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In Taiwanese School Ghost Stories and Where They Come from, the author sleuths out Taiwan’s most iconic school-related ghost stories and their variants. The fact that most readers likely already have a passing familiarity with at least a few of the underlying plotlines ensures this book a place in Taiwan’s collective cultural memory bank. Their placement in familiar school settings, from bathrooms and dormitory rooms to shadowy school-campus corners, imbues these stories with plausible realism. The author accompanies her readers on this journey, allowing both to discover together what makes these stories “scary” and why we sometimes simply need to be scared.

I compare reading Vendorworld to a stimulating, nostalgia-laced virtual journey through Taiwan’s markets and side streets – from crowded crossroads to shops and stalls with dozens-deep lines of hungry customers outside.

The author’s illuminating focus on these vendors, each a small but important part of their surrounding milieu, paints a fun-to-read, satisfyingly complete picture of Taiwan’s lively street vending scene. Moreover, the myriad stories and insights into vendor owners, clientele, and history add delightful dimension to this work. Taiwanese readers in particular are sure to find fond and familiar memories of their own within its pages.

With Taiwan’s distinctive street vendor culture now in slow but steady decline, Vendorworld is an important new addition to Taiwan’s collective cultural memory bank.

How is online social media negatively influencing our young people? In discussing this question, many point to “internet addiction” as the wellspring of related troubles and thus advocate gatekeeping the amount of time allowed online. But this author takes a different tack, arguing this issue must be reexamined from the psychological needs perspective of adolescents if we are to resolve not only the symptoms but also the root causes of this problem.

While written for a general audience, this work is well grounded in relevant theory and practice. Sifting through the varied modes of interaction used by today’s youth, the author points out that, besieged by peer pressure from both online and real-world communities, young people today are bereft of a “mental staging ground” where they can catch their breath and think. Of particular note, the author includes Asian cultural ideas about “shame” and “guilt” in the discussion. Ultimately, this book offers many practical counseling and self-help solutions.

The “affect exhaustion” epidemic rampaging through society today is rooted in poor gatekeeping between our internal (emotional) and external worlds, which is essential to ameliorating the impact of negative emotions, ideas, and relationships on our psyche. The author attempts in this book to help readers become better “gatekeepers” via a rational, step-by-step process starting from awareness and causal understanding and ending with practices tailored to dispel mental internal friction. The author, who has a distinctly Eastern take on the factors contributing to this friction, promotes the importance of “balance, temperance, and self-control”.

Today’s social media environment drives participants to engage in ever greater levels of both self-exposure and interference in others’ affairs. Thus, setting boundaries goes beyond reestablishing the ability to protect oneself to using one’s personal space to express noncompliance with the present social system. Although not delving into the deep social structures associated with affect exhaustion, the author affixes an appropriate name to an ever-present threat facing our physical and mental health as well as maps out a self-help approach to easing today’s emotional self-torture epidemic. This book effectively shows the way forward to readers lost in emotional turmoil and provides the wherewithal to regain peace of mind.

Streams of tender warmth and hard-boiled violence course through each of SEVEN’s short stories in equal measure, delivering the “one-two punch” of unfettered anguish and liberating relief necessary to kick the process of healing untold years’ worth of heartbreak and pain into motion. The seven female authors chosen to narrate the plight of women in our modern day vie for reader attention through their honed techniques, practiced prose, and charismatic moxie. Beautifully presented and bound, SEVEN is a welcome gift – be it for yourself…or someone else!

Despite the ubiquity of temples in Taiwan and the palpable influence of “religion” in everyday life, most Taiwanese have only a surface-level understanding of the manifold gods that inhabit the heavenlies: Pray to Earth God for good fortune, to Baosheng Dadi for good health, to Yuelao for a good life partner… and so on. Island of a Thousand Deities is a modern guide to Taiwan’s gods, folk religions, and local culture that offers a path forward for gods and humans to find common ground and coexistence in the twenty-first century.

Taking both immortal and mortal perspectives, Island of a Thousand Deities relays down-to-earth stories that clarify the intricate web binding local tradition, history, culture, and society together. What is most touching is how this book conveys the hopes and dreams across centuries of political and social upheaval of those who call Taiwan home. Here, Taiwan’s gods, neither aloof nor all-powerful, are remarkably “human” – anxious about being forgotten, eager for plumes of incense smoke, and longing for heartfelt sentiment.

A recent murder brings to light a forgotten, decades-old injustice. Weaving together past and present with folktales and ghost stories, the author stokes the overall air of mystery while painting a true-to-life picture of life in Taiwan under autocratic rule during the White Terror period.

The meticulous treatment of the story’s milieu wraps readers in authentic local and historical texture. The narrative, following the decline and destruction of an once wealthy and influential family, artfully tracks Taiwan’s changing fortunes between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The rigorous and imaginative treatment given to the two “worlds” of the Yin and Yang and the Taoist magic of the protagonist further fuel reader anticipation about the adventures ahead on the path to solving this long-dead, ostensibly unsolvable case.

The concept of “ghost” in Taiwan goes beyond scary story characters and earthbound souls to embrace the idea of life persisting in another form. Thus, the ghostly characters in this archetypical work of Taiwanese paranormal fiction seek assistance rather than salvation from the mortal realm to end their earthly encumbrance. This is the solid foundation that underpins the ghost-mortal relationship in Spiritspeaker Studio.

Across the ages, ghost stories have offered a platform for raising and discussing difficult social and human issues, shining hope into life’s darker corners, and speaking out for justice. In Spiritspeaker Studio, spirit-permeated smartphones add an interesting new twist on the human-ghost relationship in an expansive story revolving around the trials and tribulations of dysfunctional families and the issue of sexual predation, the latter of which leads readers smoothly into Book 2.

This creative effort, spanning the wide swathe of Taiwan’s modern art history with a story that resonates with plausibility and practiced literary flair, should not be underestimated. Beyond unraveling the “Cheng-Po” code, this story may indeed hold the key to understanding Taiwan itself. Interspersed with Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese elements, the narrative lays breadcrumbs while dangling answers just beyond reach. Once the code is cracked and the air has cleared, it is now us who should unlock our own closed doors.

Weaving a detective tale into historical fiction adds extra layers of difficulty to an inherently challenging literary genre. Its brilliant execution in The Cheng-Po Code gives staccato pacing and rich literary texture to the unfolding story. Resolving this novel’s final mystery sheds new light not only on Taiwan’s art history but also into a dark corner of Taiwanese history.