Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- The Joy Luck Club (1989)
- The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991)
- The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)
- The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001)
- Saving Fish from Drowning (2005)
- The Valley of Amazement (2013)
Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order
- Rules for Virgins (2012)
Children’s Books In Publication Order
- The Moon Lady (1992)
- Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994)
Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order
- The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (2003)
- Post Pregnancy Diet (2015)
- Where The Past Begins: A Writers Memoir (2017)
Selected Shorts Books In Publication Order
- Selected Shorts: Lots of Laughs (By:Nicholson Baker) (2005)
- Selected Shorts: Timeless Classics (By:) (2006)
- Selected Shorts: Falling in Love (By:) (2007)
- Selected Shorts: Tales of Betrayal (By:) (2007)
- Selected Shorts: Are We There Yet? (By:) (2008)
- Selected Shorts: American Classics (2010)
Anthologies In Publication Order
- American Voices (1992)
- Mid-life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude (1994)
- The Best American Short Stories 1999 (1999)
- Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All (2013)
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers
Children’s Book Covers
Non-Fiction Book Covers
Selected Shorts Book Covers
Anthologies Book Covers
Amy Tan Books Overview
The Joy Luck Club
The adage says that there are two sides to every story, but as most contemporary literature teachers can attest, there are many sides to every story-or at least many ways of looking at a story. Prestwick House’s Multiple Perspectives Lesson Guides provide the high school teacher with everything she needs to guide her students through the study of the titles she teaches from a variety of critical viewpoints. Every Multiple Perspectives Lesson Guide provides a general introduction to the work plot summary, introductions to key characters, brief discussions of social and historical background; clear and concise explanations of three critical theories including feminism, Marxism, Freudianism, new historicism, and formalism; and reading, writing, and discussion activities designed to help students probe the familiar text in new and deeper ways. Teachers who want to take their teaching of literature beyond the tired plot pyramid and want their students to experience the books they love more than reader-response alone will let them, will find Prestwick House Multiple Perspectives Lessons Guides to be an invigorating addition to their course syllabus.
The Kitchen God’s Wife
A stunning reissue of the international bestseller, from the much loved author of The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Pearl Louie Brandt has a terrible secret which she tries desperately to keep from her mother, Winne Louie. And Winnie has long kept her own secrets about her past and the confusing circumstances of Pearl’s birth. Fate intervenes in the form of Helen Kwong, Winnie’s so called sister in law, who believes she is dying and must unburden herself of all falsehoods before she flies off to heaven. But, unfortunately, the truth comes in many guises, depending on who is telling the tale! Thus begins a story that takes us back to Shanghai in the 1920s, through World War II, and the harrowing events that led to Winnie’s arrival in America in 1949. The story is one of innocence and its loss, tragedy and survival and, most of all, the enduring qualities of hope, love and friendship.
