A foreign exchange student comes to live with Julie’s family for a year—setting off a frightening chain of events Julie isn’t thrilled about her parents’ decision to sponsor a foreign exchange student from Thailand. Not only is the stranger going to live with them for a year, but Julie is convinced he’ll be a nerd and will embarrass her at school. But when a tall, handsome, super-cool guy named Bia arrives, Julie is suddenly the envy of all her girlfriends. Dominic, Julie’s 11-year-old brother, is also thrilled to have Bia around the house. So to make the guest feel at home in America, Dominic builds a traditional Thai spirit house in the backyard. Overnight, Bia seems to undergo a major personality change. He’s mean and spiteful and lies about everything. He also seems terrified of something . . . or someone. Has Dominic’s construction somehow invoked a vengeful spirit? Is Bia the bearer of luck so bad it could harm Julie and her family?

"A house in the center of Bangkok becomes the point of confluence where lives are shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. Witness to two centuries' flux in one of the world's most restless cities, a house plays host to longings and losses past, present, and future. A nineteenth-century missionary doctor pines for the comforts of New England even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam increasingly difficult to resist. A post-war society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting the course of her future. A jazz pianist is summoned in the 1970s to conjure music that will pacify resident spirits, even as he's haunted by ghosts of his former life. Not long after, a young woman gives swimming lessons in the luxury condos that have eclipsed the old house, trying to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in the post-submergence Bangkok of the future, a band of savvy teenagers guides tourists and former residents past waterlogged, ruined landmarks, selling them tissues to wipe their tears for places they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by blood, memory, yearning, chance, and the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibian, ever-morphing city itself"--Provided by publisher.

Beginning with a history of the country and its cultural influences, this book describes and illustrates a range of structures, from Thai houses to elaborate temples and even crematoriums. It concludes with a look at contemporary Thai architecture and how traditional architecture practices have been adapted to suit modern needs.

Dr Tambiah describes the religious practices and beliefs of the people of a remote village in north-east Thailand, relating them to the wider context of the civilization in which they are embedded, and examining the relationship of the religious practices of the villagers to the classical Buddhist tradition. Because they have based their studies on the Sanskrit and Pali literature, Western observers have tended to dismiss much of the popular manifestation of Buddhism as debased. Dr Tambiah demonstrates that this judgement is misleading, and emphasizes that the contemporary village religion that he describes manifests continuities as well as transformations with respect to the classical literary tradition. The village religion is described primarily through ritual.

The murder of a foreigner in Thailand kicks off this crime thriller, the first in the Shamus Award–winning series by “a terrific writer” (T. Jefferson Parker). A farang is dead, and the Bangkok police have a confession the next morning from a young paint-thinner addict. He claims he killed Ben Hoadly, an expat Brit—but American PI Vincent Calvino has his doubts when he sees heavy bruises on the kid’s face. In no time Calvino is working both sides, out to find the killer for Hoadly’s wealthy father, and eager to clear the addict’s name for a beautiful friend who runs a charity in the slums. With the help of his best friend, Pratt, a Shakespeare-quoting Thai police colonel, and his loyal assistant, Ratana, Calvino plunges into the dangerous world of addicts, dealers, fortune tellers, inexpensive hit men, oversexed foreigners, and professional bar girls . . . “Intelligent and articulate, Moore offers a rich, passionate, and original take on the private eye game” in this international bestseller (January Magazine).

The Spirit Ambulance is a journey into decision-making at the end of life in Thailand, where families attempt to craft good deaths for their elders in the face of clashing ethical frameworks, from a rapidly developing universal medical system, to national and global human-rights politics, to contemporary movements in Buddhist metaphysics. Scott Stonington’s gripping ethnography documents how Thai families attempt to pay back a “debt of life” to their elders through intensive medical care, followed by a medically assisted rush from the hospital to home to ensure a spiritually advantageous last breath. The result is a powerful exploration of the nature of death and the complexities arising from the globalization of biomedical expertise and ethics around the world.

" ... Authentic Thai and Asian recipes from the world-renowned Spirit House restaurant and cooking school ... "Spirit House, the cookbook" showcases the very best of Thai and S.E. Asian cuisines. Inside you will meet the more exotic ingredients, be guided step by step through some basic Asian cooking techniques, and read about the foreign influences which shaped much of Asian food and history ..."--Back cover.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.

Underground film-maker Mark Hejnar lived in Thailand for four years, during which time he relentlessly explored the far reaches of the kingdom taking thousands of photographs along the way. Hejnar's interest lay not in Thailand's bars, beaches and other tourist attractions, but in its stunning range of indigenous art, icons and architecture which lies, hidden in plain sight, just beyond the beaten path. From religious folk-paintings to infernal torture sculptures, from half-buried gods in temple cave complexes to the spectral dolls who beckon from derelict spirit houses, Hejnar has captured a revelatory world of the marvelous and the monstrous, showing how Thailand's religions, myths and art are inextricably bound together. SECRET SIAM presents over 300 of Hejnar's rich photographic images, reproduced in full size and full-colour throughout, accompanied by a series of concise explanatory texts. It stands as a unique visual introduction to one of the world's most fascinating and yet seldom explored artistic cultures.