Catagory: Fiction

Tian, a middle-aged man, moves into an old flat that had once belonged to his late father, to live out the rest of his life. As he goes about his days, he starts to reminisce about his childhood in a kampong in Singapore in the 1950s, and his friendship with Heng Chong, a schoolmate.
Growing up, making their own fun and mischief, the boys developed a close friendship that was tested by the sudden appearance of a stray dog in their kampong. As secrets abounded and lies crept into their lives, a spark of retaliation soon set off a chain of events that led inevitably to an unforeseen tragedy that threw a long dark shadow over Tian’s life.
As he looks back to find the answers to the mystery that surrounded this tragedy, Tian gains a deeper understanding of his own past and the true nature of loss, regret, and redemption, and discovers new hope and a new life imbued with resilience, fortitude, and purpose.

The Rosales House is a contemporary novel about Claire Rosales, a twenty-eight year old advertising executive in Singapore, who hails from a powerful political clan in the Philippines. Claire’s orderly life in Singapore is disrupted by the death of her influential grandmother Gloria Rosales. With Gloria’s demise, Claire loses her constant support and her strongest pillar especially after her broken wedding engagement. Moreover, the Rosales estate is now divided and the clan will have to rely more on Claire’s uncle, Ric, a congressman, for their public face. Claire knows only too well, though, that Ric is not the charismatic family man he pretends to be.

Only Ethan Hicks knows what happened up on the mountain, for everyone else is dead. Hundreds of them, hundreds of westerners, their bodies yet to be recovered from the devastated commune that sits high above the Kullu Valley.

It’s an unfolding tragedy that has caught the attention of the world’s media, and pressure is rapidly growing on the Indian authorities to provide answers. For them, of course, Ethan—found barely alive at the foot of the mountain—is the key to everything.

And the account he gives to investigators will prove extraordinary: of a remote commune that grew beyond recognition through a simple quirk of fate. Of a harmonious society that became driven by greed. Of a paradise befouled by its own inhabitants.

Yet, for all of Ethan’s candour, there were some events that took place on the mountain of which he cannot speak—dark, terrible secrets that he intends to take to his grave.

A collection of science fiction that borders on science possible, Virtual Center and Other stories brings to you some brilliant, adventurous possibilities of our tech-dominant lives.
Virtual Center is the first in this collection and is the 2002 Palanca Awards first-prize winner for Futuristic Fiction. It tells the story of rich people who have chosen to live the rest of their lives virtually while poor people care for them–until a young anarchist attempts to disrupt the system. Hatchling refers to the monster tiyanak of Philippine supernatural lore. The Creator Defends His Creation is the testimony of a man standing trial for fraud for building an android and getting him elected as president. By the Light of the Moon introduces an alien figure from Venus who revels in being hailed as the goddess Haliya, protector of the timid moon god. The Sincerest Form of Flattery is the story of a girl who maintains a lifelong resentment against her younger sister, a clone of her grandmother. The Beautiful and the Whole is a post-apocalyptic story in which a nation, in an attempt to rejuvenate its population after a devastating world war, has instituted restrictive laws regarding marriage and reproduction.

Riverrun is a rite-of-passage novel on the life of Danilo Cruz, a young gay man who
grows up in a colourful and chaotic military dictatorship in the Philippines. Shaped
like a memoir, it glides from childhood to young adulthood in chapters written like
flash fiction and vignettes, along with a recipe for shark meat, a feature article,
extracts from a poem and vivid songs. It can be classified as literary fiction, that is
nevertheless accessible to the general reader.

No subject, we’re all starting to admit, is as relevant as climate change. Our Sands is set in and around one of the least sustainable projects on the planet-the tar sands in Alberta, Canada. They inspire increasingly militant ‘ecoteurs’ who feel that one big dose of poison is the only way to stop the poisoning of land, water and First Nations peoples.
Seventeen year-old Ocean Janak has grown up the privileged daughter of Blake, a geologist turned oil executive. When she falls for Rory McAllister, a bike courier who secretly scans many of the oil contracts he’s paid to deliver, she finds a lover and comrade-in-green-arms. Together, they say No to help the planet say Yes.
Like Margaret Atwood, Our Sands knows that climate change is in fact ‘everything change’.

In the twilight hours of a day in March, Biru Laut was ambushed by four unknown men. Together with his friends, Daniel, Sunu and Alex, he was taken to an unknown location. For months they were held captive, interrogated, beaten and tortured into answering one sole question: Who stood behind the rebellious student movements at that time?
Biru Laut’s younger sister, who, along with other family members of kidnapped student activists, struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together and to find answers to their never-ending questions.
While her parents appear to be in denial and remain hopeful that Biru Laut will one day come back to sit at the family table again, Asmara Jati engages alongside the Missing Persons Commission Team led by Aswin Pradana in order to strive to find traces of those who went missing and to record the testimonies of those who returned.
This stirring story of Biru Laut and his friends is the story of the desaparecidos of Indonesia. It is the story of a momentous-and still seldom written about-period of Indonesian history that led to the end of dictatorship in Indonesia.