Josei

At ten, Li Shuquan’s family brings home her frail elder sister and renames her Xiaoman, ordering her to yield everything—from her name to her future.

Years later, when both sisters fall into a lake during a matchmaking meeting, Xiaoman wakes to a physician’s diagnosis of memory loss.

The Grand Princess takes her hand and declares herself Xiaoman’s mother.

With one quiet word—Mama—Xiaoman chooses the family that chooses her and begins to reclaim a life long sacrificed to someone else’s happiness.

The Empress had devised an elegant diversion: if a prince shot down a kite bearing a noblewoman’s name, he could choose her as his consort.

I made a point of running over to remind the Third Prince.

“That huge red butterfly kite is mine.

Don’t mix it up with the others later.”

He grinned and teased me.

“Are you that eager to marry me?”

“Fine.

I’ll think about it.

If I can’t hit anyone else’s, I’ll shoot yours.”

I flushed and spat at him in mock disgust.

“Plenty of men want to marry me.

I’m only afraid you’ll fail to win me and start bawling.”

Pei Qing and I had grown up together, bickering and playing since childhood.

It was the most ordinary kind of banter between us, but I knew he would take my words to heart.

Yet once the contest began, Pei Qing kept aiming at my elder sister’s kite without so much as glancing at mine.

My kite was so conspicuous.

He could not possibly have missed it.

I watched several arrows skim past it.

I grew anxious that someone else might shoot it down.

I had no choice but to let it climb higher and higher, beyond everyone’s reach.

Then, without warning, the string in my hand snapped.

The kite swayed as it fell—and landed on the Crown Prince, who had set his heart on renouncing the world for a Buddhist monastery.

In the twelfth year of her political marriage, Lu Zhuohua’s husband slaps her for the sake of his newest concubine—and the formidable marchioness answers by smashing a bench over his head.

What first looks like another petty battle in a crowded noble household soon exposes a plot involving a staged miscarriage, a powerful young heiress, and a poison meant for Zhuohua and her little daughter.

With her family, her fighters, and twelve years of household authority behind her, Zhuohua decides that if her husband wants her dead, she will simply strike first.

Five years after her elder sister fails to produce an heir, concubine-born Song Yao is forced into the palace as the Song clan’s replacement pawn. With her mother and ailing brother held hostage, she turns the family’s coercion into a weapon, pledging herself to a ruthless emperor while plotting to dismantle the clan that murdered her brothers. In a harem ruled by rival families, every act of devotion is a gambit—and Song Yao intends to survive long enough to claim the board.

One year into her marriage, Xie Wu refuses when her husband asks to take Lin Manrou as his concubine. The feud that follows costs Xie Wu her unborn child, her reputation, and thirty years of freedom—only for her to learn that both women were pawns in her husband’s plan to marry the cousin he truly loved. Reborn on the day he makes the same request, Xie Wu says yes. This time, she will play the dutiful wife, give every rival exactly what she wants, and quietly turn the Marquis of Annan’s household into a board on which only she knows the next move.

After being lost for fifteen years, the prime minister’s true daughter, Song Weilan, finally returns home and comes face-to-face with the false heiress who took her place. Beneath Song Jinyu’s tears and feigned innocence lies a vicious campaign to ruin Weilan, but this time Weilan refuses to remain a helpless victim. Armed with a sharp tongue, an unyielding will, and memories of suffering, Weilan fights for her family, exposes every scheme against her, and claims the freedom to live on her own terms.

Shen Zhuozhuo is the hidden second beauty of a merchant family. After a depraved young marquis abducts and brutalizes her elder sister, then wipes out the Shen household for daring to demand justice, Zhuozhuo survives with one purpose: revenge. Assuming the identity of a scholar’s dead sister, she enters the imperial palace and draws the emperor close, turning her beauty, patience, and even her own body into weapons. To destroy the Marquis of Cheng’en and the Empress Dowager who shields him, she baits each enemy into a trap more dangerous than the last. But when calculated affection meets the emperor’s unexpected sincerity, Zhuozhuo must decide whether vengeance has left any room for a future.

After Southern Xu fell, sixteen-year-old Princess Xihe fled through a land at war with the young heir to the throne, only to be delivered into a Northern Qian military camp.

An enemy general fell in love with her, believing her to be an ordinary girl, while she watched those dearest to her die before her eyes.

Hatred for a fallen nation and vengeance for her family drove her onto a road paved with thorns.

Years later, she became empress of Northern Qian and laid her plans one careful step at a time amid court intrigue and bloodshed.

Even when she had been wounded beyond bearing, someone still broke through every obstacle to reach her – but she would have to choose between her own love and hatred, and the lives of all beneath heaven.

For the ten years my parents were away at war, I was fostered on a country estate and grew up rough around the edges.

I was nothing like the gentle, refined Shen Miaoyi, who had grown up beside them.

She was the daughter of their fallen comrades and had followed my parents to the frontier from the age of six.

“Miaoyi may not be our daughter by blood, but she is dearer to us than one.”

I resented her for stealing my parents.

I resented her for keeping them to herself for ten years without sparing me even one.

So, for once, I fought back and stole her marriage to the Young Prince.

But after Shen Miaoyi married another man, her life turned miserable.

The Young Prince felt guilty and secretly helped her.

A rift opened between us.

I fought back one more time and refused to speak to him until the day I died.

Kneeling beside my bed, he said he regretted it.

“Ningshu, please don’t leave me alone.”

“Once you recover, we can go back to the way we were and ride side by side again…”

I did not want that life anymore.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my parents were arranging a marriage for Shen Miaoyi.

This time, I spoke first.

“The Young Prince likes powder blue. Sister Miaoyi would look perfect in it.”

Lu Jia wakes inside a novel as a beautiful orphan doomed to die after drugging her adoptive brother, Lu Fang.

Desperate to survive both the gentle Lu Fang and his ruthless alternate personality, she accepts an arranged marriage and escapes to quiet Spring Mountain Temple.

There she meets Ye Yi, a tenderhearted traveler who promises her a life beyond the Lu family’s walls.

As Lu Fang’s forbidden feelings surface, Lu Jia clings to the freedom and future she has chosen, while her brother must decide whether love means possession or letting her go.