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The Waters of Manila Bay are Never Silent

When an article about a boy who was killed after being tagged by police as a drug runner lands on his desk, journalist Zechariah ‘Zeke’ Dipasupil feels the story deserves to be on the front page. He empathizes with the dead boy whose cries were unjustly silenced since he also lost his voice as a child.
He grew up without knowing his father and had to look after his mother who suffered from depression and other ailments. His fight to defend the weak and the voiceless caught in the middle of the government’s war against illegal drugs is reminiscent of the activist movement during the Martial Law years in the Philippines. Later, he meets his long lost grandmother who reveals the truth about his father.
As he struggles to rise above societal oppression, he finally finds the courage to respond to the many unsettling silences in his personal life

We Are Not Alone Here

An unnamed young woman and her companion strike up a conversation in the dark in a quiet room, in the middle of nowhere. As they talk, the young woman starts to open up her life, to talk about her past and childhood, growing up in a single-parent household under poor impoverished conditions, living under the cold, steely eye of an estranged and manipulative mother who physically and emotionally abused her. The woman gradually divulges the lies and secrets that have plagued her life from a very young age, and how all of it has led her to make hard choices along the way: to be a mistress to her boss at her first job, to have a child out of wedlock, to rear a child all on her own and then to tragically lose him in a drowning.

The truth becomes stranger and more complicated as the woman continues to tell her story, braiding and twisting the facts and sequence of events as she narrates, that soon reveals a long unvoiced history of pain and violence and deception, that ultimately culminates in her committing a series of horrific and terrible acts. What has seemed clear and straightforward at the start of the woman’s story soon becomes a strange febrile dream that holds the woman and her companion in a complicit, unbreakable spell.

All Our Brave, Earthly Scars

Lee Yang searches desperately for Snow amid the carnage of the 2002 Bali bombings. From Singapore’s worst fire in 1961, their lives, and later their love, have woven through years of struggle and separation. When a secret that has lain hidden for over 30 years comes to light and the truth unfolds, they are pulled apart. Now, in the face of Indonesia’s worst terror attack in its history, they risk losing one another yet again.
In this novel spanning over four decades, the five elements of fire, water, earth, air and spirit display their power in the lives of Yang, Snow and those around them-an intimate and heart-rending exploration of love and loss, loneliness and courage, scarring and healing.

Too Far From Antibes

It is 1951, and Jean-Luc Guéry has arrived in Indochina to investigate the murder of his brother, Olivier, whose body was found floating in a tributary of the Saigon River. As an avid reader of detective fiction, Guéry is well aware of how such investigations should proceed, but it is not immediately clear that he is capable of putting this knowledge into practice. In addition to being a reporter for an obscure provincial newspaper, he is also a failed writer, an incorrigible alcoholic, and a compulsive gambler who has already squandered a fortune in the casinos of the Côte d’Azur. Despite his dissolute tendencies, however, and his aversion to physical danger, Guéry does eventually manage to solve the case. In order to do so, he is obliged to enter a world of elaborate conspiracies, clandestine intelligence operations, and organized crime – only to discover, in the novel’s final pages, that the truth behind his brother’s murder is far stranger than he could have imagined.

Written in the style of Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, Too Far From Antibes is a ‘retro’ thriller that brilliantly evokes the city of Saigon during the early 1950s, when it was a centre of intrigue, insurgency, and empire.

The Raffles Affair

Fresh from a gruelling three-month assignment in East Africa, beautiful former MI6 agent Victoria West arrives at Raffles Hotel in Singapore to attend her friend’s wedding. But Victoria’s plans for a relaxing break end abruptly with news that the groom has been kidnapped. Warned not to contact the police, Victoria sets out to find him. But in this glamorous setting, nothing is quite what it seems. As the deadline to pay the ransom draws near, events take a deadly turn. Victoria suspects murder. But which of the wedding guests did it? They all have a motive… and a talent for lying. With time fast running out, Victoria must untangle the web of domestic squabbles, red herrings and false alibis before it is too late.

The Macanese Pro-Wrestler’s Cookbook

Macau, that redolent, overcrowded hive of faded Portuguese culture, glossy American casinos, and overarching Mainland governance is what hapless, lovelorn Zeke Oliveira calls home. An eccentric himself, for the most part he’s at ease with the city’s eccentricities, but when his best friend is murdered Zeke goes on a search for those responsible, a search that takes him into an undercurrent of crime beneath the city that he never knew existed. An adventure, a social commentary and an unconventional cookbook, The Macanese Pro-Wrestler’s Cookbook is ultimately the portrait of a man struggling to find a balance between the cultural identity he has inherited and his own individual destiny.

Fate

Hong Kong, 1969. The Dragon Head of the Fanling Triad has died and there is a struggle to replace him among senior members of the gang. Normally, the Deputy Mountain Master is next in line, but this one is weak and ineffectual and has only survived because of the protection of the Dragon Head. Up to this point, the Fanling Triad has operated in relative isolation from neighbouring gangs, but the Dragon Head’s death has drawn attention to the area – and to its wealth. Other gangs start to make threatening moves and it’s obvious to the senior members of the Fanling Triad that they need a leader who can fend off the threats, unite the membership, and maintain their prosperity. There are several candidates. The least conspicuous is the White Paper Fan, their young administrator. His name is Chow Tung, but many of those who work with him already refer to him as “Uncle”…

Foresight

1980: A pivotal year in modern Chinese history as Premier Deng Xiaoping begins what he intends to be the transformation of China into an economic superpower. The most visible evidence of Deng’s policy is the creation of Special Economic Zones, and one has been set up in Shenzhen, next door to Hong Kong and on Fanling’s doorstep. Among Triad leaders, Uncle is the only one who recognizes that Deng’s intentions could have profound repercussions on their organizations. To protect his gang and their interests, he acts to not only minimize the danger, but to turn events to his advantage.

The Mountain Master of Sha Tin

Ava is in Shanghai visiting her ailing friend, the Mountain Master Xu, when a triad war breaks out in Hong Kong. Sammy Wing, an old enemy of Ava’s who has twice tried to kill her, has enlisted the aid of his nephew Carter – the new Mountain Master of Sha Tin – to reclaim control of his old territory, Wanchai, from Xu’s men.
There is nothing subtle about the Wings’ methods. Xu’s most trusted enforcer, Lop, has been shot, and six of his street soldiers kidnapped. The Wings threaten to execute them unless Xu’s men vacate Wanchai immediately. Ava steps in to broker a settlement, and the Wings respond by sending her a box containing six fingers – and a twelve-hour deadline.
As the violence and tension mount, Ava is driven to the edge, and she is forced to devise a plan that will bring her face-to-face with Sammy and Carter Wing. The only question is who will pull the trigger first?

Sindicato & Co.: A Novel

David Elliot, an American expat in Manila, gets a new assignment from his multinational consulting firm. To deliver to a client a very sensitive message that’s cached on his phone.
Angela Avellana, a Miss Universe finalist turned prostitute turned master thief, lands the motherlode of her thieving career. An American she picks up in a bar.
When the American goes missing, Francesca Godiñez, the daughter of a slain journalist who was the latest victim in the infamous extra-judicial killings, discovers the truth about the War on Drugs. And the innumerable number of the dead and the disappeared of which the American could soon be added to.
Before the missing American becomes an international incident, General Luis Alberto, the head of the Philippine National Police and the brains behind Operation: Tokhang, needs to locate him. And as the decorated general adds yet another name to his dreaded kill list, he will have to decide whether to keep the American alive.