Beyond the killing fields and the temples of Angkor is Cambodia: a country with a genocidal past and a wide, open smile. A frontier land where anything is possible - at least for the tourists.
In Holiday in Cambodia Laura Jean McKay explores the electric zone where local and foreign lives meet.
Three backpackers board a train, ignoring the danger signs - and find themselves in the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
Elderly sisters are visited by their vampire niece from Australia and set out to cure her.
A singer creates a sensation in swinging 1969, on the eve of an American bombing campaign.
These are bold and haunting stories by a remarkable new talent.
'Each of these stories is like catching a snippet of a conversation or looking into a lit window in a dark night, and loitering longer than you should to hear and see what characters inadvertently reveal about themselves. Holiday in Cambodia shows the ugly side of post-colonial tourism, as well as moments of great pathos and dignity, in a compelling and empathetic voice.'-Alice Pung
'Polished, Hemingwayesque snapshots, vivid and atmospheric' - Steven Carroll
About the author: Laura Jean McKay's writing has been published in The Best Australian Stories, The Sleepers Almanac, The Big Issue, Women of Letters, Going Down Swinging and The Lifted Brow. She has been shortlisted for national and international awards and in 2011 won the Alan Marshall Short Story Award. She lives in Melbourne.