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Fragile Monsters

Fragile Monsters
  • Author(s): Catherine Menon
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1920 to present

Mary is a difficult grandmother for Durga to love. She is sharp-tongued and ferocious, with more demons than there are lines on her palms. When Durga visits her in rural Malaysia, she only wants to endure Mary, and the...

Olivia and Sophia

Olivia and Sophia
  • Author(s): Rosie Milne
  • Location(s): Java, Malaysia (Malaya), Singapore, Sumatra
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 19th Century

Two audacious women; one remarkable man … When Raffles sets sail from the cold, damp confines of Georgian London to make his name and fortune in the tropics, he takes with him his new wife, Olivia, a raffish beauty...

The Hour before Dawn

The Hour before Dawn
  • Author(s): Sara MacDonald
  • Location(s): Bay of Islands, Malaysia (Malaya), Singapore
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s and modern

rich, multi-generational saga, set in Singapore and New Zealand. The mysterious disappearance of a young child sets in motion a series of events that will haunt future generations of the family. Singapore in the 1970s. A handsome army officer...

The House of Doors

The House of Doors
  • Author(s): Tan Twan Eng
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya), Penang
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Early 20th Century

It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes...

The Night Tiger

The Night Tiger
  • Author(s): Yangsze Choo
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1930s

In 1930s colonial Malaya, a dissolute British doctor receives a surprise gift of an eleven-year-old Chinese houseboy. Sent as a bequest from an old friend, young Ren has a mission: to find his dead master’s severed finger and reunite...

The Parasol Flower

The Parasol Flower
  • Author(s): Karen Quevillon
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya), Hampshire
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1896 and contemporary

Nancy Roach has fled her dissertation advisor for Paris, where her PhD research is proving fruitless. When her curiosity is piqued by an illustration of “The Parasol Flower” in a 19th century treatise, she is drawn into the life...

The Separation

The Separation
  • Author(s): Dinah Jefferies
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1950s

A country at war with itself, a family divided and betrayed, a bond that can never be broken… Malaya, 1955. Lydia Cartwright returns from visiting a sick friend to an empty house. The servants are gone. The phone is dead. Where...

The White Pearl

The White Pearl
  • Author(s): Kate Furnivall
  • Location(s): Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): WW2

Malaya, 1941. As the glamorous wife of a plantation owner, Connie Hadley appears to lead a pampered and comfortable life. But she is hiding devastating secrets that could destroy her marriage. Life is changed for ever on the day...

Bamboo Heart

Bamboo Heart
  • Author(s): Ann Bennett
  • Location(s): London, Penang, Singapore, Thailand
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1930s/40s and 1980s

The First in the Bamboo Trilogy. Thailand, 1943: Thomas Ellis, captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore, is a prisoner-of-war on the Death Railway. In stifling heat he endures endless days of clearing jungle, breaking stone and...

Circumstance

Circumstance
  • Author(s): Rosie Milne
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1920s

What happens when an adoring young bride is met on the doorstep of her new home by her husband s former mistress? Frank, Rose and Nony are about to find out. It is 1924 and the British rule Malaya....

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