Books: Classic Southeast Asian ghost stories

BANGKOK -- In 1946, George Orwell opened his essay "The Decline of the English Murder" by describing the contented domesticity that follows a large English Sunday lunch. "You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World," he wrote. "In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder."