Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Newsletter Updates

Join Now

Filter:

The Circle of Karma

The Circle of Karma
  • Author(s): Choden Kunzang
  • Location(s): Bhutan, South East Asia
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

The first English-language novel ever written by a woman from the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, The Circle of Karma has engaged and absorbed readers from around the world since its 2005 publication. Written originally in English, it tells the...

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 Day of the Tiger

The Day of the Tiger
  • Author(s): William Peskett
  • Location(s): Thailand
  • Genre(s): Short Stories

Characters whose tales are told in William Peskett’s fourth collection of short stories include a bank teller who suspects murder, an old man who loses his shorts, a butcher reminiscing with his biggest customer and a ladyboy searching for...

The Disappeared

The Disappeared
  • Author(s): Kim Echlin
  • Location(s): Cambodia
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s/Modern

After more than 30 years Anne Greves feels compelled to break her silence about her first lover, and a treacherous pursuit across Cambodia’s killing fields. Once she was a motherless girl from taciturn immigrant stock. Defying fierce opposition, she...

The Dogs at the Perimeter

The Dogs at the Perimeter
  • Author(s): Madeleine Thien
  • Location(s): Cambodia, Montreal
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Looking back at the 1980s

One starless night Janie’s childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from Phnom Penh, Janie and her family were forced to live out in the open: cold, hungry and under constant surveillance. Caught up...

The Flame Tree

The Flame Tree
  • Author(s): Keith Dahlberg
  • Location(s): Burma (Myanmar)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Turn of 21st Century

Returning to Burma to teach for a month, Dr. George Daniels and his wife had not expected to get involved in a war. But a renegade colonel disrupts the balance of power between the military dictatorship and the insurgent...

The Frangipani Hotel

The Frangipani Hotel
  • Author(s): Violet Kupersmith
  • Location(s): Vietnam
  • Genre(s): Short Stories
  • Era(s): Various

A beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is...

The Friend Zone Experiment

The Friend Zone Experiment
  • Author(s): Zen Cho
  • Location(s): London, Singapore
  • Genre(s): Romance
  • Era(s): Present day

From the renowned, award-winning author Zen Cho comes a delightfully funny romance about family, class, and love in modern London. From the outside, Renee Goh’s life looks perfect. She’s thirty and beautiful, running a glamorous–and successful–fashion company in London,...

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...

Would you like to add a book or a review or create a reading list? Join Today – It's FREE

Register Now