The Borrowed


Chan Ho-Kei - 2014
    Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultraviolent gangsters, stallholders at the city’s many covered markets, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing.A gripping and brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice in crime fiction, The Borrowed paints a dynamic portrait of Hong Kong and reveals just how closely the past and present are connected in this fascinating city.

Yellowthread Street


William Marshall - 1976
    The debut novel of the zany Yellowthread Street series.

You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked.


Sheung-King - 2020
    In restaurants and hotel rooms, the couple begin telling folk tales to each other, perhaps as a way to fill the undefined space between them. Theirs is a comic and enigmatic relationship in which emotions are often muted and sometimes masked by verbal play and philosophical questions, and further complicated by the woman’s frequent unexplained disappearances.You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King’s debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Asian-Canadian literature.Praise for You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.:Longlisted for CBC's Canada Reads 2021“One of the best book debuts of 2020” — The Globe and Mail“Sheung-King has written a wonderfully unexpected and maverick love story but also a novel of ideas that hopscotches between Toronto, Macau, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Prague. It is enchanting, funny, and a joy to read.”—Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life“A tale of two rich and rootless people that oozes the horror and confusion of love, while staying somehow still desperately romantic, and so gloriously sad. This novel is also about something else: it gives the cold shoulder to the dominant gaze and its demands to control the Asian body, carving out a thrilling space beyond whiteness. I didn’t want it to end.” —Thea Lim, author of An Ocean of Minutes, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize“In a cruel paradox for writers who are just trying to recount their lives, the tropes of diasporic lit have made it nearly impossible to write about belonging without also placing whiteness at the center of attention—the tropes exist because stories that do this are regularly rewarded with publication. But You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. sidesteps this trap all together: It is bored by Western approval.” — Thea Lim, The Nation.“He practically sets the page on fire." —Brett Josef Grubisic, Toronto Star

East and West: The Last Governor of Hong Kong on Power, Freedom and the Future


Chris Patten - 1998
    'Patten's East and West is a must for anyone who wants to understand the forces that will shape the world of the 21st century.' New York Times

No Ordinary Love (AmBw Standalone Japanese Mafia Romance)


Kenya Wright - 2014
    It was this intense heat, vibrating through my bones and causing my nipples to stiffen under my shirt.Don’t forget the book, Nyomi. This is work, nothing more.Debt-ridden author, Nyomi must complete her book on Tokyo’s underground sex industry in order to revive her stalled career. But first, she needs to get permission from Kenji Soto, head of the Japanese mafia who controls the red-light district under his father's watchful eyes. With one meeting, Kenji traps Nyomi in his gaze and locks her into a deal—spend time with him during her three-week stay, and she will earn the access she needs in order to make her book a bestseller.But Kenji's plans for Nyomi not only include allowing her a look around, but also a first-hand taste of the kinds of things that go on behind closed doors. And if Nyomi isn't careful, she just might find herself falling for Kenji, a man with many demons and a passion so dark, it could change everything she thinks she knows about love.

Naked Earth


Eileen Chang - 1954
    Far from being a simplistic exercise in anti-Communist propaganda (two previous novels Chang wrote were pro-Communist), Naked Earth is a powerfully moving, Balzacian tale that follows two young student cadres, Liu Ch’uen and Su Nan, who fall in love during a time when, as Chang writes, “the whole country lay stretched out like an open palm, ready to close around any one person at any minute.” Mao’s land reform movement is in full force when Liu and Su Nan arrive at a farm to help the peasants take over the fields. The work is hard, the nights  long, and spies abound. Liu is eventually imprisoned by his enemies and sent to fight on the Korean front. But both Liu and Su Nan harbor festering secrets that are pulling them apart. A romance, a thrilling drama, a tragedy, Naked Earth is a stunning work of twentieth-century fiction by one of China’s most revered modern novelists.

Pearl Moon


Katherine Stone - 1995
    Hurled together by circumstances into a fateful conflict, Allison Whitaker and Maylene Kwan must confront each other and their pasts--and the men they will love with passionate intensity in exotic and turbulent Hong Kong, a city on the brink of metamorphosis from British Crown Colony to Chinese possession. Pressure builds for completion of the luxury hotel they're involved in developing. Both will know the deadly menace of a force as elusive as the morning fog swirling over Victoria Peak...and as deadly as the typhoons that strike the island with such fury. The love of British aristocrat James Drake for the beautiful Allison and of rugged Texan Sam Coulter for the exquisite Maylene will be tested in an unforgettable life and death struggle.

