Tales of money launderers who keep $10,000-a-night hotel suites at Marina Bay Sands are among the lurid stories author Neil Humphreys will tell on a walking tour at the end of the month.

The 42-year-old will take participants around Marina Bay on the one-hour tour, provocatively titled Walking With Murderers In Sexy Singapore.

"We need Singaporeans to read more for pleasure, and that's easier said than done," says the British-born writer of a number of bestselling Singapore novels. "A walking tour where we could see the key locations behind my two novels makes it a tactile experience."

The upcoming #BuySingLit campaign, an industry-led movement to get Singaporeans to buy local books, does not want to keep readers confined to their armchairs.

Rather, a slew of literary walking tours and book scavenger hunts have been planned for the weekend of Feb 24 to 26.

Humphreys will be regaling those on his tour with the stories that inspired his crime thrillers Marina Bay Sins and Rich Kill Poor Kill, as well as dish out career advice to wannabe writers.

He chose Marina Bay because he feels it is a place where the divide between rich and poor in Singapore, an issue in his books, is heavily apparent.

"It's a different world," he says of the glossy towers of Marina Bay Financial Centre. "I created a serial killer from that world."

Murder also makes an appearance in another #BuySingLit tour, an otherwise sedate walk around Serangoon Garden.

The tour, based on the book Heritage Journeys: No Place Like Serangoon Gardens, will pass through Chepstow Close, where three businessmen were beaten to death for 120 gold bars in 1972.

Less grim stops include small mall myVillage, the site of the former Parliament Theatre cinema, and Pow Sing Restaurant, where participants can try their hand at making chicken rice.

The tour will be led by the book's editor Catherine Khoo, 58, along with a retired Serangoon Garden resident. The book was co-written by six authors aged 13 to 18, who are alumni of Janus Education, which Ms Khoo founded to teach kids creative writing.

"We hope the tour will generate interest in such books," she says. "It shows that even though they're books, they're also alive in a way."

For families with young kids, Armour Publishing is holding two nature walks at the Botanic Gardens, based on its children's book Timmy And Tammy At The Botanic Gardens.

Both tours are sold out.

Tour guide Grace Lim, 52, of educational consultancy CreativeKids, aims to spark a love of local discovery, of both nature and reading, through the tour.

"Most children's books on nature talk about temperate forests and the four seasons," says Ms Lim, a former biologist. "They don't have what we need to teach our kids about what's happening right outside."

Meanwhile, local publishers and distributors are dangling free books through scavenger hunts.

Publisher Epigram will be hiding 50 books in public places such as walkways, parks and void decks across Singapore, from Ang Mo Kio to Telok Blangah.

In another scavenger hunt by Malay distributor and retailer Pustaka Islamiyah, participating teams must race among bookstores around Singapore, searching for books with a clue to the next location.

Teams stand to win an iPad Air loaded with 20 Malay e-books.

Pustaka director Syed Ali Semait says: "We thought the iPad would be something that would attract the millennials. But we have also loaded it with e-books, which we hope they will read too."