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A Town Like Alice

A Town Like Alice
  • Author(s): Nevil Shute
  • Location(s): Australia, Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Mystery
  • Era(s): 1940s

Bellies

Bellies
  • Author(s): Nicola Dinan
  • Location(s): Cologne (Köln), Kuala Lumpur, London, New York City (NYC)
  • Genre(s): Coming of Age, Fiction, LGBTQIA+
  • Era(s): Contemporary

It begins as your typical boy meets boy. Tom and Ming meet on a night out at university and fall hard for each other. It’s not long before they are planning a future and building a life. Then Ming...

Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green
  • Author(s): Amélie Skoda
  • Location(s): Bethnal Green, London, Penang
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s

Penang, 1971. When Suyin is offered the opportunity of a lifetime – a place as a trainee nurse in London’s Bethnal Green hospital – she jumps at the chance to leave her job as a seamstress and unite with...

How to Find Your (First) Husband

How to Find Your (First) Husband
  • Author(s): Rosie Blake
  • Location(s): Tioman Island
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Romance
  • Era(s): Modern

Isobel Graves moved to LA determined to be the Next Big Thing. Instead, she is dressed as a giant prawn handing out fliers promoting a fish market. Rather than attending glamorous parties and dating exciting men, her evenings consist...

Lies That Blind

Lies That Blind
  • Author(s): E S Alexander
  • Location(s): Penang
  • Genre(s): Historical, Fiction
  • Era(s): 1788

1788, Penang, Malaya: A young man desperate to prove himself becomes enmeshed in the web of deceit woven by an ambitious adventurer whose double-dealing imperils the island’s inhabitants. Malaya, 1788: Aspiring journalist Jim Lloyd jeopardises his future in ways...

Malayan Spymaster

Malayan Spymaster
  • Author(s): Boris Hembry
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs, Historical
  • Era(s): 1930s

A true story of 1930s Malaysia, of jungle operations, submarines and spies in WWII, and of the postwar Malayan Emergency, as experienced by an extraordinary man. Rubber planter Boris Hembry was a part of Freddy Spencer Chapman’s covert Stay...

Railroad of Death

Railroad of Death
  • Author(s): John Coast
  • Location(s): Singapore, Malaysia (Malaya), Thailand
  • Genre(s): Historical, Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): WW2

A bestseller in 1946, Railroad of Death is the first and best account of forced labour on the Burma Railway. John Coast was a young officer in the Norfolk Regiment who was taken prisoner at the Fall of Singapore...

Ru

Ru
  • Author(s): Kim Thuy
  • Location(s): Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Malaysia (Malaya), Montreal
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs, Fiction
  • Era(s): Mid 1970s onwards

Ru: In Vietnamese it means lullaby: in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow – of tears, blood, money. Kim Thúy’s Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the...

Stranded

Stranded
  • Author(s): Emily Barr
  • Location(s): Perhentian Islands
  • Genre(s): Thriller
  • Era(s): Modern

Bruised from the breakdown of her marriage, Esther Lomax needs to get away, and Malaysia’s unspoilt shores seem the perfect place. But a day’s boat trip takes a desperate turn when Esther and six other holidaymakers are taken to...

The Concubine’s Child

The Concubine’s Child
  • Author(s): Carol Jones
  • Location(s): Kuala Lumpur
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1930s and contemporary

In 1930s Malaya a sixteen-year-old girl, dreaming of marriage to her sweetheart, is sold as a concubine to a rich old man desperate for an heir. Trapped, and bullied by his spiteful wife, Yu Lan plans to escape with...

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