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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

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...

The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists
  • Author(s): Tan Twan Eng
  • Location(s): Cameron Highlands
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Late 1940s,

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. It’s Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks...

The Ghost Bride

The Ghost Bride
  • Author(s): Yangsze Choo
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1890s

Seventeen-year-old Li Lan lives in 1890s Malaya with her quietly-ruined father, who returns one evening with a proposition – the fabulously wealthy Lim family want Li Lan to marry their son. The only problem is, he’s dead. After a...

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