Set against a beautifully observed Thailand of the 1950s, this is the story of a young Englishman’s infatuation with a dance-hall hostess named Vilai, who all Bangkok knows as The White Leopard. No ordinary prostitute, Vilai is one of the most memorable in literature’s long line of brazen working girls. An unmitigated liar and brutally transparent about her desire for money Read More

An epic tale of love and loss in WWII Malaya and Singapore.

It’s 1941 and seventeen-year-old Victoria Khoo, daughter of a wealthy family of Straits Chinese, lives in luxury in colonial Singapore. Her carefree days are spent fantasising about marrying Sebastian Boustead, scion of a great British merchant family, Read More

First published in 1956, Han Suyin’s magnificent novel about the Emergency Period in Malaya and Singapore evokes all the colour and conflict of a land where, in the late 1940s and early 50s, a bitter guerrilla war was fought between communist terrorists lurking in the Malayan jungles and British, Australian and New Zealand armed forces. Read More

First published in 1956, Han Suyin’s magnificent novel about the Emergency Period in Malaya and Singapore evokes all the colour and conflict of a land where, in the late 1940s and early 50s, a bitter guerrilla war was fought between communist terrorists lurking in the Malayan jungles and British, Australian and New Zealand armed forces. Read More

Long-term Bangkok resident and former New Orleans cop Bob Turtledove has a knack for getting people out of difficult situations.

So when a young man from Utah goes missing in Bangkok, his parents are soon knocking on Bob’s door asking for help. But what starts out as a simple missing person case takes a deadly turn Read More

Bangkok expatriate Gary Griswold, a millionaire American of Albany old money, goes missing and his ex-wife wants to know what’s happened to him … and his 38 million dollars. It seems religious dilettante Griswold and his money have disappeared deep into Thailand, where corruption has its own etiquette. Soon, Albany’s only gay private detective, Read More

As the Singapore police frequently remind us: ‘low crime does not mean no crime’. But the writers in this book remind us that low crime can definitely mean exciting, imaginative crime.

Strong, riveting stories fill the pages of this volume, the first of its kind in the Lion City. Veteran UK crime and thriller luminary Stephen Leather Read More

British agent Daniel Swann fled Thailand after murdering the son of the Kingdom’s top underworld boss. Now he is back, ordered by his government to recover a small black box from the bottom of the Andaman Sea. Business as usual, he doesn’t ask questions. But as his friends are beheaded one by one and he is pursued by CIA agents, Swann realises Read More

What you don’t see until you read this book: the kennels, the dogmen, the breeding farms.

Coleman Legget, Animal Control officer (aka dog catcher), knows the streets of Palm County: corrupt, fast, and unforgiving. A petty criminal himself, Legget, as he’s called by his friends, learns what real crime is all about. Read More

Orphaned as a young boy in the rainforests of Borneo, Bujang is brought up by a family of orangutans, but his adult future has already been decided for him by Sengalang Burong, the Iban warpath god. On reaching adulthood, Bujang must leave his ape family and serve the warpath god as a warrior and a headhunter. 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

Love and Lust in Singapore is a vibrant collection of twenty-four stories that delves into the diverse love lives of the city-state’s eclectic mix of inhabitants, from the prostitute to the migrant worker, the guilt-ridden expatriate to the fantasizing heartlands housewife.

Leading Singaporean and Read More

Singaporean teenager Lee Jun Yong dreams of becoming a pro fessional footballer. Growing up in a family of humble means, in the shadow of Bedok Stadium, the sixteen-year-old is unsure what the future has in store for him. Read More

What on earth is causing the orangutans of Mukada Nature Reserve to fall sick and head to the coast? Romy Alexander—on a visit to Borneo with her scientist father—isn’t convinced by the park warden’s explanation that overcrowding is the cause of the problem.

