A Whole Neu World: 18 Months in Laos
Neu Wee Teck
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810731366

A Whole Neu World is an engaging account of Neu Wee Teck's (mis)adventures in Laos and his encounters with its lovely people during his stint as a volunteer teacher with the Singapore International Foundation. Besides his official assignment of teaching English to government officials in Vientiane, he managed to find time to chew bamboo larvae and duck out of drinking duck blood in the mountains of north-eastern Laos, fend off the matchmaking attempts of a noodle seller, help out at village schools, and organise the first Laos-Singapore Charity Run. Wee Teck shows that, sometimes, taking a leap of faith into the unknown is indeed the best way to grow – spiritually, professionally and, not least, horizontally.

Wives, Lovers & Other Women
David Leo
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810711139

Women and the woman’s place in a predominantly male world – as if God’s creation of Eve was an afterthought – are the focus in this award-winning collection of 15 short stories by David Leo. Misunderstood wives, women trapped by marriage and women caught in affairs with married men often are not treated fairly. The writer also takes a dig at men who, in their relationships with women, exhibit a vulnerability not infrequently attributed to the so-called weaker sex: the insecure husband, the egocentric lover and the naive wife hunter.

Wives, Lovers & Other Women was first published in 1995 after winning the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award. One of the stories – Picnic – subsequently featured in the award-winning TV series Singapore Short Story Project.

Ah... The Fragrance of Durians and Other Stories
David Leo
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810710255

Is there really an acceptable code of behaviour by which we judge others? In this collection of distinctively Singaporean short stories we meet people we know and think we understand, but do we really?

Ah... the Fragrance of Durians and Other Stories was first published in 1993, and in that same year was awarded the Publishers Prize for fiction.

The stories – filled with life’s many ironies – are told with remarkable credibility because they are about people whom we know too well or think we know in our very own real life experiences. Beneath the simplicity of the stories are the varied themes presented by the human psyche – themes that tell of a suppressed consciousness that often we are reluctant to acknowledge, and one that compels us, sometimes frighteningly, to confront the true meaning of life.

Beyond the Village Gate
Mei Ching Tan
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810877545

Myths of the mountains and their spirits pervade stories of Shi Ying’s mysterious origins. Abandoned to die but saved by a villager, Shi Ying is named the “lost child” and taken into a family of fisherfolk. She does not know who her parents are, or who she is. When she befriends a village outcast with whom she feels a strange bond, her journey into the unknown, in search of her parents and her true identity, begins.

Beyond The Village Gate won a Commendation Award in the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) in 1992 and was first published in 1994.

Crossing Distance
Mei Ching Tan
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810731038

A child’s afternoon of play, a teenager's notion of pain, one's understanding of freedom, another's glimpse of mortality, a young woman’s encounter with her cultural roots, and the individual worlds of the young and old.

They reveal the distances between people and within people. Sometimes all that people do, or try to do, is cross distance.

Crossing Distance won a Merit Award in the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) in 1994 and a Commendation Award in the National Book Development Council of Singapore Book Awards in 1996. It was first published in 1995.

Spider Boys
Ming Cher
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810726874

In the 1950s, the street boys of Singapore caught and bet on their wrestling spiders, gaining not only money but also power and prestige as they won. Backgrounded against age-old vices, superstitions, urban legends, as well as a dangerous world of youth gangs and a tumultuous period in Singapore’s history, Spider Boys is a moving and sensual story that draws the reader into turning its pages as if by a beguiling, hypnotic force, alternating arousing and repelling him.

First published by Penguin, New Zealand, in 1995, Spider Boys has been re-edited to not only retain the flavour of colloquial Singapore English in the dialogues, but also improve the accessibility of the novel for all readers by rendering the narrative into grammatical Standard English.

Three Sisters of Sze
Tan Kok Seng
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810726881

Set in Penang, the well-heeled Sze family, initially loving, disintegrates as the parents become increasingly absorbed in their own pursuits. Their three children - two of whom are Western educated and one Chinese educated - are, increasingly, forced to think for themselves as they grow up without parental guidance or love. The novel portrays the conflict between different systems of education as well as different value systems, particularly as they all occur within one family. First published by heineman Asia in 1979.

Ricky Star
Lim Thean Soo
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810726867

First published in 1978 by Pan Pacific Book Distributors, Ricky Star is about a man who strives for career and financial success at the expense of everyone else around him, including even his wife and daughter. At first successful in his endeavour to climb a series of corporate ladders and becoming very rich, Ricky is, in the end, forced to reckon with his past misdeeds and indiscretions.

Green is the Colour
Lloyd Fernando
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810726850

First published by Landmark Books in 1993, Green is the Colour explores how people of different races face the challenges of living together. The story centres on Yun Ming and Siti Sara falling in love with each other in the post-13 May 1969 period in Malaysia. Both characters are not only from different racial backgrounds and faiths but are also married to different people. In addition, Siti Sara’s father is a respected religious figure. How do the protagonists resolve their excruciatingly different circumstances in their fight to stay together?

Raffles and the Golden Opportunity
Victoria Glendinning
London: Profile Books, 2012
ISBN: 9781781250259

Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was the charismatic and persuasive founder of Singapore and Governor of Java. An English adventurer, disobedient employee of the East India Company, utopian imperialist, linguist, zoologist and civil servant, he carved an extraordinary (though brief) life for himself in South East Asia. The tropical, disease-ridden settings of his story are as dramatic as his own trajectory - an obscure young man with no advantages other than talent and obsessive drive, who changed history by establishing - without authority - on the wretchedly unpromising island of Singapore, a settlement which has become a world city. After a turbulent time in the East Indies, Raffles returned to the UK and turned to his other great interests - botany and zoology. He founded London Zoo in 1825, a year before his death. Raffles remains a controversial figure, and in the first biography for over forty years, Victoria Glendinning charts his prodigious rise within the social and historical contexts of his world. His domestic and personal life was vivid and shot through with tragedy. His own end was sad, though his fame immortal.

Lee Kuan Yew: The Crucial Years
Alex Josey
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2012
ISBN: 9789814398367

This facsimile edition of Alex Josey's Lee Kuan Yew: The Crucial Years contains practically everything that Singapore’s first prime minister had said politically since his student days at Cambridge right up to his speeches at the 1971 Commonwealth Prime Minister’s Conference held in Singapore.

More than a political biography of a remarkable Asian statesman, this indispensable volume shows how Lee successfully created an independent multiracial nation while tackling and solving problems which confront all developing states. The account ends in 1970 when Singapore was faced with the gloomy prospect of the withdrawal of British troops in 1971, and the necessity of creating, almost overnight, a credible Singapore defence force.