Inspired by Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, debut novelist Weina Dai Randel sets out to write stories of Chinese women who succeeded in mapping their own destinies and tries to redress the often misrepresented and misunderstood Empress Wu with The Moon in the Palace .

When a monk foretells that 5 year-old Mei will one day be both the mother of emperors and an emperor in her own right, her father takes this to heart and sees that she is schooled in poetry, history, mathematics, calligraphy, and even Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

At 13, the orphaned Mei enters the palace to serve in the royal household where she will need to draw on all she had learned from her father to survive the intrigue and duplicity of the Imperial Court and to earn favor with the emperor. Her only ally is a boy named Pheasant but their involvement might put both of them in danger.

Mei's story continues in The Empress of Bright Moon as she ascends to rule as China's only female emperor in more than four millennia.

For historical fiction readers who enjoyed Empress Orchid and The Last Empress by Anchee Min.