Ghost Forest


Pik-Shuen Fung - 2021
    One of the many Hong Kong "astronaut" fathers, he stays there to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Canada before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China.As she revisits memories of her father through the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and misunderstandings. Turning to her mother and grandmother for answers, she discovers her own life refracted brightly in theirs.Buoyant, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Ghost Forest is a slim novel that envelops the reader in joy and sorrow. Fung writes with a poetic and haunting voice, layering detail and abstraction, weaving memory and oral history to paint a moving portrait of a Chinese-Canadian astronaut family.

Chasing the Dragon: One Woman's Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong's Drug Den


Jackie Pullinger - 1980
    A 20 yr old young woman is called there by God. The true, rivveting story of how one girl lead hundreds of junkies, prostitues and a few drug lords to Christ.

The Red Pavillion


Jean Chapman - 1995
    Liz Hammond and her mother Blanche are returning to the rubber plantation they were forced to abandon at the outbreak of war. The beautiful Malayan jungle and exotic estate of her childhood have remained in Liz's heart even after she was forced to leave it for the security of England in the war years. But as Liz and Blanche travel out to Singapore they are met with tales of Communist uprisings, violence, banditry and, most ominously, Liz’s father’s disappearance. Under the military protection of Major Sturgess and a young guardsman, Alan, they try to track Mr Hammond down. Liz quickly falls for Alan, but she knows she can’t let her love for him overshadow her concern for her missing father. She struggles with reconciling the treacherous country she now finds herself in with the paradise of her youth. And she no longer knows who she can trust. Old friends are called into question and new friends are shadowed with doubt as this tense plot unwinds with love, heartache and action.

Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South East Asia


Joe Studwell - 2007
    Their interests range from banking to property, from shipping to sugar, from gambling to lumber. At their peak, eight of the world's two dozen richest families were south-east Asian, yet they are largely unknown outside the region. A complex mythology surrounds them, one which informs Asian views on culture, entrepreneurialism and economics. In this explosive account, Joe Studwell finds that the facts are even more remarkable than the myths, as he lifts the lid on a world of hypocrisy, power and enormous wealth. Through the hidden lives of some mysterious and fascinating men, Studwell explores the broader economic and political issues facing a region of 500 million people: how the Asian tycoons took such a strong hold over their local economies, how they survived the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997, and what their endurance teaches us about the real state of the countries they live in.

Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong


Gordon Mathews - 2011
    A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there—even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet. But as Ghetto at the Center of the World shows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people. Gordon Mathews’s intimate portrayal of the building’s polyethnic residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. And we see that this so-called ghetto—which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong’s other residents, despite its low crime rate—is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope. Gordon Mathews’s compendium of riveting stories enthralls and instructs in equal measure, making Ghetto at the Center of the World not just a fascinating tour of a singular place but also a peek into the future of life on our shrinking planet.

The Feng Shui Detective


Nury Vittachi - 2000
    Wong is a feng shui consultant, but his cases tend to involve a lot more than just interior decoration. You see, Wong specializes in a certain type of problem premises: crime scenes. He and his brash teenage Aussie-American ex-pat intern (think an Asian Sherlock Holmes paired up with Kelly Osbourne) travel around Singapore solving crimes while trying to decipher each other's language and behavior. His latest case involves a mysterious young woman who, according to a psychic reading, is doomed to die. Wong's desperate efforts to save her eventually lead him and his sidekick to Sydney where the story climaxes at the Opera House, a building known for its appalling feng shui. A delightful combination of crafty plotting, quirky humor, and Asian philosophy, the Feng Shui Detective is an investigator like no other!

Prabhakaran: The Story of his struggle for Eelam


Chellamuthu Kuppusamy - 2013
    This book provides an account of the life of LTTE chief Prabhakaran, who led an armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state to create Eelam, a separate nation for the Sri Lankan Tamils.The book begins from Prabhakaran’s childhood days in the aftermath of India’s and Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain. The Sri Lankan Tamils were following Gandhi’s non-violent methods to fight for their rights as citizens of Sri Lanka. Prabhakaran, an ardent fan of Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose, felt that non-violence would not work against a Sinhala dominated government and began experimenting with violent acts against the Government to send a message. His initial success became the nucleus for the formation of LTTE, which became the quintessential guerrilla organization fighting the State.The book details various incidents of Prabhakaran’s life including terror attacks, assassination of politicians, heads of States and militant leaders; India’s role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict; Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka; the Eelam wars, negotiations, betrayals and elections; through to his killing in May 2009.

The Men Who Came Out of the Ground: A Gripping Account of Australia's First Commando Campaign: Timor 1942


Paul Cleary - 2010
    The heroics of a small team of Australian Special Forces commandos in Timor who tied down a far superior Japanese force for most of the critical year of 1942.