The Ghost Bride - Tapa blanda

A stunning debut, set in colonial Malaysia with a smart, winning heroine, THE GHOST BRIDE is catnip for the reader's group crowd, combining the detailed historical accuracy of a Lisa See novel with the playful literary fantasy of A Discovery of Witches.

In the gracefully declining Malaysian port city of Malacca in 1890s many cultures coexist under distant British rule -- and the city is full of their ghosts and superstitions. Li Lan, daughter of a respectable Chinese merchant family, knows her chances of a good marriage are slim--her mother died many years before in a smallpox epidemic and her father's opium habit has drained away the family fortune. Then, out of the blue, comes a most unusual proposal from the wealthiest and most powerful clan in town: would Li Lan consent to be the ghost bride for the Lim family's son, who has died under mysterious circumstances?

Both Li Lan and her father are taken aback. Spirit marriages are a rare historic custom amongst the Chinese in Malaysia, where the living are married to the dead to placate a restless ghost. Such a marraige would guarantee Li Lan a home in the Lim household for the rest of her days...but at what cost?

Invited to meet the Lims at their opulent mansion, Li Lan is drawn instead to the nephew of the family, the attractive new heir. But then she begins to receive sinister nightly visits in her dreams from the deceased son. When her attempts to break free from this haunting prove almost fatal, Li Lan herself becomes a wandering spirit in the streets of Malacca.

Unable to escape the influence of the spirit world, determined not to be sold as a ghost bride, Li Lan must challenge her fate. With the help of a medium at the local temple she plunges into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, navigating its hungry ghosts, haunted mansions, and not-quite-human guardians--including the mysterious Er Lang, a handsome guardian spirit whose own secret identity is one of the novel's most stunning reveals. With Er Lang's help, Li Lan will uncover the Lim family's darkest secrets, and the truth about her own family's history. But can she return before she is permanently severed from her earthly body? And if she does, can she ever be content with life in the human world again?

THE GHOST BRIDE is a gripping literary ghost novel infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, and fascinating supernatural twists, perfect for book club discussion.

Yangsze Choo is a fourth generation Malaysian of Chinese descent who reads and writes in Mandarin, Cantonese and Malay. The daughter of a diplomat, she moved to the US to study at Harvard as an undergrad and now lives in California. The Ghost Bride is her first novel.