya to escape being made a concubine to a warlord only to find herself tricked into becoming a second wife to a rich man with sadistic tendencies. Her life becomes intertwined with that of her rescuer, Shao Peng, in a Malaya that is rapidly transforming under British rule.

A Flash of Water follows New Beginnings and together with Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest forms a quadrilogy, which traces the lives of one family against the
turbulent political, economic and social changes in China and Malaya. The books are complete in themselves.

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Chan Ling Yap was educated in Malaysia and the UK. She has a PhD in economics and was Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Malaya and then Senior Economist in the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Rome. She now lives in the UK. Her novel New Beginnings won the Readers Popular Choice Award in 2014 in Malaysia while both Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest were shortlisted for the award. For more information visit www.chanlingyap.com.