The New York Times bestseller is Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in 1926 Shanghai that hums to the tune of debauchery, similar top her first novel  (Immortal Longings by Hodderscape, £18.99) which is also based on another Shakespeare’s romantic tragedies, Anthony and Cleopatra.

These Violent Delights is in twin cities San-Er in the Kingdom of Talin, where a gladiatorial death match is held annually, with great riches awarded to the last contestant standing. Princess Calla Tuoleimi enters the game in the hope that, if she wins, she will get close enough to her reclusive uncle King Kasa, to kill him and end his tyrannical rule. Then there is Anton Makusa, who teams up with Calla forming an alliance that blooms into passion even though they will be fighting with each other eventually.

This contains a bit of fantasy action-adventure that offers plenty of bloodletting aiming at enthusiasms of the teen fiction genre. A blood feud between two gangs runs the street red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. Eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang –  a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love and first betrayal. When the gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a Contagion, a madness of a monster in the shadows. As the death stacks up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns – and grudges aside and work together for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.

Romance, intrigue, vicious, great mystery, and betrayal  filled novel navigates tensions and chaos in Shanghai builds toward a fever pitch, the two become entangled again in ways that fuel the story consumed by fire and powder is likely to end in disaster.

Juliette Cai daughter of the Scarlet Gang’s leader and the successor to one of the most powerful gangs in the city, has returned to Shanghai after four years in the United States, a decision intended to punish and banish her for a disastrous fling with a rival heir, Roma Montagov, next in line to the White flowers  a fearsome Russian family and enemies of the Scarlet Gang. The City is a powder keg on the verge of igniting made all worse by French and British political meddling, greedy and advantageous merchants. On the top that there were rumors of a horrendous creature haunting the Huangpu River spread as a mysterious epidemic infects the city, causing its victims to brutally rip out their own throats.

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong, McElderry Books, £19.99,  449 pages