Charlie Chaplin is on vacation in Asia in 1936 when Cambodians are challenging colonial exploitation. Chaplin must choose: lend his celebrity status to the anti-colonial cause or stay silent. Fictionalised around real events, this is a story about how an embittered Chaplin abandons his silent Tramp in order to find his own voice.
Jakarta, 2014. Hendra is ‿Radikal‿, a techno DJ at the top of his game when a childhood trauma resurfaces. No longer able to find solace in techno and ecstasy, he is presented with a new purpose in life and a focus for his pent-up rage: jihad.
Following the assassination of a British Colonel in a guerrilla ambush by communist terrorists during the Malayan Emergency in 1954, Jason Rance, an English company commander in a Gurkha battalion and jungle expert, is tasked with tracking down the bandits.
In Volume 3 of Penang Chronicles, as the 18th century draws to a close, Penang must fortify and prepare for war, and Francis Light‿s partner, Martinha Rozells, learns to negotiate the murky waters of colonial prejudice and corruption for the sake of her family.
The story of what would become the tipping point of the Malayan Emergency in favour of the security forces is retold against a background of events in Moscow, Darjeeling, Delhi and Calcutta, where senior communist party members plot to infiltrate Gurkha units and destabilise Malaya.
Echoes of footsteps in the hallways make Anna wonder whether rumours of the house being haunted are true. A place with a dark history. Anna bumps into Salimah, and their lives intertwine in unexpected ways. Tensions rise as the house‿s haunting presence grips both women and threatens to upset an already fragile friendship.
When Australian Mark Heyward decides to build a home and raise a family on the island of Lombok, east of Bali, he has little idea of what is to come. Riots and battles, mythical princesses, magical voyages, birth and death, love and loss ‿ the story takes us into the heart of Indonesia.
The eponymous pearl, Martinha Rozells, embodies the rich and diverse heritage of the Straits in the 18th century. Her husband, Captain Light, is the dragon in search of his elusive pearl: a British settlement on the Straits of Malacca. Through their eyes we experience the rich culture of the region and its tumultuous politics.
Philip Goundry is 93, living out his days quietly when a young researcher arrives, wanting to learn more about his former life in Malaya. His memory growing fitful, Philip is torn between wanting to unburden himself and staying silent about the sinister events of his childhood on a Malayan rubber plantation.
Juggling her bookstore job, her family, her friends and worries about her future is keeping Singaporean Mei busy but when a customer is murdered, Mei needs to know why. Taking lessons from her favourite detectives, the always inquisitive bookseller navigates the darker side...
Two weeks before a near-certain death sentence drug smuggler McMillan escapes from a high-security prison in Bangkok, never to be seen in Thailand again.
Before Raffles, before Rajah Brooke, there was Francis Light, the 18th-century trailblazer in the Malay Archipelago. 'Dragon', the first volume of the Penang Chronicles, charts Light‿s colourful adventures in the decades before the settlement of Penang island, the Company‿s first possession in the East Indies.
Unemployed, broke and engaged in a telepathic turf war with a feral cat behind an Okinawa convenience store, 28-year-old Fred Buchanan is hopelessly lost in life. After a fortuitous bet on the island bullfights, he boards a ferry to Kobe then a slow train to Tokyo, chasing shadows of a halogen dream. Rainy Day Ramen and the Cosmic Pachinko is told in two distinct overlapping and interwoven formats. Join Fred's drunken, staggering, metaphysical...
