“She wanted something else…something better. Passion and perfection were out there somewhere. All she had to do was find them.”
Emma Bovary is a young woman who wants a life complete opposite to that which she lives, every day for her is a reminder of that perfection seeking her elsewhere. Her marriage to Charles Bovary, a kind but dull country doctor, falls short of her fantasies.
As Emma becomes increasingly depressed with her reality, she embarks on a series of adulterous affairs, seeking the fulfilment that eludes her. The elegant prose of the writing perfectly shows Emma’s inner turmoil and the stark contrast between her illusions and the harsh realities of life.
Will Emma be proven right in her quest? Or will she ultimately learn that satisfaction only comes from within, and our circumstances are ultimately nothing but perception.
‘I learned to look up to heaven, and to fear none but God.’
Robinson Crusoe is a young Englishman who embarks on a fateful journey to a deserted island in the Caribbean. After a shipwreck and some misadventures, Crusoe finds himself stranded on the uninhabited island, without any human being in sight.
The only tools he had were his determination, and presence of mind; armed with those he begins to adapt to his new environment, building shelter, growing crops, and taming animals. Soon he realised, that ultimate peace is in connecting with the environment around you and striving hard to build the life you deserve, irrespective of the circumstances.
Is will power and strong mindset enough to conquer the most challenging circumstances? This gripping tale of Robinson Crusoe is a testament to the human knack for survival, resilience, and the importance of self-discovery.
“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”
Jane Eyre, a simple and solid young woman, grew from an orphaned child to a responsible adult with an immense sense of independence and self-worth. With the ambition to work as a house manager she reached Thornfield Hall.
As fate would have it, she falls in love with her handsome, quiet and intimidating employer Edward Rochester. Jane brings to Edward a sense of calmness and being at home, which his mansion could never give him. But their happiness is threatened by a terrible secret that Rochester is hiding. Edward Rochester passionately in love with Jane, is haunted by his past.
When the truth comes out will Edward be able to save their love, keep Jane from leaving? Can Jane learn to trust the love, and that newfound home will be hers forever?
These stories, many of which riff on traditional Japanese folk tales and lore, explore the lives of individuals caught between desire and duty, as well as the conflicting expectations of different cultures.
For example, in ‘Day Pass,’ a college student in South Carolina befriends a female prisoner on a work release program, thinking that she will be a good influence, but then realizes that she has gotten in over her head. In ‘Blue Murder,’ a Japanese farmer troubled by the crows eating his pears becomes besotted with a kingfisher. The narrator of ‘Down the Mountain,’ a descendant of the Heike clan, recounts the tragic life and death of her beloved sister as she urges her own daughter to leave their secluded mountain village and go out into the world, and in the title story, ‘River of Dolls,’ a Japanese woman struggles with infertility.
Ranging from dirty to magical realism, the stories collected here are often infused with humor, while exposing universal truths.
A Rei of Sunshine is a coming-of-age tale that weaves together the threads of two former lovers separated by circumstance over many years. When the recently divorced Ari receives an invitation from Fyra to attend her wedding, he jumps on the chance. But as Ari arrives at the wedding, all is not as it seems, and he is catapulted into what he already knew would be a difficult and complicated situation.
With the addition of a mysterious dream world and strange occurrences happening around Fyra’s daughter Rei, it seems that where Ari’s found himself is even more supernaturally complex than he can comprehend.
When successful London real estate agent, Isabelle Goh, is left close to death in an attempted assassination, Detective Ayesha Nur begins a case that not only brings her face to face with her own demons, but sends her on a journey to unravel Goh’s long-hidden secrets. What happened a half-century ago in post-colonial Singapore? Who was baby Rosie and how did her disappearance so many years in the past lead to the shooting in modern-day London?
UNTIL EVEN THE ANGELS, Suzanne Scott Tomita’s debut literary crime novel, is a story of class division in a rapidly changing world, childhood friendships gained and lost, and bonds that erode, but can never be erased.
