As the good ship McCarthy wends its way from the UK to China across troubled waters, Susan and Howard – two employees in a shipping and logistics company – establish an extraordinary friendship in cyberspace. Entrusted with ensuring the timely delivery of a valuable cargo, they discuss everything under the sun (and then some) as their relationship develops with each passing port of call.
Only Connect examines the very nature of human interaction and the desperate need for connection in an increasingly fraught world in which things are not always what they might seem. The Asian leg of the ship’s journey leads to a potentially catastrophic geopolitical flashpoint, as revelations are made that result in dramatic and fascinating consequences.
Lee Yang searches desperately for Snow amid the carnage of the 2002 Bali bombings. From Singapore’s worst fire in 1961, their lives, and later their love, have woven through years of struggle and separation. When a secret that has lain hidden for over 30 years comes to light and the truth unfolds, they are pulled apart. Now, in the face of Indonesia’s worst terror attack in its history, they risk losing one another yet again.
In this novel spanning over four decades, the five elements of fire, water, earth, air and spirit display their power in the lives of Yang, Snow and those around them-an intimate and heart-rending exploration of love and loss, loneliness and courage, scarring and healing.
It is 1949, and young Etienne Legast is in trouble. Estranged from his pious Catholic family, having fled a messy love affair with an older man at the end of the war, he returns home to Paris for a funeral, only to find himself quick drawn into a deadly debt to a neighborhood gangster and an unexpected romance with Samphan, an orphaned Cambodian student radical. Though the two young men come from different worlds, they soon develop a bond that helps them transcend their respective tragedies – until revolutionary political intrigues and the Parisian underworld threaten to pull them under once more.
Philip Montfort is a man of contradictions. He is an Anglo-Indian born in British India and torn between his Part-Caucasian heritage and his Indian identity. Born into a vanishing aristocratic family with fading fortunes, his life is a struggle to reconcile his circumstances with his desires and to render a true account of himself. He is irreligious but a seeker of truth and authenticity. After studying law at Cambridge, and being denied a place in both England and India, he seeks instead to make life anew in the Colonies – specifically in the bustling, ecstatic British outpost of Singapore.
There, he is drawn into the orbit of young, privileged intellectuals like himself who seek truth just as he does, while gorging and stupefying themselves with layers of luxury. They call themselves the Asiatic Club and commission themselves to doing civic works in the lead up to the War. More secretive however are their preparations to form a stay-behind auxiliary in the event that Singapore is occupied.
When War reaches Singapore in the early forties, the excess is stripped away and each member of this exclusive coterie is forced to confront their true selves as they make sacrifices and compromises of character. While fighting as a reserve officer in the British Indian Army’s III Corps, Philip is captured as a prisoner-of-war. Thereafter, he is convinced to join the Axis-collaborationist Indian National Army under its mercurial but brilliant leader, Subhas Chandra Bose.
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.
A moving tale of courage and love, set against the Zamboanga crisis in the Southern Philippines in the
1970s.
In Below the Crying Mountain, the Moro Rebellion that broke out in the Sulu archipelago in the 1970s, and that continues to wound the nation, is seen vividly through the lives of the mestiza Rosy Wright, the Tausug girl Nahla, the rebel leader Prof. Hassan, the soldier Capt. Rodolfo as well as in the quest of the book’s narrator. The personal is political as war fuels the clash of emotions, histories and cultures. The story traces the lives of Jolo residents Rosy France Wright, a half-American girl who elopes with a Muslim professor from Christian Zamboanga to Muslim Jolo, leaving behind her husband-without-ceremony, Omar Hassan, her best friend, Nahla, a Tausug girl and Jolo local, Captain Rodolfo, who becomes Nahla’s lover. The events take place against the backdrop of the escalation of communal and other tensions during the 70’s and 80’s. Through the eyes of the narrator the reader is able to follow the transformation of Jolo—from its former glory days of prestigious parties to the ushering in of a new era of more zealous religious observance.
