Excerpt from Ghost Month by Ed Lin, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I had watched the cartoon shooting with indifference, numbed to the over-the-top violence, sex and sexual violence the news channels served up to compete for eyeballs. The woman in the animated reenactment looked more like a strung-out Marge Simpson than Julia. One version featured the gunman killing the woman and then spitting betel-nut juice on her face as a final act of indecency.

The girls who work at betel-nut stalls are usually in tough circumstances. It pays well and doesn't require a college degree. You just have to be willing to wear next to nothing and to let the occasional big tipper conduct your breast exam.

How many disgusting men with ugly, red-stained teeth drove up to the stand and tried to grab you when you handed them their betel-nut chew, Julia? Did you fight back? Is that why he shot you?

Betel nut, or binlang, is a stimulant grubby Taiwanese men can't get enough of. Binlang is utterly unacceptable in most social settings—even in easygoing Taipei—because users constantly spit out the bloody juice as it collects in the mouth, staining the teeth and gums. If you want to chew binlang, you have to not care what you look like.

There are many benefits to chewing binlang, though. It's better than coffee at keeping drivers alert, which is why it's so often associated with taxi, bus and truck drivers. It has a flavor that outlasts any gum, and it tops cigarettes in terms of effectively delivering mouth cancer to its users.

Best of all are the barely legal, barely dressed women who work at the betel-nut stands, the "betel-nut beauties," or binlang xishi. Community standards and furious wives have kept betel-nut stands outside the city limits, relegating them to highways and off- and on-ramps. At night drivers will see stretches of young women in swimsuits and lingerie in their glass-enclosed stands. Visitors to Taiwan think all the women are prostitutes. As I understand it, only the less reputable stands are fronts for hookers, who also sell illegal drugs.

Nonetheless, religious and political leaders have often called for regulation in the industry. A Christian coalition called upon the women to completely cover the three Bs: breasts, butts and bellies. But then the tips wouldn't be as good. Anyway, some of the privileged young women at Taipei's throbbing nightclubs weren't dressed that differently from socially and educationally disadvantaged betel-nut beauties.

Are the binlang xishi exploited or are they empowered? Maybe a combination of the two? It's hard to say. Many of the women who work at the stands are from broken and poor families. Some stands employ aboriginal girls for a touch of the exotic. The income they earn is on the high side, but they are typically supporting an entire household. One thing is quite clear, though. There is money in it, and the binlang stands have a steady inflow from lonely betel-nut addicts. Drugs, tits and asses are recession-proof, and even the most forlorn binlang outposts are always hiring. I didn't chew binlang, I didn't go to the stands and I hadn't cared about the undeniably seedy world that they operated in.

How could Julia, the valedictorian of our high school and the love of my life, have ended up working as a betel-nut girl? What the hell had happened?

THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE WAS THIN on details of Julia's murder and ended with a call to shut down unlicensed betel-nut stands. I checked my phone to see if the story had been updated, but there was nothing new.

I dropped my phone in my shirt pocket and rubbed my thighs. A truck going by hit a pothole, and the vibration caused some of my soup to dribble over the side of the plastic bowl. I had eaten exactly one bite before I saw Julia's name.

The woman who ran the noodle shop came out from behind the counter, and we regarded each other. She was maybe sixty-five years old and had once been the young bride of a retired soldier from the mainland, who started this beef-noodle-soup stand. Her face was still smooth but had some spots that were only getting darker. She wore Buddhist counting beads and a Taoist pendant around her neck, which had three long and deep scoops taken out of the flesh.

Excerpted from Ghost Month by Ed Lin. Copyright © 2014 by Ed Lin. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.