The eleven-year-old soon Read More

Distraught oafter a shocking turn of events in Borneo, Romy Alexander arrives in China to witess a wonderful and most unusual gathering on the Great Wall. In the second part of the “Magic Magic” series, the 11-year-old embarks on another nocturnal adventure and is drawn into a mystery Read More

Often described as the best book ever written about the Bangkok bar scene, Private Dancer has been a huge hit around the world as a downloadable e-book. According to Leather, the e-book has been downloaded from the author’s website over 60,000 times in more than forty countries. “I have been getting dozens of emails a week asking for 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

Shadow Play is the first in the series of “Kain Songket Mysteries” set in the northern state of Kelantan, Malaysia during the 1970s. Mak Cik Maryam, a smart and take-charge kain songket (silk) trader in Kota Bharu Central Market, discovers a murder in her own backyard, shattering the bucolic village world she thought surrounded her. Read More

Former British agent Daniel Swann is living in semi-retirement in Hong Kong when he receives a call for help from his old friend Thai drug lord Sami Somsak. Sami’s stepbrother and his family have been murdered, and Sami’s brainchild, the $6-billion Intella Island project, Singapore’s largest offshore construction, is in jeopardy. When Swann attempts Read More

Lawson Banks is terminally ill with stage IV cancer and wants to spend the last days of his life enjoying Thai cuisine on a windy beach in Paradise. It’s the Big Escape so many dream of, but never have the courage to make. But how does he get the cash?

Viatication, also known as death Read More

For newly qualified forensic psychologist Rachel Carson, a three-month tour of Southeast Asia is exactly what the doctor ordered. But from the moment she picks up her first satay stick in Penang, things do not quite go according to plan. Her longterm boyfriend seems more interested in the price of beer than the priceless scenery, Read More

When travellers Ben and Emma come to blows on the idyllic Thai island of Koh Samet, it’s not long before Ben falls for Fon, a flirtatious but enigmatic beach masseuse, and is forced to come to terms with the darker side of tourism in Thailand.

As Ben parties on 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 the fourth and final volume of the The Straits Quartet, Charlotte Macleod is the English concubine. Her love affair with Zhen, wealthy Chinese merchant, is an open scandal to both the English and the Chinese communities.

Singapore in 1860 is a vice-ridden town filled “with the dregs of humanity from two continents”. Read More

The Flight of the Swans is a rich and fascinating family saga set in British India and Malaya. Cursed, and with blood on his hands, Captain Ramdas Rao Bhonlse is forced to flee Killa Fort, which has fallen to the British. A strange flight of swans signals his flight from Killa; a flight that will drive Ramdas and his family into further adversity. Read More

The Flight of the Swans is a rich and fascinating family saga set in British India and Malaya. Cursed, and with blood on his hands, Captain Ramdas Rao Bhonslé is forced to flee Killa Fort, which has fallen to the British. A strange flight of swans signals his flight from Killa; a flight that will drive Ramdas and his family into further adversity. Read More

Young, beautiful and wealthy, widow Charlotte Macleod leaves Batavia in the 1850s and returns to Singapore for the English education of her two young sons. She is determined not to be drawn back into a secret affair with Zhen, the married Chinese merchant, triad-member and man she loves who is, unbeknownst to him, the father of her eldest son, Read More

A mother finds out her son is gay; a daughter finds out her two mothers are lesbians; a niece stumbles upon the body of her dead uncle dressed in his wife’s sarong kebaya; and an old man’s nascent feelings for a Filipino maid lead him back to his suppressed art.

The Lies that Build A Marriage, Read More

It is 1950 and the Federation of Malaya is in the throes of the Malayan Emergency. The British are struggling to defeat the communist terrorists and deal with rising nationalism in the colony.

Ferdach O’Haney arrives in Malaya as a young Anglo-Irish man to serve the Federation government, and he is plunged into the Read More

This endearing nineteenth-century family saga follows the lives, loves and losses of one pioneering family and two escaped convicts as they open up the land in Gippsland, Victoria. The Pioneers won the Hodder and Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia in 1915, giving its author one thousand pounds and the opportunity to launch Read More

A tropical paradise. A freak storm. A dead body. Offi cer Arunchit recognises the victim—and fears it is no accident.

Set in Thailand and England, The Rain Tree brings together an unlikely set of complex characters, each the victim of a personal tragedy, Read More

Like Chinese silk, The Red Thread is, by turns, gentle and strong, exploring a love that breaks through the divide of race and culture, a love that is both deeply physical and a marriage of souls. Set against the backdrop of 1830s Singapore where piracy, crime, triads and tigers are commonplace, this cultural romance follows the struggle 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

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army under General Tomoyuki Yamashita looted untold amounts of gold and other valuables from across its occupied colonies in Southeast Asia to fi nance the empire’s ongoing military expansion. But when the tide of war turned against Japan in 1943, much of this treasure had to be buried in secret. Read More