As the city roils around them, they find solace in love, marriage, and then parenthood. But when their two-year-old daughter Alba is kidnapped, Del must confront the terrible secret of a city where babies are sold and girls trafficked.By turns heart-breaking and suspenseful, Once We Were There is a debut novel of profound insight. It is Bernice Chauly at her very best.

    This is a collection of very short fictional stories.The taste can be sweet, juicy, spicy, tart, or crunchy! The flavours of Malaysia, in fact. So if this book could talk, it would say: "Bite me."

    Like her previous books, Lee Su Kim’s stories in this book are laced with humour and occasional gentle satire. All the stories are based on or are inspired by real-life events which Su Kim has collected from her nyonya mother, grandmother, bibiks and nyonyas.This is a first-ever collection of short stories of a unique cultural community, at the crossroads as to its very survival, but presently enjoying a tremendous resurgence. Su Kim’s debut collection of stories are simply stunning and heartwarming, evocative of a bygone era and a cultural community renowned for its unique multicultural legacy. (Description extracted from : http://www.leesukim.net/kebayatales.html)

    There are 14 short stories and one essay about the seedy, the sinister and sometimes the spooky. You will find murder, drug-dealing, kidnapping, sexual depravity, prostitution, celebrity secrets, suicides, academic rivalry, gangsters, police brutality, cannibalism, black magic, creepy rituals, political corruption and even busking. It's all totally fictional. Well, maybe the cannibalism is.Line-Up:INTRO / Amir MuhammadTHE RUNNER / Adib ZainiRUKUN TETANGGA / Preeta SamarasanMAMAK MURDER MYSTERY / Marc de FaoiteASIAN ANGEL / Shaz JoharA GIFT OF FLOWERS / Shih-Li KowKISS FROM A ROSE / Fadzlishah JohanabasAFTER DARK, MY LOVE / Dina ZamanTHE ORACLE OF TRUTH / Eeleen LeeCHASING BUTTERFLIES IN THE NIGHT / Kris WilliamsonTHE DUALIST / Shivani SivagurunathanVANISHED / Khairulnizam BakeriCANNIBAL VS. AH LONG / Megat IshakTHE MACHETE AND ME / Dayang NoorTHE UNBELIEVER / Amir HafiziMUD / Brian GomezBIOS

    A witty, revealing and moving novel following the fortunes of a Canadian rock band and their adventures on tour as they struggle to grow up, both helped and hindered by their rock n' roll lifestyles.

    This is a book about a piece of cloth, and how it is able to weave its way into the hearts of people, causing multiple and different chains of reactions.This book aims to shed light on the bigger picture, and the deeper meaning that comes with a person’s choice to either keep it or discard it, giving us a different perspective to consider our side before making assumptions and drawing conclusions.

    Contributed by those close to her, you may notice some are written in present tense - because to them, she's still very much alive - just not in a physical sense. the anecdotes here range from her days as a student, her many different phases in life, right up to the day of her passing. You'll find poems which Yasmin wrote, and photographs which she took (many may not know Yasmin was an accomplished poet and photographer). Also included are the last two TV commercial scripts written by her.

    The collection includes the following titles: Almost by Elizabeth Benedict, Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss, The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell, and The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett.

    Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess have shaped our perceptions of Malaysia. In Tash Aw, we now have an authentic Malaysian voice that remaps this literary landscape.The Harmony Silk Factory traces the story of textile merchant Johnny Lim, a Chinese peasant living in British Malaya in the first half of the twentieth century. Johnny's factory is the most impressive structure in the region, and to the inhabitants of the Kinta Valley Johnny is a hero—a Communist who fought the Japanese when they invaded, ready to sacrifice his life for the welfare of his people. But to his son, Jasper, Johnny is a crook and a collaborator who betrayed the very people he pretended to serve, and the Harmony Silk Factory is merely a front for his father's illegal businesses. This debut novel from Tash Aw gives us an exquisitely written look into another culture at a moment of crisis.The Harmony Silk Factory won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award and also made it to the 2005 Man Booker longlist.

    Set during the period of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation give voice to people living under this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. The characters of these compelling stories come from a wide variety of backgrounds, from a young mother living among the elite in Pyongyang whose son misbehaves during a political rally, to a former Communist war hero who is deeply disillusioned with the intrusion of the Party into everything he holds dear, to a husband and father who is denied a travel permit and sneaks onto a train in order to visit his critically ill mother. Written with deep emotion and writing talent, The Accusation is a vivid depiction of life in a closed-off one-party state, and also a hopeful testament to the humanity and rich internal life that persists even in such inhumane conditions.

    Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn - not only about their leaders, but also about their own people - stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world... Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party's stranglehold on China today.'An all-encompassing metaphor for today's looming superpower' OBSERVER

    As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.

    The grim circumstances of Laila’s life are counter-balanced by her energy, vitality and determination to survive. Nine-year-old Laila is spirited and intelligent. She lives in a slum but she is happy: she’s got plenty of friends to play with, and is well looked after by her beloved elder sister, Jumana, while her mother works as a maid for rich families across town. But when Jumana contracts TB, their mother cannot afford the medicines that would save her life. Following Jumana’s lingering, painful death, and her mother’s emotional collapse, Laila discovers that her feckless stepfather is planning to sell her into prostitution to pay his gambling debts. Running away is her only option. Finding help from unexpected quarters, Laila makes her way to one of the families her mother worked for, and is taken into their household as a servant. There she finds unimaginable luxury, but also great unhappiness within this privileged family. At first Laila’s gift for making friends serves her well, but then disaster strikes, and Laila must flee again. But where is she running, and to whom? How can she hide from the terrible violence that threatens her? And how can she hope to find love, affection, and the chance at a normal life? Slum Child is the story of a girl forced to run alone, strong and courageous, to a future that cannot deny her happiness.

    Each casebook reprints documents relating to a work's historical context and reception, presents the best critical studies, and, when possible, features an interview with the author. Accessible and informative to scholars, students, and nonspecialist readers alike, the books in this series provide a wide range of critical and informative commentaries on major texts. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is arguably the most important novel in twentieth-century Latin American literature. This Casebook features ten critical articles on Garcia Marquez's great work. Carefully selected from the most important work on the novel over the past three decades, they include pieces by Carlos Fuentes, Iris Zavala, James Higgins, Jean Franco, Michael Wood, and Gene H. Bell-Villada. Among the intriguing aspects of the work discussed are its mythic dimension, its "magical" side, its representations of women, its relationship with past chronicles of exploration and discovery, its portrayals of Western power and imperialism, its astounding diffusion throughout the globe and the media, and its simple truth-telling, its fidelity to the tangled history of Latin America. The book incorporates several theoretical approaches--historical, feminist, postcolonial; the first English translation of Fuentes's renowned, oft-cited, eight page meditation on the work; a general introduction; and a 1982 interview with Garcia Marquez.

    Bask in the sweetness of young hearts falling in love and cheer them on when circumstances stand in their way. Walk through the pain of broken relationships and rejoice at unexpected reunions. Whether you prefer it happy or bittersweet, straightforward or a little complicated, Love in Penang offers you 18 morsels of love in various forms.