The Hundred Secret Senses
‘THE WISEST AND MOST CAPTIVATING NOVEL TAN HAS WRITTEN.’ The Boston Sunday Globe’TRULY MAGICAL…
UNFORGETTABLE…
The first person narrator is Olivia Laguni, and her unrelenting nemesis from childhood on is her half sister, Kwan Li…
. It is Kwan’s haunting predictions, her implementation of the secret senses, and her linking of the present with the past that cause this novel to shimmer with meaning and to leave it in the readers mind when the book has long been finished.’ The San Diego Tribune’HER MOST POLISHED WORK…
Tan is a wonderful storyteller, and the story’s many strands Olivia’s childhood, her courtship and marriage, Kwan’s ghost stories and village tales propel the work to its climactic but bittersweet end.’ USA Today’TAN HAS ONCE MORE PRODUCED A NOVEL WONDERFULLY LIKE A HOLOGRAM: turn it this way and find Chinese Americans shopping and arguing in San Francisco; turn it that way and the Chinese of Changmian village in 1864 are fleeing into the hills to hide from the rampaging Manchus…
. The Hundred Secret Senses doesn’t simply return to a world but burrows more deeply into it, following new trails to fresh revelations. Newsweek
The Bonesetter’s Daughter
In memories that rise like wisps of ghosts, LuLing Young searches for the name of her mother, the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain. Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. Meanwhile, her daughter Ruth, a ghostwriter for authors of self help books, is losing the ability to speak up for herself in front of the man she lives with and his two teenage daughters. None of her professional sound bites and pat homilies works for her personal life; she knows only how to translate what others want to say. Ruth starts suspecting that something is terribly wrong with her mother. As a child, Ruth had been constantly subjected to her mother’s disturbing notions about curses and ghosts, and to her repeated threats to kill herself, and was even forced by her mother to try to communicate with ghosts. But now LuLing seems less argumentative, even happy, far from her usual disagreeable and dissatisfied self. While tending to her ailing mother, Ruth discovers the pages LuLing wrote in Chinese, the story of her tumultuous and star crossed life, and is transported to a backwoods village known as Immortal Heart. There she learns of secrets passed along by a mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined, some of which may prove to be the teeth of Peking Man; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World, where Precious Auntie’s scattered bones lie, and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal. Like layers of sediment being removed, each page reveals secrets of a larger mystery: What became of Peking Man? What was the name of The Bonesetter’s Daughter? And who was Precious Auntie, whose suicide changed the path of LuLing’s life? Within LuLing’s calligraphed pages awaits the truth about a mother’s heart, what she cannot tell her daughter yet hopes she will never forget. Set in contemporary San Francisco and in a Chinese village where Peking Man is being unearthed, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes. The story conjures the pain of broken dreams, the power of myths, and the strength of love that enables us to recover in memory what we have lost in grief. Over the course of one fog shrouded year, between one season of falling stars and the next, mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history, and inexpressible qualities of love.
Saving Fish from Drowning
A pious man explained to his followers: It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. Don t be scared, I tell those fishes. I am saving you from drowning. Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes. Anonymous Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China dubbed the true Shangri La and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure seekers as they come to discover that the Burma Road is paved with less than honorable intentions, questionable food, and tribal curses. And then, on Christmas morning, eleven of the travelers boat across a misty lake for a sunrise cruise and disappear. Drawing from the current political reality in Burma and woven with pure confabulation, Amy Tan’s picaresque novel poses the question: How can we discern what is real and what is fiction, in everything we see? How do we know what to believe? Saving Fish from Drowning finds sly truth in the absurd: a reality TV show called Darwin s Fittest, a repressive regime known as SLORC, two cheroot smoking twin children hailed as divinities, and a ragtag tribe hiding in the jungle where the sprites of disaster known as Nats lurk, as do the specters of the fabled Younger White Brother and a British illusionist who was not who he was worshipped to be. With her signature idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery Los Angeles Times, Amy Tan spins a provocative and mesmerizing tale about the mind and the heart of the individual, the actions we choose, the moral questions we might ask ourselves, and above all, the deeply personal answers we seek when happy endings are seemingly impossible.
Rules for Virgins
In her startlingly sensual new story, Rules for Virgins the first fiction she has published in six years beloved bestselling author Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter’s Daughter takes us deep into the illicit world of 1912 Shanghai, where beautiful courtesans mercilessly compete for the patronage of wealthy gentlemen. For the women, the contest is deadly serious, a perilous game of economic survival that, if played well, can set them up for life as mistresses of the rich and prominent. There is no room for error, however: erotic power is hard to achieve and harder to maintain, especially in the loftiest social circles. Enter veteran seducer, Magic Gourd, formerly one of Shanghai s Top Ten Beauties and now the advisor and attendant of Violet, an aspiring but inexperienced courtesan. Violet may have the youth and the allure, but Magic Gourd has the cunning and the knowledge without which the younger woman is sure to fail. These ancient tricks of the trade aren t written down, though; to pass them on to her student, Magic Gourd must reach back into her own professional past, bringing her lessons alive with stories and anecdotes from a career spent charming and manipulating men who should have known better but rarely did. The world of sexual intrigue that Tan reveals in ‘Rules for Virgins‘ actually existed once, and she spares no detail in recreating it. But this story is more than intriguing and sometimes shocking historical literary fiction. Besides inviting us inside a life that few writers but Tan could conjure up, the intimate confessions of Magic Gourd add up to a kind of military manual for the War of the Sexes female combatants. The wisdom conveyed is ancient, specific, and timeless, exposing the workings of vanity and folly, calculation and desire that define the mysterious human heart.
