Observations of contemporary life that make monkeys of us: this existential disbelief thrums through speculative stories and essays in Xu Xi's latest collection. These 16 short pieces, evenly divided between fiction and nonfiction, are in turn elegiac, satiric, darkly comic, lyrical, even confessional in tone, and traverse the inequities and abuse of power in sex, politics, race history, culture, and language across a disquieting transnational terrain. Prepare to be disturbed, enlightened, and maybe even entertained.

Monkey in Residence & Other Speculations

Literature & Fiction

Xu, Xi

Literary

Signal 8 Press

After Simone learns that her ex-husband Guy has died unexpectedly at the age of fifty, her only regret is that she didn't expose his affairs when she had the chance. But when a woman asks her to help her disrupt his Celebration of Life planned in Northern Cyprus, Simone wonders if she has a last chance to reveal Guy's hypocrisy. Accompanied by her best friend, Simone arrives in Cyprus; however, the circumstances surrounding Guy's death become increasingly mysterious. Worse, since Guy's death, Simone has been haunted by Guy and the ghosts of her loved ones warning her of impending danger. As the Celebration approaches and Simone's mental state deteriorates, she must decide who she should trust and who she must betray in order to save herself.

Apparitions

Baker, Sybil

There Is Fire Here: Essays

Biographies & Memoirs

Knight, Lania

Community & Culture

Sorry Men

Bird, Daniel

Humor & Satire

In this collection, twenty-six women reveal the truth about expatriate life in modern East Asia through original works of memoir and creative non-fiction. Their experiences are varied and unique, demonstrating that expat women's lives go far beyond the stereotypical. The writers hail from a dozen different countries and walks of life. Some are well-known; others are fresh voices adding nuance to the expat conversation. Through deeply personal accounts, they explore what they have learned about themselves and the world through their lives abroad. Together, they create a portrait of the modern expatriate experience that will both resonate and inspire.

How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia

Politics & Social Sciences

Women's Studies

Bren Barran is a normal guy in most ways. All he really wants is a sweet girlfriend and enough time and money to play videogames, but his job keeps getting in the way. After all, opening trans-dimensional gates to hell and summoning demons for money isn't the sort of thing that you can leave at the office when the clock hits five. Even so, he's doing all right until someone (or something) starts making people in his line of work disappear. With nothing in his corner except for his job skills, a few friends in low places, and a good head on his shoulders, Bren's got to do everything he can to figure out what's going on before all hell breaks loose (literally) and he ends up dead... or much, much worse.

Speaking in Forked Tongues

Gallaway, Brad

Genre Fiction

In The Worst Motorcycle in Laos: Rough Travels in Asia, author Chris Tharp recounts his misadventures in countries across the region he's called home for the last ten years. He takes us to the back-alley restaurants of Vietnam on a quest to eat cobra; to the neon streets of Japan, where he goes on tour with a jazz band, gets lost in the depraved depths of a comic book shop, and nearly causes a riot at a punk rock bar; to far Western China, where he narrowly misses a terrorist attack and endures a harrowing drive on the world's highest highway. Whether he's losing his lunch on the boat ride to the disputed Dokdo islets, surviving a bus wreck on a Korean highway, eating chicken embryos in the Philippines, or riding a dilapidated motorbike through the dirt tracks of Laos, Tharp delivers his tales with a mixture of honesty, wit, and humor that will inspire readers to strap on a backpack and hit the road.

