Ming Yellow

by S. Martin Shelton

During the chaos that was China in 1935, Randall Kendrick, a wealthy American collector of fine oriental art, and his savvy daughter, Ingrid, embark on an adventurous quest to purchase a cache of extremely rare Ming yellow porcelains. General Wu Pei-fu, the vicious warlord of Kansu Province, offers the porcelains for sale to the highest bidder. Traveling with Kendrick is the expatriate Australian photojournalist, Matt Drummond who focuses his eyes through his camera's viewfinder and on Ingrid. Leading the Kendrick party is Wallace Chung, a suave young hustler who claims to have some connection with the warlord and first-hand knowledge about the porcelains. The Kendrick party travels in a private railroad coach bound for Kansu Province in western China. Soon they are caught in the maw of China's interior dueling warlords, bandit gangs, marauding militias, Communist cadres, and elements of Japan's Kwangtung Army.

228 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 29, 2015

About the author

Captain Shelton retired from active and reserve naval service several years ago. He was a photojournalist skilled in several facets of his profession and has an extensive background in Soviet and Chinese studies. He served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. His duties required that he travel throughout the world and with particular emphasis on the Far East.

Shelton earned his Bachelor of Science degree (Physics) from St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, and his Master of Arts in Cinema from the University of Southern California. For several years, he produced a host of information motion-media shows, winning over forty awards in national and international film competitions and festivals. He was elected a fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and the Information Film Producers of America.

Shelton has published extensively in trade magazines, peer-reviewed journals, and commercial publications. After retirement from the Naval Reserve, he completed his book Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia, which earned the Best of Show award in a major publication competition. He continued his writing completing his first novel St. Catherine’s Crown. He has authored a number of short stories and three novellas, all unpublished. Now he is working on his second novel, which he has titled Abyssinia. The narrative is set shortly after the conclusion of the Second Italian-Abyssinian War in 1936.