POETRY
DEATH WISH
By Gwee Li Sui
Landmark Books/ Paperback/ 82 pages/ $19.90/Books Kinokuniya and Popular
A macabre poetry collection that is a departure from the humorous works Gwee has become known for. Divided into six sections, it draws from the past two decades of his life and attempts to parse the human tendency towards self-destruction.
SQUARE ROOT OF TIME
By Madeleine Lee
Ethos Books/ Paperback/ 38 pages/ $9.35/ www.ethos books.com.sg
Lee, an investment manager, was at a conference on financial risk management when the term "square root of time" popped up in conversation, intriguing her. In her new collection, she fuses financial mathematical concepts with poetry on life and relationships.
WHAT HAPPENED: POEMS 1997 - 2017
By Alvin Pang
Math Paper Press/ Paperback/ 132 pages/ $18/ BooksActually
This collection gathers selected poems from Pang's oeuvre over the last 20 years, including some unpublished material.
POEMS FOR THE SOUND OF THE SKY BEFORE THUNDER
By Topaz Winters
Math Paper Press/ Paperback/ 49 pages/$16/ BooksActually
"Give me a thunder like awakening," writes Winters in this dreamy debut collection on longing and depression. Topaz Winters is the pseudonym of American-Singaporean writer Priyanka Balasubramanian Aiyer.
TWIN CITIES
Edited by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming and Joshua Ip
Landmark Books/ Paperback/ 88 pages/ $18.60 before GST/Major bookstores
The first anthology of twin cinema, collecting 60 poems from Singapore and Hong Kong on everything from family affairs - private and public - to actual cinemas. The twin cinema is a local poetic form of two columns that can be read independently or interdependently.
FICTION
THE MEMORY EATERS
By Janice Tay
Straits Times Press/ Paperback/364 pages/$19.79/ Major bookstores
In this historical fantasy set in an alternate Edo-period Japan, a kuyin - a spirit beast who feeds on the memories of humans - tries to help a man whose past she accidentally devoured to rediscover his identity.
LAUNCH PAD
By Shelly Bryant
Epigram Books/ Paperback/ 189 pages/ $20.22/Major bookstores
In this debut collection of speculative tales, a science park creates synthetic life to repopulate the oceans, but to ruinous effect; a future heiress falls in love with an alien life form; demon barber Sweeney Todd comes to colonial Singapore.
THE INFINITE LIBRARY AND OTHER STORIES
By Victor Fernando R. Ocampo
Math Paper Press/ Paperback/ 255 pages/$19/ BooksActually
Filipino writer Ocampo produces fantastical visions of both Singapore and his hometown in this short story collection of nanotech clay monsters, black holes and a disaster that threatens to turn the residents of Bukit Batok into mathematical equations.
NON-FICTION
TOMMY KOH: SERVING SINGAPORE AND THE WORLD
Edited by Yeo Lay Hwee, Peggy Kek, Gillian Koh, Chang Li Lin World Scientific/ Hardcover/ $79.90/ 420 pages/ Major bookstores
In a collection of essays, experts and colleagues of Prof Koh discuss his contributions in the fields of diplomacy, arts and culture, international law and more.
SPIAKING SINGLISH
By Gwee Li Sui
Marshall Cavendish/ Paperback/ 200 pages/ $24.98/Major bookstores
This tongue-in-cheek guide to Singlish examines the origin of phrases such as "stunned like vegetable" and "horrigible" (a portmanteau of horrible and incorrigible) as well as the profound difference between "hampalang" and "chapalang". It is, of course, written entirely in Singlish.
CREATIVE NON-FICTION
THE MAGIC CIRCLE
By Charmaine Chan
Ethos Books/ Paperback/ 302 pages/ $19.90/Books Kinokuniya, MPH and Times bookstores
Stricken by the loss of her older sister Elaine to a rare, aggressive cancer, Chan takes to the pen to conjure up the vanished world of their childhood and, through it, a path to healing and memory.
'OTHERS' IS NOT A RACE
By Melissa De Silva
Math Paper Press/ Paperback/ 103 pages/$19/ BooksActually
Let them eat sugee cake, declares De Silva in this half-autobiographical, half-fictional account of what it is like to be Eurasian in Singapore when you comprise less than one per cent of the population.
I WANT TO GO HOME
By Wesley Leon Aroozoo
Math Paper Press/ Paperback/ 222 pages/$19/ BooksActually
An account of Aroozoo's travels to Onagawa, Japan, to meet widower Yasuo Takamatsu, who dives every week in search of his wife, whom he lost in the 2011 tsunami. The book is available both in English and a Japanese translation by Miki Hawkinson.
YOUNG ADULT
BEING ARCADIA
By Simon Chesterman
Marshall Cavendish/ Paperback/220 pages/$19.90/ Major bookstores
In the final instalment of Chesterman's puzzle-peppered trilogy, teenage genius Arcadia Greentree must decide if she can trust her estranged sister and nemesis Moira in working together to uncover the secret of their birth.
