Black Water Sister

Jessamyn Teoh finishes at Harvard with no job lined up, and she has no idea how to tell her parents she is gay. When money runs short, the family leaves the United States for Penang, Malaysia, which she left as a toddler and barely knows.

Soon after the move, a voice starts talking in her head. It is her grandmother, Ah Ma, a woman Jess never really knew, and who is very much dead.

Ah Ma spent her life as the spirit medium for the Black Water Sister, a local goddess known for her fierce temper. Now the ghost wants revenge on Ng Chee Hin, a powerful property developer who plans to demolish the goddess's shrine.

Ah Ma cannot act without a living body, so she and the goddess both reach for Jess's. Jess is drawn among gods, gangsters and family secrets. She also tries to stay close to her girlfriend in Singapore and to work out what she owes relatives she has only just met.

This contemporary fantasy unfolds in George Town, with Malaysian Chinese religious practice and everyday speech woven through it. The bickering between Jess and her grandmother keeps the tone comic. Finalist nods came from the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award and the Ignyte Award.