In the four years since its founding Earnshaw Books has published 11 titles on old Shanghai. And the niche publishing house, which operates out of Hong Kong and Shanghai and proclaims an interest in "China's past, present and future", evidently, hasn't yet had its fill of pre-1949 Shanghai.

  A Wet Day In Shanghai, by Sapajou, from Sapajou: The Collected Works I.

"Till 1949 the balance of power was shifting, there was intrigue and the sexy stuff one would like to write about. Back then it was a city people looked at for inspiration," says chief editor Derek Sandhaus, reflecting on the company's obsessive engagement with Shanghai and early 20th century Chinese history.

Also, as he points out, the focus on the 1930s makes it easier to connect with a Western audience, because of their shared history with China during that period.

The newest from the Earnshaw stable is Stateless in Shanghai by Liliane Willens. The daughter of Jewish-Russian refugees who were given asylum in Shanghai in the 1930s, Willens found herself suddenly "stateless" with the founding of New China in 1949.

The story of Willens' time spent in a tense, indifferent Shanghai, running from pillar to post for two years to get an exit permit, is told with dispassionate eloquence.

Also on offer is Sapajou: The Collected Works I, edited by Nenad Djordjevic. A White Russian who came to Shanghai in the early 1920s, Sapajou, or Georgi Avksentievich Sapojnikoff as he was named, was one of Shanghai's most prolific and admired cartoonists in the 1920s.

The first in a three-volume series of Sapajou's artworks compiled from the North China Daily News and North China Herald, his work is a delightful commentary on China's social and political life during the period 1923 to 1931.