"Goh-Goh is angry at you for not being a good Little Sister. Wah. . . . Why are you so selfish? You know you are not supposed to anger bad spirits during Ghost Month."
I sputtered, "You think Goh-Goh is a bad spirit? A gwai?"
"Ai-yah. Don't call them that. Do you want to anger them? They are the Good Brothers. You call them the Good Brothers. Ho hing dai."
Tori Wong is starting over. She's given herself a new name, dropped out of university to work at a downtown Toronto bookstore, and fled her parents' strict home to do all the things she's never done before. Like go out on weeknights, flirt with her cute co-worker Egan, and live out of the shadow of her overachieving brother, to whom her parents always compare her--even though he's dead.
But turning your back on the past isn't as easy as it seems. Especially during Yu Lan, or The Festival of Hungry Ghosts, when traditional Chinese believe that neglected spirits roam the earth. Not one but three forgotten ghosts come back to haunt Tori: her vengeful brother Seymour, and ambitious Vicky and meek little Mui-Mui, herself at age seventeen and eleven. Despite her attempts to appease them, none of them approve of Tori's new life and interfere with her job and her budding relationship with Egan.
And although it's Seymour who literally burns with jealousy of the living, Tori begins to despair that she too is a hungry ghost and has more in common with him than she'd thought . . .
About the Author: E. L. (Elaine) Chen's short fiction has been featured in anthologies such as MASKED MOSAIC, THE DRAGON AND THE STARS and TESSERACTS FIFTEEN, and in magazines such as STRANGE HORIZONS and ON SPEC. THE GOOD BROTHER is her first novel. She lives in Toronto with a very nice husband, their young son and a requisite cat.
