In 1953, Peter Mooney, an adventurous young Irishman and newly qualified advocate — the Scottish equivalent of a barrister — decided to forsake the stately precincts of Parliament House and the Advocates Library in the historic city of Edinburgh and accept the position of Crown Counsel, Sarawak in far-off Borneo. All thoughts of returning to the elegant world of Edinburgh were soon forgotten, however, as he became Read More

Considered one of the world’s most popular holiday destinations, the tropical island of Bali in Indonesia has long been the site for Western fantasies about paradise. Millions of tourists visit the Island of the Gods every year, from families treating the kids to a beach holiday to single men looking for cheap booze and sex. And for many young Westerners and Singaporeans, hardcore partying Read More

In this first-ever compendium of erotic writing from Singapore, we are presented with a selection of short stories, poetry and narrative nonfiction that is as hot and steamy as the city-state itself.

From the Indonesian maid to the Singaporean prostitute, the local schoolteacher to the American expatriate, the twenty-seven contributions Read More

This is the follow-up volume to Monsoon’s bestselling Best of Singapore Erotica. This time around, there are 19 stories from well-known authors in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

Traipsing through the pages of this steamy collection is a colourful cavalcade of adventurers, maids, masseurs, prostitutes, transsexuals, Read More

‘Two-timing bargirls, suspicious spouses and lesbian lovers—it was all in a day’s work for Bangkok Private Eye Warren Olson.’

For more than a decade Olson walked the mean streets of the Big Mango. Fluent in Thai and Khmer, he was able to go where other Private Eyes feared to tread.

His clients Read More

Tropical = Paradise, right? Wrong! Travel writer Stu Lloyd simply wanted to enjoy seamless sunshine, frolic in azure waters with dusky maidens, and drink chilled beers in exotic climes—all at the publisher’s expense. Too much to ask? Apparently so … In this riotous romp through The Tropics, Stu often finds more Purgatory than Paradise, more Hell Read More

Stamford Raffles is that rarest of things — a colonial figure who is forgotten at home but still remembered with affection abroad.

Born into genteel poverty in 1781, he joined the East India Company at the age of fourteen and worked his way up to become Lieutenant Governor of Java when the British seized that island for some five years in 1811. Read More

Many men dream of running away to a tropical island and living surrounded by beauty and exotic exuberance. Walter Spies did more than dream. He actually did it.

In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies — ethnographer, choreographer, film maker, natural historian and painter — transformed the perception of Bali Read More

Set in Sumatra in the 1950s, Jaipong Dancer is a story of lost innocence and complex moral dilemmas. It follows the journey of Yahyu, a young Javanese dancer, who runs away from a forced marriage and becomes unwittingly involved in the violent struggle for Sumatra’s independence from Jakarta. Read More

Prowling the seedy red-light districts, the underground club circuit and the house parties of wealthy Indonesian society, Moammar Emka offers a unique glimpse into the underbelly of modern, urban Jakarta.

Jakarta Undercover features:
• sex-for-sale in chauffeur-driven SUVs
• sashimi sex
• desperate Read More

After the enormous success of Jakarta Undercover, Moammar Emka is back with more on the seedy nightlife and underground sex servics of modern, hip Jakarta. Delving deep into the city’s karaoke clubs, massage parlours and transit hotels, the author takes it upon himself to experience first-hand the tasty delights on offer and what exactly Read More

This is 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. Read More

Dining out on dim sum and looking for the perfect wine to accompany your meal? Wondering which bottle to uncork when serving up Thai? In Pairing Wine with Asian Food, enologist, wine judge, and wine writer Edwin Soon explores the most important theories of matching wine and Asian cuisine. Discover hundreds of inspired food and wine marriages from Cambodia, Read More

On a hot August afternoon in 1811, an army of 10,000 British redcoats splashed ashore through the muddy shallows off Batavia (the former name of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital) to conquer the Dutch colony of Java. They would remain there for five turbulent years. Read More

Sexy, entertaining, and thoroughly informative, Red-light Nights, Bangkok Daze is a collection of reports that offers a glimpse into what is enticing, insightful, and possibly unknown about sex in Asia. It looks at the sex scenes and unseens in the ‘usual suspects’ of Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Japan as well as in less obvious countries such Read More

‘I’ve not slept for seventy hours or more, walking, watching, waiting, praying for the end of this nightmare from which, at some stage, I must wake. But the reality is beginning to set in and I know only too well that, at least in this life, I shall never speak openly with my son. Never again shall I laugh with him, drink with him, Read More

It is the First World War and Julius Lauterbach is a German prisoner of war in the old Tanglin barracks of Singapore. He is also a braggart, a womaniser and a heavy drinker and through his bored fantasies he unwittingly triggers a mutiny by Muslim troops of the British garrison and so throws the whole course of the war in doubt. The British Read More

It is the First World War and the Flashmanesque German naval reserve captain, Julius Lauterbach, is a prisoner of war in the old Tanglin barracks of Singapore. He is also a braggart, a womaniser and a heavy drinker and through his bored fantasies he unwittingly triggers a mutiny by Muslim troops of the British garrison — the 1915 Singapore Mutiny Read More

‘I was looked at, criticized, and after much bargaining sold for $250.’

So begins Janet Lim’s ordeal as a mui tsai, or slave girl, in 1930s Singapore. But this is only the beginning of a remarkable journey, which sees the author freed from child bondage to assume a position of leadership, and obtain true happiness, Read More

In 1942 a ship carrying 500 escapees from Japanese-occupied Singapore set sail from Padang for Ceylon. Halfway to safety she was torpedoed and sank. Amidst the horror and confusion, only one lifeboat was launched—a lifeboat built to carry twenty-eight but to which 135 souls now looked to for salvation.

For twenty-six days she drifted across Read More

Gardens are magical places – images of Nature and Culture, models of paradise, spaces where plants live in war and peace, co-operation and competition. It is 1942 and Singapore is Syonanto, part of the Japanese Empire, where violence and starvation stalk the streets but in the Singapore Botanic Gardens a bizarre tranquillity reigns between warring nations and even love awakes Read More

In this sequel to The Red Thread, Charlotte Macleod is nineteen, pregnant, and alone in 1842. She is fleeing a scandalous liaison with her married Chinese lover, a liaison which would bring ruin on him, herself, and her brother, Robert, the police chief of Singapore. When Tigran Manouk, forty, and the richest merchant in Batavia, Read More

Weakend by hunger, thirst and ill-treatment, author Charles McCormac, then a World War Two prisoner-of-war in Japanese-occupied Singapore, knew that if he did not escape he would die. With sixteen others he broke out of Pasir Panjang camp and began an epic two-thousand-mile escape from the island of Singapore, through the jungles of Indonesia to Read More