Kai Ling and the sign of The Dragon Ring

Twelve-year-old Kai Ling scoops ice cream by day, plays softball for the Kirby Koolers by evening, and has never once thought of himself as part of any mystery adventure — until the night his older cousin Tang hands him a jade dragon ring for safekeeping and whispers four words: "Tell no one. Yet."

Within a day, Kai's family curio shop is being watched. A stranger in dark glasses is asking questions about the House of Kwang — a once-great Chinese family whose fortune vanished when their ancestral lands fell silent behind a wall of secrecy. Kai's own hurried, midnight errand to warn a family friend is the very clue a boy across town named Biff Brewster later stumbles onto without ever knowing the real story behind it.

While Biff jets off toward Rangoon, the jungle, and the roaring Yangtze rapids, Kai discovers that his family has been guarding a piece of the Chinese ring mystery for years — and that the House of Kwang's hidden treasure map was never lost at all. It's been hiding in his own family's curio shop, in code, the whole time. With his fearless softball teammate Josie at his side, Kai must outwit a smuggler's spy, protect his family from a blackmail plot, and race a rival treasure hunter across Hong Kong harbor to reach Uncle Charlie and Biff before a fifty-year-old secret falls into the wrong hands forever.

Packed with coded messages, family secrets, jungle rivers, jade rings, treasure maps, daring escapes, and cross-continent detective work, Kai Ling and the Sign of the Dragon Ring is a fast-paced mystery adventure for kids who love treasure hunts, friendship stories, immigrant family history, and brave young heroes proving that the biggest clues sometimes start with the person nobody thinks to ask.