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The Rescue of Streetcar 304: A Navy Pilot’s Forty Hours on the Run in Laos

The Rescue of Streetcar 304: A Navy Pilot’s Forty Hours on the Run in Laos
  • Author(s): Kenny Wayne Fields
  • Location(s): Laos
  • Genre(s): Nonfiction
  • Era(s): 1968

On 31 May 1968, Lt. Kenny Fields catapulted off USS America in his A-7 for his first combat mission. His target was in Laos, which at the time was officially off limits for US attacks. What the planners did...

The Return

The Return
  • Author(s): K S Maniam
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): pre and post 1957

It is the time for both apprehension and hope. The youthful narrator Ravi witnesses the change in a way of life and the end of a way of thinking. The story depicts the experiences of an immigrant community in...

The Rice Mother

The Rice Mother
  • Author(s): Rani Manicka
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): around WW2

A compelling glimpse into a captivatingly exotic world of myth and magic. Beguiled by promises of wealth, fourteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her native Ceylon for Malaya and marriage to a man many years her senior. But Ayah has lied to...

The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma

The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma
  • Author(s): Thant Myint-U
  • Location(s): Burma (Myanmar)
  • Genre(s): Nonfiction
  • Era(s): Various centuries

For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma–through sanctions and tourist boycotts–only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship....

The River’s Song

The River’s Song
  • Author(s): Suchen Christine Lim
  • Location(s): Singapore
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): late 20th century

Ping, the daughter of Chinatown’s Pipa Queen, loves Weng, the voice of the people, but family circumstances drive them apart. Ping is forced to leave suddenly for the USA, where she creates a different life for herself. Many years...

The Road to Wanting

The Road to Wanting
  • Author(s): Wendy Law-Yone
  • Location(s): Burma (Myanmar)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 20th century

Na Ga was always in search of a better life. But now she sits, alone, in a hotel room in Wanting, a godforsaken town on the Chinese-Burmese border. Plucked from her wild life as a rural eel-catcher, Na Ga...

The Sacred Willow

The Sacred Willow
  • Author(s): Duong Van Mai Elliott
  • Location(s): Vietnam
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): 20th century

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Duong Van Mai Elliott’s The Sacred Willow illuminates recent Vietnamese history by weaving together the stories of the lives of four generations of her family. Beginning with her great-grandfather, who rose from rural...

The Scent of the Gods

The Scent of the Gods
  • Author(s): Fiona Cheong
  • Location(s): Singapore
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1960s

The Scent of the Gods tells the enchanting, haunting story of a young girl’s coming of age in Singapore during the tumultuous years of its formation as a nation. Eleven-year-old Su Yen bears witness to the secretive lives of...

The Secret of the Purple Lake

The Secret of the Purple Lake
  • Author(s): Yaba Badoe, Gbolahan Adams (Illustrator)
  • Location(s): Ghana, Norway, Orkney Islands, Spain, Thailand
  • Genre(s): Young Adult
  • Era(s): N/A

The Secret of the Purple Lake is a collection of five interlinked stories that take us from Ghana to Orkney, and from Spain to Norway and Thailand. As a minor character from one story assumes a major role in...

The Silk Merchant’s Daughter

The Silk Merchant’s Daughter
  • Author(s): Dinah Jefferies
  • Location(s): Vietnam
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1950s

1952, French Indochina. Since her mother’s death, eighteen-year-old half-French, half-Vietnamese Nicole has been living in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Sylvie. When Sylvie is handed control of the family silk business, Nicole is given an abandoned silk...

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