Home from boarding school to spend Christmas with their missionary parents, fourteen-year-old Ruth and her brothers find that the Communist Revolution has brought about many changes and new restrictions that complicate Ruth's growing friendship with a young Chinese girl who may not be what she seems. Sequel to "The Bomber's Moon."

Wang Lung, a peasant farmer in China, becomes a prosperous landowner with the help of his humble wife, O'Lan, but the newly accumulated wealth brings its own problems to the family.

The posthumous papers of Rebecca MacKenzie document her adventures, along with her brother Doug, in 1920s China as the teenaged siblings are sent to live aboard their uncle's ship where they become involved in the dangerous activities of a mysterious secret society called the Honourable Guild of Specialists.