OTHER EDENS is a collection of five genre-defying novellas by Thai author-composer S.P. Somtow, author of the acclaimed "Jasmine Nights" and "Dragon's Fin Soup." From 1st Century Palestine to the baroque perplexities of the American South and postwar Siam, with characters from the Virgin Mary to a Chinese serial killer, the stories explore the idea of alternate paradises and provide astonishing, sometimes shocking, perspectives.