The Worst Motorcycle in Laos: Rough Travels in Asia

Travel

Tharp, Chris

Asia

NOMINATED FOR THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE ("The Booker of Asia") ~"EDITORS' CHOICE" by The Historical Novel Society and Book Browse ~A Bookworm Beijing Book Club Selection of the Month Jacquie Mouhot and Paaku the Lotus-Born are divided by six centuries but linked by a common curse. In medieval Cambodia, Paaku is an orphan whose community believes he may be a reluctant incarnation of a god, causing sectarian turmoil for the kingdom's leaders. Meanwhile, in 1921, Jacquie follows the footsteps of her grandfather, a famous explorer, to Indochina, where she becomes immersed in the tragedy of Paaku's history: a story simultaneously unfolding in the intertwined present and past, a story in which she still has a vital role to play. "American-born Samuel Ferrer achieves the unlikely in this impressive debut novel... The Last Gods of Indochine demonstrates Ferrer's fascination with history and culture from cover to cover while delivering a gripping narrative." -- World Literature Today "...a remarkable story well told. Samuel Ferrer's ambitious debut novel is a stunning work of imagination." -- The East Asia Book Review "Enjoyable, enthralling, and fascinating... this is an impressive first novel. Highly recommended." (*EDITORS' CHOICE*) -- The Historical Novel Society "Ferrer's debut masterpiece evokes the magic and mystery of a long gone civilization. This is beautiful fiction that leaves the scent of incense and sandalwood long after you have finished reading it." -- Dania Shawwa, Editor-in-Chief, Haven Books "... rationality and superstition get locked into the kind of epic conflict that is the stuff of all great narratives... an elaborate and self-assured interweaving of historical fact and keenly imagined fiction." -- Time Out Hong Kong Magazine "A sublime tale told by a master storyteller, steeped in the lore of old. Ferrer's conjuring of romantic Indochine is a journey that lures, stirring up ghosts in a wild phantasmagoria, reckoning with forces both entwined and eternal." -- Angela Kan, Travel Host &amp; Writer, The Discovery Channel "Creative and engaging, the historical novel The Last Gods of Indochine is an inventive recreation of European exploration and exploitation alongside the spiritual mysticism of ancient Cambodia." -- Asian Review of Books Excerpt from the Prologue: "Farther India, 1861 (Laos, Indochina). It was hard to believe the human body could contain so much water, and yet, there it all was. Phrai twisted the cloth and watched it plop in dull patters on the ground, the pocked earth sponging up sound as well. Sweat had been seeping out his employer for weeks, and he had been at the dying man's side all the while, pouring fresh water back into his mouth with the devotion of a nun. Phrai imagined nearly half the man had been absorbed and squeezed from these rags, creating small pools just outside the hut. In another part of the world, that half of him would evaporate out of existence, but here it could not; the thick air held eternity at bay. Phrai returned and closed the flimsy door after himself. The explorer looked like a rag doll tossed upon a bed. He regained consciousness and requested a mirror; even in dying, he didn't want to be denied the role of observer. Perhaps he wanted to put that in his book as well. Phrai resisted, thinking it best not to show him the thinly veiled skeleton who would have stared back. Instead, he wiped the fermenting body clean with a soapy rag. There was no dirt to wash off, just the fetid odor. It was no wonder the white-ghost had succumbed to this condition whilst exploring here. They couldn't take the heat; they gagged on the thick air. And this white-ghost was no exception. He had worked too hard and traveled too far. He had been away from home too long. Going up one river, he had hastened his young guides to lead him even farther up the next, and after that, yet another. But the jungle was too deep here, in Farther India, and he should have turned back long ago."

The Last Gods of Indochine

Ferrer, Samuel

The Bride of Amman, a huge and controversial bestseller when first published in Arabic, takes a sharp-eyed look at the intersecting lives of four women and one gay man in Jordan's historic capital, Amman-a city deeply imbued with its nation's traditions and taboos. When Rana finds herself not only falling for a man of the wrong faith, but also getting into trouble with him, where can they go to escape? Can Hayat's secret liaisons really suppress the memories of her abusive father? When Ali is pressured by society's homophobia into a fake heterosexual marriage, how long can he maintain the illusion? And when spinsterhood and divorce spell social catastrophe, is living a lie truly the best option for Leila? What must she do to avoid reaching her 'expiry date' at the age thirty like her sister Salma, Jordan's secret blogger and a self-confessed spinster with a plot up her sleeve to defy her city's prejudices? These five young lives come together and come apart in ways that are distinctly modern yet as unique and timeless as Amman itself.

The Bride of Amman

Zaghmout, Fadi

Thousands of young adults pass through South Korea each year, teaching English in private schools that together make up one of the country's largest industries. Korea, long isolated by culture and geography, with a complex language and set of social mores, can be a difficult place to call home. Chris Tharp has begun to make a name for himself as a travel writer, and in this gruff but affectionate memoir, explains why Korea can be both hard to like and hard to leave. He navigates his way through the timeless alleys and neon streets of Korea's cities, painting a picture of a society that is at once ancient and utterly modern; he serves in the trenches of the English teaching industry, working his way from the private, for-profit academy to the university; he treks through the peninsula's mountain valleys and rides deep into the country's rural soul on the back of his motorcycle; he also explores the internal geography of Korea, from nearly being deported over a comedy performance, getting caught in the middle of a street riot, to staring face-to-face with North Korean soldiers along the DMZ. During this six-year journey, Tharp must also deal with the death of his parents, which forces him to ask the question: Is home a place that we're from, or is it something we take with us wherever we go?

Dispatches from the Peninsula: Six Years in South Korea

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