2024–25 Big Read Reveal!

The Purdue English Department's 2024–25 Big Read selection is Ovidia Yu's Aunty Lee's Delights: A Singaporean Mystery.

Aunty Lee’s Delights is the first in a series of cozy mysteries set in modern-day Singapore, written by best-selling, internationally recognized author Ovidia Yu. This fun, accessible book follows "Aunty" Rosy Lee—a "kaypoh" (busybody) widow, restauranter, and amateur detective—who serves up mouth-watering home-cooking in her café while solving local crimes on the side.

When a tourist washes up dead on the beaches of Sentosa, one of the city’s hotspots, Aunty Lee is on the case, doling out bits of life advice as well as the secrets of her Peranakan cooking in equal measure. Ultimately, Yu’s novel tackles important themes such as family, aging, love, and tolerance while also providing a complex representation of the Southeast Asian island nation, where (as the book jacket tells us) "money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities co-exist peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface."

One of Singapore’s most accomplished writers, Ovidia Yu has authored numerous plays, short stories, and novels, including the Aunty Lee (5 books) and Crown Colony (6 books) mystery series. In 2016, she earned the South-East Asian (S.E.A.) Write Award, the most prestigious award presented to poets and writers in Southeast Asia.

Praise for Aunty Lee's Delights:

"A delicious debut! No mere whodunnit—Aunty Lee's Delights sparkles with insight. . . . Rosie Lee is a terrifically original heroine." —Louise Penny, author of The Beautiful Mystery
"This delightfully anachronistic series debut from playwright and occasional novelist Yu (Miss Moorthy Investigates, 2012, etc.) boasts buoyant prose and a colorful cast, led by the lovably unstoppable sleuth herself." —Kirkus Reviews
"Wise, witty and unusually charming, Aunty Lee’s Delights is a spicy mystery about love, friendship and home cooking in Singapore, where money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities co-exist peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface, sometimes with deadly results." —Fantastic Fiction

Join us for another exciting year of the Purdue English Big Read!