The Frangipani Hotel

The Frangipani Hotel
Author: Violet Kupersmith
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812983475

An extraordinarily compelling debut—ghost stories that grapple with the legacy of the Vietnam War A beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is asked to drive a dying young man home to his village. A plump Vietnamese-American teenager is sent to her elderly grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City to lose weight, only to be lured out of the house by the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. In these evocative and always surprising stories, the supernatural coexists with the mundane lives of characters who struggle against the burdens of the past. Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales told to Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost—that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us. Violet Kupersmith’s voice is an exciting addition to the landscape of American fiction. With tremendous depth and range, her stories transcend their genre to make a wholly original statement about the postwar experience. Praise for The Frangipani Hotel “[A] subversively clever debut collection . . . These stories—playful, angry, at times legitimately scary—demonstrate a subtlety of purpose that belies [Kupersmith’s] youth.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magical, beautiful, modern stories, all based on traditional Vietnamese folktales, [The Frangipani Hotel] invokes the ghosts of the land that was left behind.”—San Francisco Chronicle “[A] sparkling debut . . . playful and wise, an astonishing feat for a young writer.”—Chicago Tribune “A series of short stories that are as fresh as they are mesmerizing, The Frangipani Hotel will haunt you long after the last words have drifted off the page.”—Lisa See “Auspicious . . . wildly energetic.”—Elle “Enthralling stories . . . teeming with detail and personality.”—Asian Review of Books “Chilling and lovely . . . Kupersmith has combined traditional storytelling with a post-modern sense of anxiety and darkness, and the result is captivating.”—Bookreporter “The stories shimmer with life. . . . Kupersmith [is] one to watch.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Build Your House Around My Body

Build Your House Around My Body
Author: Violet Kupersmith
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812993322

Part puzzle, part revenge tale, part ghost story, this ingenious novel spins half a century of Vietnamese history and folklore into “a thrilling read, acrobatic and filled with verve” (The New York Times Editors’ Choice). FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews “Fiction as daring and accomplished as Violet Kupersmith’s first novel reignites my love of the form and its kaleidoscopic possibilities.”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. 1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed. 2011: A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace. The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Alongside them, we meet a young boy who is sent to a boarding school for the métis children of French expatriates, just before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule; two Frenchmen who are trying to start a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co., who find themselves investigating strange occurrences in a farmhouse on the edge of a forest. Each new character and timeline brings us one step closer to understanding what binds them all. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last page.

The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

The Betel Nut Tree Mystery
Author: Ovidia Yu
Publisher: Constable
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2018-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1472125231

'Great protagonist, great setting - this is a delightful book' Morning Star The second novel in Ovidia Yu's delightfully charming crime series set in 1930s Singapore, featuring amateur sleuth Su Lin. What we came to think of as the betel nut affair began in the middle of a tropical thunderstorm in December 1937 . . . Singapore is agog with the news of King Edward VIII's abdication to marry American heiress Wallis Simpson. Chen Su Lin, now Chief Inspector Le Froy's secretarial assistant in Singapore's newly formed detective unit, still dreams of becoming a journalist and hopes to cover the story when the Hon Victor Glossop announces he is marrying an American widow of his own, Mrs Nicole Covington, in the Colony. But things go horribly wrong when Victor Glossop is found dead, his body covered in bizarre symbols and soaked in betel nut juice. The beautiful, highly-strung Nicole claims it's her fault he's dead . . . just like the others. And when investigations into her past reveal a dead lover, as well as a husband, the case against her appears to be stacking up. Begrudgingly on Le Froy's part, Su Lin agrees to chaperon Nicole at the Farquhar Hotel, intending to get the truth out of her somehow. But as she uncovers secrets and further deaths occur, Su Lin realises she may not be able to save Nicole's life - or even her own. 'Charming and fascinating with great authentic feel. This book is exactly why I love historical novels' Rhys Bowen 'I really enjoyed this wonderful gem of a book. The diversity and rich history portrayed in the book are what make The Frangipani Tree Mystery a brilliant read. The fact that it's a fusion of crime and historical fiction adds brownie points to the package!' Bookloves Reviews

Fodor's Caribbean 2007

Fodor's Caribbean 2007
Author: Mark Sullivan
Publisher: Fodors Travel Publications
Total Pages: 1106
Release: 2006
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1400016754

Maps of each Caribbean island and the Caribbean area accompany travel tips and a brief history of the islands

Wave

Wave
Author: Sonali Deraniyagala
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0771025386

A brave, intimate, beautifully crafted memoir by a survivor of the tsunami that struck the Sri Lankan coast in 2004 and took her entire family. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation at the seaside resort of Yala on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. Sonali Deraniyagala has written an extraordinarily honest, utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.