The Moon Lady
A MAGICAL NIGHT WHEN SECRET WISHES CAN COME TRUE On a rainy afternoon, three sisters wish for the rain to stoop, wish they could play in the puddles, wish for something, anything, to do. So Ying Ying, their grandmother, tells them a tale from long ago. On the night of the Moon Festival, when Ying ying was a little girl, she encountered The Moon Lady, who grants the secret wishes of those who ask, and learned from her that the best wishes are those you can make come true yourself. This haunting tale, adapted from Amy Tan’s best seller The Joy Luck Club and enhanced by Gretchen Schields’s rich, meticulously detailed art, is a book for all to treasure.
Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat
‘Before you go out into the world,’ Ming Miao told her five kittens, ‘you must know the true story of your ancestors…
.’ And so begins the story of Sagwa of China, a mischievous, pearl white kitten. Sagwa lived in the House of the Foolish Magistrate, a greedy man who made up rules that helped only himself. One day, Sagwa fell into an inkwell and accidentally changed one of the Foolish Magistrate’s rules. Little did Sagwa know she would alter the fate and the appearance of Chinese cats forever!
The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings
In her first book of nonfiction, bestselling novelist Amy Tan shares her personal philosophy of fate. Amy Tan was born into a family that believed in fate. In The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, she explores this legacy, as well as American circumstances, and finds ways to honor the past while creating her own brand of destiny. She discovers answers in everyday actions and attitudes from writing stories, decorating her house with charms, learning to ski, and living with squirrels, to dealing with three members of her family afflicted with brain disease, surviving natural disasters, and shaking off both family curses and the expectations that she should become a doctor and a concert pianist. With the same spirit, humor, and magic that characterize her beloved novels, Amy Tan presents a refreshing antidote to the world weariness and uncertainties we face today, contemplating how things happen in her own life and beyond but always returning to the question of fate and its opposites: the choices, charms, influences, attitudes, and lucky accidents that shape us all.
Mid-life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude
Part gossip, part behind the scenes tell all, part confessional, this book details the strangest tour in rock history, as 15 of America’s most popular writers including Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, and Barbara Kingsolver left their ‘day jobs’ for life on the rock ‘n’ roll road. Features 100 candid and often excruciatingly embarrassing photos, 30 in color.
The Best American Short Stories 1999
‘What I look for most in a story,’ writes Amy Tan in her introduction to this year’s volume of The Best American Short Stories, ‘what I crave, what I found in these twenty one, is a distinctive voice that tells a story only that voice can tell.’ Tan found herself drawn to wonderfully original stories that satisfied her appetite for the magic and mystery she loved as a child, when she was addicted to fairy tales. In this vibrant collection, fantasy and truth coexist brilliantly in new works by writers such as Annie Proulx, Lorrie Moore, Nathan Englander, and Pam Houston. ‘The Sun, the Moon, the Stars,’ by Junot Diaz, features a young man trying to stave off heartbreak in a sacred cave in Santo Domingo. In ‘Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter,’ by Chitra Divakaruni, a mother moves from India to California to be closer to her son, only to sacrifice something crucial along the way. In Melissa Hardy’s haunting story ‘The Uncharted Heart,’ a geologist unearths a shocking secret in the wilds of northern Ontario. ‘Maybe I’m still that kid who wants to see things I’ve never seen before,’ writes Tan. ‘I like being startled by images I never could have conjured up myself.’ With twenty one tales, each a fabulously rich journey into a different world, The Best American Short Stories 1999 is sure to surprise and delight.
Related Authors