Showing results by author "Vann Chow" in All Categories

An unforgettable, breathless debut fiction by author Vann Chow, The Pachinko Girl is the winning selection of an international book award online with over 140,000 submissions. While the book appears to be a murder mystery, the author explores and exposes a slew of human rights issues such as gender inequality, hyper-sexualization of teens, homosexual discrimination, racial discrimination, and workplace bullying among others in Japan through the eyes of a foreigner with his friends from different walks of lives and professions in her seminal debut fiction series.

She was 15 when she met him on the snowy mountain. He was a charming young man from the city and he swept her feet away. She moved to Tokyo for him full of hope. Then one day he was murdered. To avoid being suspected, she had to disappear in the crowd.

The Secrets of the Pachinko Girl is the third book of the four-part crime thriller series. The story follows a cast of characters Carson Smith, the middle-aged American businessman, Tanaka Ryuuji, the disillusioned movie director, and Itsuki Miyazaki, the corrupted detective, in their journey across Japan to uncovering the secrets behind a series of murders involving Misa Hayami and her biological father, Doctor Hasegawa.

She was 15 when she met him on the snowy mountain. He was a charming young man from the city, and he swept her away. She moved to Tokyo for him, full of hope. Then one day, she was betrayed; her own elder sister raped and murdered by the very man she loved. And not long after, he was found dead in a ritual killing.

Despite his intelligence, Jong was hardly employee-of-the-month, and he was fired from his job once again. Luckily for him, Marvey Simons, the American intern he had a secret crush on, introduced him to Mr. Qi, the manager of a major international bank, who was desperately looking for a good programmer to take over the development of a series of highly complex fin-tech projects. The man was filthy rich for a corporate employee, and when he offered Jong a mind-blowing remuneration package with the job, Jong took the bait without thinking twice.

You are not the only ones who are occasionally confused, misunderstood, and lost in the wonderful yet sophisticated Chinese system. For those of you who have committed yourself to taking a deeper, more structural and practical, modern approach to learning Chinese culture, you will find this book informative and at the same time compassionate.

An erotic art house movie The Beginning of the End, directed by famous Frenchman Sergey Ribery, was released in Japan to critical acclaim. Little did the audience know that Misa Hayami, the actress in the movie, had died in a freak accident during filming. Its director Sergey was also murdered in what appears to be a ritual killing.

The action-packed story told in first-person perspective follows Jong He, a highly intelligent but socially awkward Chinese programmer and his friends around the financial capital of the country in the cat-and-mouse chase of the biggest cryptocurrency heist of our time.

Jong may be clever, but he was so awkward when it comes to dealing with women. After his girlfriend broke up with him, Jong got into all sorts of troubles. A chance encounter put him under the radar of Shirley Li, the daughter of Li Kun, one of the richest men in China. Shirley quickly became obsessed with him and hinted at the possibility of a long-term relationship. She whisked him away to America on a whirlwind honeymoon tour, but little did he know that there was a hidden agenda behind her apparent affection.

When Joe finds out that the agency insures a person’s marriage against falling apart, he is beyond baffled. How can anyone, let alone perpetually single Joe, promise such a thing? Now Joe must work hard to make enough profit to pay his bills with or make the business attractive enough to sell it off. But attempting to repair broken marriages, especially with the cast of strange and oddball characters who keep coming to his tiny office in the crumbling building demanding his attention, is no small task—and it threatens to fracture his sanity. Could Joe really pull this off?

Every year on the day of the Ghost Festival, creatures from the underworld roam city streets freely when the gate of hell is opened. The owner of the House of Life set out a lavish banquet to entertain and appease these hungry ghosts. This year, however, foul creatures led by a long-dead Manchurian nobleman came down from the Devil's Peak on horseback and stormed the banquet hall. They harassed the guests and wrecked havoc to the festivity, demanding the House of Life to hand over something it has been safe-keeping for centuries.

Triggered by a memory with her ex-boyfriend from college, Vanessa bought a ticket and backpacked in Germany to look for her first love, an exchange student with whom she had lost contact with many years ago. All she had was a travel guide full of clues and her memories to rely on.

When Ester and Jennifer, two best friends since high school, joined a group of European friends for Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, they met and fell in love with the same handsome and charming man without each other knowing. Fast-forward 15 years to when Ester and Jennifer took a trip together to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany, and old secrets and unspoken feelings were finally exposed.