"Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida--war photographer, gambler, and closet queen--has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife,...

In 1799, having stowed away on her father's ship sailing from Dartmouth, England, to Ceylon in search of her long-lost mother, seventeen-year-old Constance Blackchurch falls in love with a nineteen-year old French orphan they rescue from a nefarious pearl dealer.