Imagine Lafcadio Hearn venturing to 21st-century Tokyo reincarnated as a single American woman with a penchant for the exotic and erotic, and you will have a sense of the stories in "Ghost of a Smile."
Author Deborah Boehm knows her territory. She's a travel writer specializing in Japan, Hawaii and other Pacific islands, and a former magazine editor and sumo reporter.
Boehm has also written an engaging memoir, "A Zen Romance," and has translated Akimitsu Takagi's "The Tattoo Murder Case."