The three famous girls have it all: the looks, the fame, and the boys.
GALE, the perfect girl from an old money family with a reputation to uphold and a secret no one can ever find out.
PAPANG, a scandalous girl with hundreds of one-night stand stories.
And QUEEN, a gorgeous yet deadly girl who always gets everything she desires, one way or another.
The three of them are inseparable. Then everything changes when someone murder Queen on a happy April Fool’s Night, leaving the other girls devoid of their memories.
Gale wakes up on her elite boyfriend’s bed and decides to go along with his lies, even though she knows full well the guy who left a kiss mark on her last night was not him.
And as Papang finds herself sleeping on a garbage dump without a clue how she got there, her instinct says she must have been with a guy. What’s worse is that he might be the one she shouldn’t be with.
As all the darkest secrets Queen kept inside are revealed one by one, it becomes clearer that almost everyone has a reason to kill her, including her own best friends who are drowning in their own lies while trying to protect themselves by pointing fingers at each other.
But in the end, nothing is as it seems, and no matter how shocking the truth may be, they will finally see who exactly Queen is.
And why she has to die.
Farm-laborer-turned-artist Vance Igorta returns to the Philippines as a balikbayan after nearly fifty years in the United States. He is a member of the Manong Generation, the largest diaspora of Filipinos who worked physically demanding jobs, mostly in California’s agricultural fields.
Coming home to a country on the brink of becoming a dictatorship, Vance’s paintings shift from abstractions to didactic, political art to better reflect the rebellion that he eventually joins. Didacticism also facilitates his meditations on the impact of leaving his birthland to become a powerless Manong and then an impoverished artist of color in New York.
The Balikbayan Artist—inspired by and dedicated to Venancio C. Igarta (1912–2000), the real-life leading artist of the Manong Generation—takes readers from the early twentieth century to the present day when Vance Igorta’s art is being discovered anew. His legacy is validated for allowing his art to address the tensions of his time instead of keeping it solely entrenched in aesthetic concerns. The artist’s choice reflects what Vance Igorta learned as a voraciously self-educated person: that in circumstances where power corrupts, what makes anyone and everyone dangerous is love.
‘I’ve seen a lot of things in my time, but nothing comes close to this. I’ve never seen a body in that condition.’
In the heart of Kuala Lumpur, the naked body of a prominent investigative journalist is found in a foetal position with the hands covering her face. As forensic investigators attempt to move her hands, they discover that the entire skin of her face has been surgically removed. Fresh off their last case, Inspector Alysha (Aly) and her partner, Inspector Raj from CID Bukit Aman are assigned to investigate the murder.
As Aly and Raj embark on their investigation, more bodies of young women pile up in the same cryptic manner. Their investigative trail takes them from Kuala Lumpur to the tea plantations of Cameron Highlands and from there on to the quiet, sleepy town of Teluk Intan where they slowly begin to unravel secrets from the past that are seemingly linked to the case.
Before they know it, Aly and Raj find themselves on a quest to hunt their most dangerous adversary yet, someone with a dark past and an even darker mind, who is driven by something that none of us would ever think could twist the human mind to such an outré extent.
This is not a ghost story. This is a love story.
Lily witnesses a profound change in life as she moves to the Netherlands due to her mother’s diplomatic duties. Amid the classroom cruelty and shattered teenage dreams, affairs with a supernatural twist add to Lily’s troubles as a local legend featuring an attractive ghost, known as the Heartbreaker, plagues the town.
Beware! Don’t let your heart fall for his mystical charm! Ghostlore has it, he spellbinds girls into becoming his eternal lovers in the afterworld.
A forbidden game to summon the Heartbreaker turns into a cruel prank by her bullies, resulting in supernatural chaos. Lily ends up being haunted by the ghost, who alternates between terrorizing her and defending her against her enemies, forging a romantic, paranormal bond.
When this bond is threatened by sceptics and forces outside the couple’s control, will their love triumph in blurring the boundary of reality and fantasy? Or will the grip of logic force them to part?
