A fun, witty, sexy, page-turning novel written by a real-life, high-priced Manhattan call girl. This is the diary of Nancy Chan, busy career girl, in her thirties, newly engaged and trying to balance job and romance. But Nancy is a high-class call girl, a fact her banker fiance, Matt does not know (he thinks she's a copy editor) and Nancy wants to keep it that way. With one foot in the bedrooms of her rich and demanding clients and one in the world of her fiance and his family, Nancy demonstrates, in her inimitable fashion, that if you know the dance, you can keep those two worlds from colliding. At least for a while. This wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel gives us fresh insight into the machinations and politics of being an expensive call girl in the modern world. Quan pulls no punches, gives no apologies, and has written one of the best and most honest books yet on the topic.

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl

Literature & Fiction

Quan, Tracy

Contemporary

Harper-perennial

This is the diary of Nancy Chan, turn-of-the-millennium call girl, who lives and works on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Although she’s in her thirties, she’s at the top of her career–a better twenty-five-year-old today than when she was twenty-five. Most of her regulars don’t realize how long she’s been working. Her new fiancé, Matt, an up-and-coming M.B.A. on Wall Street, does know her age and how long she’s been working but not what she does for a living. And at least for the time being, Nancy wants to keep it that way. Nancy is full of contradictory desires. She frequently has to choose between making love and making money. On good days, she gets to do both. Surrounded by devoted, wealthy, and powerful johns, some of whom want more than just sex, and caught between two complicated call girl friends who, shall we say, make her life more interesting than it really needs to be–not to mention an unwitting fiancé who has started to apartment hunt and arrange a wedding–Nancy navigates the tricky currents of the world’s oldest profession. With one foot in the bedrooms of her rich and demanding clients and one in the straight world of her fiancé and his family, Nancy demonstrates, in her inimitable fashion, that if you know the dance, you can keep those two worlds from colliding. At least for a while. Based on the highly successful Salon.com column “Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl,” this wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel gives us fresh insight into the machinations and politics of being an expensive call girl in the modern world. Tracy Quan pulls no punches, gives no apologies, and has written one of the best and most honest books yet on the topic.

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel

United States

Crown

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl is a wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel that introduces us to Nancy Chan, a turn-of-the-millennium call girl who lives and works on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Nancy is full of contradictory desires; she frequently has to choose between making love and making money. On good days, she gets to do both. Surrounded by devoted, wealthy, and powerful johns, some of whom want more than just sex, and caught between two all-consuming call girl friends who complicate her life, Nancy navigates the tricky currents of the world’s oldest profession. With one foot in the bedrooms of her rich and demanding clients and one in the straight world of her unwitting fiancé, who has started to apartment-hunt and arrange a wedding, Nancy keeps her two worlds from colliding in her inimitable style.

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Novel

In this irreverent take on infidelity and modern marriage, newlywed topflight prostitute Nancy Chan finds herself struggling to adjust to the realities of domestic bliss. She’s honing her respectable image as the wife of investment banker Matt, cooking fashionable meals and taking his shirts to the cleaners. But now that she and Matt share a home, it’s getting harder to keep her career as an exclusive call girl a secret. Nancy fears what might happen if Matt finds out, but she can’t quite bring herself to give up her financial independence. And now Matt wants to start a family. Motherhood could jeopardize her business—and what will it do to her body? Will Nancy have to give up her career to save her marriage? If you’ve ever had a naughty secret or struggled with competing desires, this funny, insightful romp will strike a chord.

Diary of a Married Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel

Broadway Books

Every day, thousands of young Asian women go to work in the sex industry, a marketplace in which any desire can be satisfied for a price—despite the fact that many Asian countries are repressive to the point of banning certain standard sexual practices. For six years, Asian-American photographer Reagan Louie journeyed through this sexual underworld, visiting nearly a dozen countries including Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam, Tibet, Thailand, and Japan, among others, photographing the day-to-day lives of women who, either by choice or by necessity, exchange their bodies for money.  Orientalia: Sex in Asia reveals the concealed, yet readily available industry that thrives by fulfilling fantasy. From Thai sex emporiums and Japanese image clubs to Philippine dance halls and Taiwanese betel nut stands, Louie’s travels through this underground subculture expose a world where the mythical archetypes of female Asian sexuality—from the submissive Madame Butterfly to the dominating Dragon Lady—are maintained. The women depicted here are at times seductive and playful, entertaining their clients with sex, massages, or simple companionship; but they can also be desperately sad or indifferent as they finish with one client and pass hours before their next encounter.  At once alluring and unsettling, intimate and acute, Orientalia also features Louie’s narrative of his journeys, revealing the context in which these photographs were shot, and providing further insight into this exotic, sometimes erotic, and far from quixotic industry.

Orientalia: Sex in Asia

Arts & Photography

Louie, Reagan

Photography & Video

powerHouse Books