The Midnight Children trilogy is a series of dark fantasy novels for children age 8-13 combining Asian mythology and Gothic elements. The characters, ten-year-old Min and twelve-year-old Zak are the main protagonists.
In The Midnight Children: A Vanishing, Zak and Min’s father mysteriously disappears at breakfast and curious things then begin to happen to them. Min encounters two small creatures with spider-like legs, a doll that runs, talks and steals and Shaz, the shaman, who gives her a box with a finger bone inside. Zak is chased by a strange man on all fours in the shopping mall, flees from snakes that interrupt his homework and is visited by a ghostly old lady in his bedroom who happens to love matcha ice cream.
Trying to find their father, they are transported to an eerie world called the Moonlight World where oily creatures want to kidnap and eat them. The novel concludes with Zak vanishing one night during dinner.
Archives: Books
The Midnight Children: Cemetery House
Min is forced to move into the old and haunted Cemetery House where a ghost-boy awaits her in the library. Zak is chased by terrible creatures that drip oil and he can’t get home. This is only the start of the many uncanny events that will happen to them, including having to dig a body out of a grave in the shadowy darkness and a close encounter with a vampire!
Be warned . . . this hair-raising book is not for the faint-hearted!
Don’t you dare scream!
The Midnight Children: The Moonlight World
The Yak-Yaks are on the war path and their awful king wants to eat Min, his prisoner. Zak is desperately trying to rescue his sister but he has been tricked and is about to be flung down a rocky cliff by a ghastly spirit.
And who are the Rising and will they all be slaughtered in one last battle in the desert?
Is this how it will all end? Will their father ever be rescued?
Be warned . . . great excitement awaits you in this final book of the Midnight Children trilogy.
Don’t you dare scream!
Man of Contradictions
Although he has dominated Indonesian politics for years, President Joko Widodo remains an enigmatic figure.
He has consistently defied both his sternest critics and his strongest supporters. A brilliant instinctive politician, Jokowi was resoundingly re-elected in 2019. However, he has struggled to turn success at the ballot box into the transformational change that Indonesia desperately needs.
Jokowi has vowed to turn Indonesia into an Asian powerhouse with a strong economy and the heft to defend its international interests at a time of renewed US-China rivalry. But progress has been slow, and the scale of the challenge is increasing, at home and abroad. As he gets to work in his second and final term, will Jokowi deliver on his grand ambitions? Or will Indonesia once more fall short of expectations?
Man of Contradictions, the first English-language political biography of Jokowi, will examine how he became so popular, what makes him tick, and why he will struggle to remake Indonesia. The key to understanding Jokowi lies not in uncovering some core inner convictions but in embracing his contradictions. He rose from obscurity thanks to Indonesia’s free and fair elections, but he has been a poor guardian of democracy. As an outsider he promised to shake up the corrupt and nepotistic elite, but he has become a consummate transactional politician. As a former factory owner, he pledged to open up the economy to foreign investors, but he has pursued a campaign of nationalisation and prioritised state-owned companies.
Ultimately, the conflicts within Jokowi reflect the profound tensions in a young democracy that is still trying to escape a legacy of colonial oppression and domestic dictatorship, and make its own way in the world.
Borderline Citizen
In Borderline Citizen Robin Hemley wrestles with what it means to be a citizen of the world, taking readers on a singular journey through the hinterlands of national identity. As a polygamist of place, Hemley celebrates Guy Fawkes Day in the contested Falkland Islands; Canada Day and the Fourth of July in the tiny U.S. exclave of Point Roberts, Washington; Russian Federation Day in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad; Handover Day among protesters in Hong Kong; and India Day along the most complicated border in the world.
Forgoing the exotic descriptions of faraway lands common in traditional travel writing, Borderline Citizen upends the genre with darkly humorous and deeply compassionate glimpses into the lives of exiles, nationalists, refugees, and others. Hemley’s superbly rendered narratives detail these individuals, including a Chinese billionaire who could live anywhere but has chosen to situate his ornate mansion in the middle of his impoverished ancestral village, a black nationalist wanted on thirty-two outstanding FBI warrants exiled in Cuba, and an Afghan refugee whose intentionally altered birth date makes him more easy to deport despite his harrowing past.
#HAPPYxCOOL
#HAPPYxCOOL is not one of the usual guidebooks that pretends to know the ultimate way to happiness. The work is not fixated on the personal gathering of as many feelings of happiness as possible and does not deal with happiness or the way to happiness per se. In contrast to the conventional guidebook literature, the authors rather concentrate pragmatically on the many subjective and objective obstacles that usually stand in the way of happiness. They want to motivate and assist the reader to work actively and pro-actively on themselves.
