Books published by Monsoon Books

Juggling her bookstore job, her family, her friends and worries about her future is keeping Singaporean Mei busy but when a customer is murdered, Mei needs to know why. Taking lessons from her favourite detectives, the always inquisitive bookseller navigates the darker side...

Unemployed, broke and engaged in a telepathic turf war with a feral cat behind an Okinawa convenience store, 28-year-old Fred Buchanan is hopelessly lost in life. After a fortuitous bet on the island bullfights, he boards a ferry to Kobe then a slow train to Tokyo, chasing shadows of a halogen dream. Rainy Day Ramen and the Cosmic Pachinko is told in two distinct overlapping and interwoven formats. Join Fred's drunken, staggering, metaphysical odyssey from Okinawa to Tokyo, and his search for meaning beyond the physical path trodden. The novel blends Murakami-esque magical realism with a coming-of-age on-the-road story.

Arthur Grimsby is an ageing museum curator in 1960s Singapore. He fears Singapore's looming independence and his redundancy and tries to complete one final piece of work: the life story of an real-life eccentric 19th-century Englishman called Alexander Hare. Hare was a slave-owner, the epitome of masculine, colonial exploitation, and the creator of an Asian harem initially in Borneo and then on an uninhabited atoll that would become the Cocos-Keeling Islands.

On the Thai island of Koh Samui, Thanikarn, a masseuse with traditional values, has never fallen in love - until she meets Lucas, a dashing French American musician. After a brief and passionate affair, Lucas returns home and Thanikarn doubts she'll ever see him again. Will Thanikarn find out what has become of Lucas? Will their lives ever cross again? Only unforeseen events and the gift of a song will decide.

In post-WWII Laos, Vietnamese communists secretly commence to infiltrate the kingdom. They are countered by four dedicated Lao 'moles' who try to thwart these aims. Gurkha Colonel Jason Rance is unwittingly dragged into a confrontation between one of the Lao moles and a Thai spy and the mole gives him a ring as a reward for saving his life. During his appointment in Laos as military attaché, Rance becomes a target of the KGB and of the Vietnamese communists, and is sought by the remaining three Lao moles because of the ring in his possession.

Hungry Ghosts is the volume three in the Singapore Saga, a series of historical fiction covering the early years of Singapore, and follows Forbidden Hill and Chasing the Dragon.

In 1943 on Bougainville Island, New Guinea, a Japanese officer beheads Hugh Rand, an Australian spy -- a coast watcher. But Rand's influence transcends his death. For decades he plagues characters who strive to cope with him and one another in New Guinea, the Gilbert Islands, Australia and Japan. The layers unfold as the author entices us through cultural, historical and intellectual curtains, deep into minds and relationships disturbed by the Pacific war and Rand's legacy.

Cold-blooded Thai bargirls, naïve tourists and sordid scams - it was all in a night's work for Pattaya bar manager Simon Los. For years, expat Simon Los worked the bars of Pattaya. Befriending Thai staff as well as western and local customers, he was privy to the dating despair - and occasional joy - of countless couples. That bargirls would go to such lengths to deceive their farang boyfriends, out of poverty or greed, was not unexpected, but Simon was also surprised to see some of his customers find true love in the Land of Smiles.

The eccentric saints of Java's impact both on challenging fundamentalist aspects of Islam and shaping the dynamic of modern Indonesia is considered in this illustrated and map-bearing investigation.

Set against the expansion of Singapore in the years 1834-1854, Chasing the Dragon (Singapore Saga, Vol. 2) continues to vividly portray the lives of the early pioneers of the expanding port city, including Joseph Balestier, Seah Eu Chin, Captain Henry Keppel, Tan Tock Seng, Munshi Abdullah, Governor Butterworth and Whampoa as well as fictional characters who bring nineteenth-century Singapore to life.

Shaman of Bali offers a riveting insight into a world of drug smuggling, cockfighting, bribery and imprisonment, flavoured with shamanic rituals and Balinese mysticism. Based on the experiences of the author, this powerful drug crime thriller does for Bali what Shantaram did for Bombay.

Beyond the Bali known from idyllic images of Hollywood movies and five-star resort holidays are the secret lives of men and women who flock to the island from around the world in search of new beginnings. Not all find the bliss and peace they hope for. Island Secrets is a collection of stories about lives fraught with scandal, conflict, heartache and despair.

It is 1950s and the Malayan Emergency and the British battle with Communist terrorists hiding deep in the jungle. When a British Gurkha captain deserts to the guerrillas, a fellow British Gurkha officer is despatched with five Gurkhas to hunt him down and the chase through pathless jungle becomes a race against time and a contest of deadly jungle warfare skills.

Amidst the struggles of war-torn 1950 Singapore, the chaos of the Malayan Emergency and the violence of the Maria Hertogh race riots, a journey into the past brings a chilling discovery for Eurasian Annie Collins, who returns to Singapore seeking her lost baby. This well-crafted story is a lament for the loss and damage of war, an unraveling mystery and a journey into suppressed memory and the nature of self-delusion