Jade Lee

Desperate Tigress by Jade Lee

• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 0843955058
• Amazon

Back Cover: ON PLEASURE’S PATH
The final step was release. Shi Po had devoted her life to the Taoist ideal: enlightenment through ecstasy, through rigid control of the body and mind. The kiss, the caress, the bite, the scratch—these were the stairs to Immortality. Up, up, up one would climb, through yin rain and yang fire until… But Heaven had been denied her. Two barbarians, white women, had been granted everything; Joanna Crane and Lydia Smith had found Immortality. Shi Po, 19th-century Shanghai’s most famous teacher and abbess, its greatest Tigress, had not.

And so it was time to die.

Only one man stood in her way: Tan Kui Yu. His fingers, his lips, his dragon. He swore he and Shi Po would attain Heaven even if he had to pleasure her every day—and night—for the rest of their lives. He had other ideas as well; things that had never occurred to the woman who had done it all. Perhaps, he said, it was not just about making love, but about feeling it.

Awards

• Romantic Times BOOKclub TOP PICK
• Romantic Times BOOKclub Hero's KISS award
• Booklist Starred review

Reviews

Shi Po has practiced her Taoist beliefs for one purpose: to become an Immortal. But she has failed. And to her utter dismay, she does so in the wake of another, a European of all people, who has attained her goal. It becomes clear to her then that there is nothing more for her but death. All she needs is to choose the way, or so she thinks. Her husband, Kui Yu, vows to remind her that life and love are the true ways to heaven. Desperate Tigress could easily be called Perfection. It’s unflinching and unabashed in historic social and cultural detail and in its incredibly intimate portrayal of a husband and wife at once re-connecting and discovering each other for the first time. Elegant complexity and beautifully rendered flaws in Shi Po and Kui Yu elevate the latest novel in Lee’s series (White Tigress and Hungry Tigress, 2005) to a new plane of accomplishment. If Lee’s skills continue to grow at this rate, it will be she who becomes an Immortal.

Nina C. Davis
October 1, 2005
Booklist STARRED review

In all the years she has faithfully practiced and taught the sensual arts, the Tigress Shi Po has never climbed the steps to immortality. Believing she is a failure, she plans her death.

But her husband, Tan Kui Yu, who knows her as teacher, bedmate and partner, will not allow her to leave him. He vows to help her reach the Taoist ideal of heaven, even as their actions anger a politically powerful general.

Shi Po has always been in control of their sexual lives, but Tan Kui Yu suddenly wrests that control, throwing Shi Po off balance. It is he who now makes her body sing. She desires his caresses, his kisses and, most of all, his love.

Lee continues the Tigress series with her most fascinating, mature heroine, a woman who knows everything about sexuality but discovers she has never allowed herself the freedom to love. Faced with the feelings and fears of getting older, her children growing up and her lifestyle changing, Shi Po discovers what has eluded her and the ability of love to transcend the ordinary. Her story, with its strong sensuality, characters and plot, transports readers onto another plane of erotic romance. Sexy.

Kathe Robin