In #HAPPYxCOOL the authors don’t shy away from discussing many unconventional topics such as the important issue of sexuality and happiness, adultery, bad or no sex, or a partner’s obsession with pornographic movies. In a separate section, another influential aspects is discussed in some detail: the conditions at a person’s workplace. This includes, amongst others, career unhappiness, unhappiness caused by toxic co-workers or a disliked boss, excessive work burden, a lack of recognition and being underpaid.
The authors give great importance to the “freedom of mind” and the concept of “being cool”, thus inspiring the reader to free themselves from the constraints of happiness in a way that could be called “cool”.
Lockdown Lovers
Lockdown Lovers is a five-part love story set in lockdown conditions in two regions, Asia and Europe.
In Part I, set in Hong Kong and China, forty-something academic John Ryan goes to the local 24/7 McDonalds every day to record events around him. We also get regular updates and reflections on the time of lockdown from Phoebe Ho, Kwok-ying and a pangolin. Phoebe is a twenty-something Hong Kong activist and recently elected local councilor, Kwok-ying is a government health official, and the pangolin is one of the mammals reported as being at the root of the virus. In Part II, John, Phoebe and Kwok-ying have all had to go into quarantine as they have picked up the virus. John and Phoebe grow closer in unique lockdown conditions. Part II ends on the night before their passionate encounter in Phoebe’s quarantine quarters. Part III is set in lockdown conditions in Ireland, Europe. John’s parents are in the vulnerable category and have been ordered to stay in their homes. John tells no one but his parents that he has returned. He delivers groceries and medicine to his parents’ porch but the pain is too much when he sees them staring at him from twenty feet away behind the porch door. In Part IV, John has come back to Hong Kong from Ireland and is living on his own. Phoebe is caught up in events taking place in Hong Kong. Kwok-ying still sends in his witty comments about the Government. Part V takes place in Hong Kong and China two years after the first outbreak. Each character has moved on, and the pangolin is flourishing.
In this pandemic-ridden world, this novel reminds us how human contact will never cease to be mankind’s saving grace through the darkest times.
The Votive Pen: Writings on Edwin Thumboo
Born of Tamil and Teochew parents, Edwin Thumboo embraced the Protestant faith late in his life. He has a self-confessed fetish for Yeats and Pound and yet completed his doctoral thesis on post-colonial African poetry. He taught himself the Ramayana and I-Ching but found traces of the Odysseus in the shadows of the Merlion. He is brusquely vocal about poetry with a purpose and yet appears a hopeless romantic in his poems about his wife. What happens when a mind which is such a melting pot of brilliant ideas and contrary emotions tries to unscramble
the identity of a country like Singapore which is complex, multiracial, has known a fierce economic growth that has often elbowed aside everything else? The Votive Pen sets out to see Edwin Thumboo’s poetry-steadily and see it whole-without the intervening static of earlier critical writing and with
an intense alertness to the text.
The Secrets of the Sakura Girls
Aged fifteen, Aoki was sold by her father and shipped to Singapore from Japan, where she was bought into the world of prostitution. In a chance encounter with Reverend Harry Gilmore and his nine-year-old son Rupert from England, she finds herself drawn to their domicile life. Indomitable, empathetic and resolute, she is determined to break free of her life of prostitution and live the life she has always dreamt of. Against the backdrop of the savage decapitation of one of Aoki’s Chinese customers, Aoki and Harry’s feelings forge themselves into an unexpected bond. Meanwhile, detective superintendent Karupan, of the island’s police, strives desperately to solve the crime and fend off possible religious riots. In a race against time, will the dreadful crime be solved and will Aoki and Harry’s budding emotions grow into something permanent?
At Night We Are Dancers
This novel spanning seven decades documents the life of Tomas Franco “Cocoy” Sabater and his ascent to becoming one of the Philippines’s most callous vigilante assassins. Punctuated by news clippings from different generations, essays and
accounts from a perceptive journalist, internal monologues, a short children’s story from a failed novelist, and a lingering homage to ballet and kundiman, the story progresses in a non-linear fashion, conscientiously dissecting Sabater’s tumultuous pursuit of reprisal as he tries to fix his disintegrating relationship with his dying wife and growing daughter. At Night We Are Dancers is a story of love and family amidst ever-changing political milieu, as well as understanding existence and purpose, but, above all, embracing redemption in its countless forms.