From the bestselling author of The Last Cato comes an addictively entertaining adventure in a land of danger and mystery. A prim, straitlaced Spanish painter living in Paris, Elvira De Poulain is shocked to hear of her profligate husband’s death and travels to Shanghai to claim his body and put his affairs in order. Overwhelmed by his still-outstanding debts and scandals—adrift in an exotic city teeming with unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells—she discovers a treasure among her late husband’s detritus: a beautifully crafted box holding clues to the location of the remains of China’s First Emperor...and the unimaginable riches buried alongside him. Joining forces with a colorful Irish journalist, a wily local antiquarian, and a brilliant orphaned servant boy, Elvira is immediately swept up into the adventure of a lifetime. But she and her motley partners are not alone in their quest—and those who pursue them have murdered before, and would murder again, to possess the wealth of an ancient dynasty.