Water Ghosts

Water Ghosts
Author: Shawna Yang Ryan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2009
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781594202070

The unexpected arrival of Richard Fong's wife, along with two other women from China, brings complications for Richard as he struggles to combine his two lives and decide if he wants to be with his wife, the local woman he has fallen for, or the prostitute he has been visiting.

The Last Nights of the Frangipani Hotel

The Last Nights of the Frangipani Hotel
Author: Bey Deckard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2015-09-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781523968848

All James wanted was a little solitude at his favourite resort: bright sunshine overhead, soft, white sand underfoot, and a hammock to read in while the warm breeze rustles through the coconut palms and almond trees. However, when an old acquaintance shows up, and James is obliged to share "his" beach, a profound exchange over a bottle of rum leads to a lust-fuelled encounter in the dark.Reeling from the intensity of the drunken tryst, James decides to cut his vacation short rather than face what he's kept hidden under mountains of denial.However, his escape is thwarted when Rudie, handsome and plainspoken, calls him out on his behaviour and makes him see that life needn't be spent running away from his desires.Set at a rundown old resort on a small Caribbean island, The Last Nights of The Frangipani Hotel is a story about letting go of fear and learning that passion and love can be found in the most unexpected of places.

The Refugees

The Refugees
Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802189350

“Beautiful and heartrending” fiction set in Vietnam and America from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker) In these powerful stories, written over a period of twenty years and set in both Vietnam and America, Viet Thanh Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experiences of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. This incisive collection by the National Book Award finalist and celebrated author of The Committed gives voice to the hopes and expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, and the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, and family that accompany relocation. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her with a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of migration. “Terrific.” —Chicago Tribune “An important and incisive book.” —The Washington Post “An urgent, wonderful collection.” —NPR

Eurasian Business and Economics Perspectives

Eurasian Business and Economics Perspectives
Author: Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2022-10-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3031143957

EBES conferences have been intellectual hub for academic discussion in economics, finance, and business fields and provide network opportunities for participants to make long lasting academic cooperation. This is the 23rd volume of the Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics (EBES’s official proceeding series) which includes selected papers from the 36th EBES Conference – Istanbul. The conference was organized on July 1-3, 2021 in hybrid mode with both online and in-person presentation. In the conference, 141 papers by 311 colleagues from 49 countries were presented. Both theoretical and empirical papers in this volume cover diverse areas of business, economics, and finance from many different regions. Therefore, it provides a great opportunity to colleagues, professionals, and students to catch up with the most recent studies in different fields and empirical findings on many countries and regions.

Ghost Month

Ghost Month
Author: Ed Lin
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616953276

Welcome to Unknown Pleasures, a food stand in Taipei's night market named after a Joy Division album, and also the location for a big-hearted new mystery set in the often undocumented Taiwan. August is Ghost Month in Taiwan—a time to pay respects to the dead and avoid unlucky omens. Jing-nan, who runs a food stand in a bustling Taipei night market, isn’t superstitious, but this August will haunt him nonetheless. He learns that his high school sweetheart has been murdered—found scantily clad near a highway where she was selling betel nuts. Beyond his harrowing grief, Jing-nan is confused. “Betel nut beauties” are typically women in desperate circumstances, but Julia Huang was high school valedictorian, and the last time Jing-nan spoke to her, she was far away, happily enrolled in NYU’s honor program. The facts don’t add up. Julia’s parents don’t think so, either, but the police seem to have closed the case without asking any questions. The Huangs beg Jing-nan to do some investigating—reconnect with old classmates, see if he can learn anything more about Julia’s last years. Reluctantly, he agrees, for Julia’s sake. But nothing can prepare him for what he is about to learn, or how it will change his life.