"An intriguing, insightful portrait of a woman born at the boundary between two cultures who, in her restless yearning for celebrity, crossed and re-crossed another boundary - that between reality and fantasy - in an extraordinary life that took her from

"The last years of the Qing dynasty were a time of rumors, adventures, and mysterious opportunities for the polyglot inhabitants of Beijing. The memoir written in 1911 by the self-styled 'Princess' Der Ling, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager between

"This is a fine book, full of historical surprises. Grant Hayter-Menzies has taken a strange and much-abused figure, and brought her back to life with grace and flair. He shows that 'Princess' Der Ling really was a lady-in-waiting to China's Empress Dowag

"Grant Hayter-Menzies has written a delightful and insightful work about Der Ling, whose colorful and early life in Tokyo, Paris and the court of the Empress Dowager Cixi contrasts sharply with her later life in California with her American husband that e

A resident of Sidney, British Columbia, Grant Hayter-Menzies has served as art and music critic for newspapers and magazines from the U.S. Pacific Northwest to the Eastern seaboard and in Western Canada. He is a former board member of the Northwest China Council in Portland, Oregon. Grant's first book, a long-awaited biography of American stage and screen comedienne Charlotte Greenwood, was published by McFarland & Company in May 2007.