Phoebe Wong would do anything to escape a British winter. But it may cost her more than her airfare.
Sunsets, tacos and margaritas all sound perfect to exhausted forty-three-year-old single mum Phoebe with a dead-end job in Southwark. When her long distance boyfriend in New York invites her to meet him in Florida, she couldn’t wait to jump on a plane with her toddler. Arriving with her teething child at her boyfriend’s Key West ‘vacay home’ before him, she is robbed on her first night. With no money, cards or passports, she is grateful for the support of friendly locals. At a BBQ, she meets an old expat British businessman. Her boyfriend arrives eventually, apologetic, and takes her out to a posh seafood dinner. But when the British expat is shot that night in the same restaurant’s car park, Phoebe is trapped in a put-up job, and her boyfriend’s delayed arrival is suspiciously timed. If this place has turned darker and chillier than London, she wants out.
Will she be able to pull herself and her daughter away from danger?
Archives: Books
The Mouse’s Daughter is Getting Married
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness.
The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of renowned Chinese children’s literature Mei Zihan.
On the third day of the lunar new year, adults will always tell their children to go to bed early. They believe that on the evening of this day, the mouse’s daughter is going to get married. Read on to find out why!
The Butterfly Lovers
Chang’e Flying to the Moon
Lady Meng Jiangnu
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness. The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of renowned Chinese children’s literature Mei Zihan.
Lady Meng Jiangnu is an important Chinese tale about devotion and love. Lady Meng Jiangnu’s husband was pressed into service and sent as labourer to build the Great Wall of China. He died while building the Wall and upon hearing this news, Lady Meng Jiangnu wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed. Her pain brought to fore the atrocities of the unkind ruler.
Mulan
The unique Chinese-style illustrations will engage children and the stories will instill wise oriental philosophies of life such as diligence, courage and kindness. The books were written and illustrated by award-winning authors and artists. The team has won awards such as Feng Zikai Chinese Childen’s Picture Book Award, Hsin Yi Picture Book Award, Bingxin Children’s Literature Award and Hong Kong Youth Literary Awards. The series was reviewed by consultant Dr Wang Jing, a professor of children’s literature at Shanghai Normal University and a student of renowned Chinese children’s literature Mei Zihan.
Hua Mulan’s extraordinary act of disguising herself as a man to contribute to the fight against the enemy is a story that would be told for many centuries to come.
Unquiet Heart Soliloquy
In modern-day China, a man has travelled to Shanghai on impulse to meet his online lover Luna, but she refuses to see him and soon disappears without a trace. He tries to forget her by immersing himself in dating apps, and also learns to appreciate the nuances within everyday Chinese life while he adjusts himself to mainland China as a member of the greater overseas Chinese diaspora. As the seasons change he falls in love with a budding photographer named Sofia, but with traces of Luna constantly reappearing in his life, will he ever find a way out of his unquiet predicament?
Unquiet Heart Soliloquy is Dano Chow’s debut novel, a confessional account of one’s turning to dating apps for comfort in times of loneliness, in the hope that one casual outing after another will somehow be enough to fulfil a generational desire for intimacy.
The Return on Kindness
The world needs leaders who have the strength to be kind. The Return on Kindness challenges companies to set a higher bar and reimagine what great leadership looks like. Kindness isn’t what you think it is. Kind leaders, far from being soft or weak, are caring and tough.
The Return on Kindness makes a compelling, evidence-based case for why kind leadership is good for business and how kind leaders create value through prioritizing the mental health and wellbeing of their people. Bonnie Hayden Cheng, organizational psychologist, researcher, and consultant to Fortune 500 companies, combines extensive research, storytelling, and in-depth interviews with influential executives across a wide range of industries to reveal the transformative power of kindness in driving business success.
The Return on Kindness provides a simple but impactful RISE framework to inspire kind leadership, accompanied by practical touchpoints for successfully implementing kind leadership in organizations.
Healers: A Novel
Set in the Philippine island of Cebu and spanning a wide expanse of the country’s history, Healers is the first book in a three-novel series that follows the lives of Luis, Armand and Victoria, three immortal children with supernatural skills who are trained in the healing arts.
After centuries of practicing healing, they grow weary of life eternal and become envious of what adults can do that children can’t. Deciding to shed their immortality and grow into adulthood, the three carve their own identities and paths in life, clinging on to the remnants of the immortal powers they once had to fulfil their dreams, aspirations, and innermost desires.
It is only generations later, in the second decade of the 21st century, that misfortune and modern-day societal maladies truly begin to complicate the lives of Luis, Armand, and Victoria, thrusting them into conflicts and existential struggles. And the three, bound together by their shared past, present, and future, will have to choose once more if they are willing to do what it takes to live forever again.
4 Pax to Emptiness
Four people from the tiny, wealthy, hypermodern nation of Singapore visit a remote village in the heart of China. It’s almost forty years since the end of a great famine, hardly known to the world outside China, but psychic echoes of that agony still reverberate through the cosmos. It is the Singaporeans’ task to try to heal that spiritual trauma. When the dead have been universally recognised and mourned for, the ‘hungry ghosts’ will be at peace.
The four are Peter, Katrina, Lumy and Alex: a cripple, a yuppie, a tai-tai and a businessman. On their quest they grow in self-understanding and wisdom, through the guidance of a good spirit named Bezalia.
The story is an amusing closeup of Singaporeans as you’ve never seen them before: four insular people confronting cosmic issues, pragmatists on a spiritual quest. It is also a declaration that transcendence is within everyone’s reach.