Margaret is doing everything in her power to forget home. And Tokyo’s exotic nightlife—teeming with drink, drugs, and three-hour love hotels—enables her to keep her demons at bay. Working as an English specialist at Air-Pro Stewardess Training Institute by day, and losing herself in a sex- and drug-addled oblivion by night, Margaret represses memories of her painful childhood in Canada and her older brother Frank’s descent into madness.

But Margaret’s deliberate nihilism is thrown off balance as she becomes increasingly haunted by images of a Western girl missing in Tokyo. And when she becomes enamored of Kazu, a mysterious gangster, their affair sparks a chain of events that could spell tragedy for Margaret in a city where it’s all too easy to disappear.

An unforgettable portrait of loneliness and redemption as seen through the neon glare of one of the world’s most fascinating cities, Lost Girls and Love Hotels will rattle your brain and pull hard on your heart.

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CATHERINE HANRAHAN was born in Montreal and has lived in England, Thailand, and Japan. She currently lives in Sweden. Her fiction has appeared in Zoetrope All-Story Extra and Open City. Lost Girls and Love Hotels is Hanrahan's first novel, and was adapted into a film in 2020.