FICTION
ALTERED STRAITS
By Kevin Martens Wong
Epigram Books/ Paperback/300 pages/ $26.64/Major bookstores and localbooks.sg
Pacific Rim meets Ender's Game in Marina Bay in Wong's bold vision of alternate Singapores, the final novel to be published from the 2015 Epigram Fiction Prize.
A boy soldier in 1947 is bonded telepathically to a weaponised Merlion, while in post-apocalyptic 2047, a Singapore Armed Forces officer must retrieve a Merlion to battle the Concordance, a hive intelligence that threatens to consume all humanity.
PAYOH
By Jim Tan
Ethos Books/Paperback/ 236 pages/$16.05/ Books Kinokuniya, MPH, Booktique and localbooks.sg
A frustrating brush with income- tax bureaucracy inspired Tan, a retired contractor who was unemployed and in debt at the time, to pen this political allegory, in which a retired professor reads a story by a Changi Prison inmate.
In it, a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Lucky moves into a protected bird sanctuary, which swiftly turns political.
CHILDREN'S
THE HOUSE ON PALMER ROAD
By Si-Hoe S. S. and Sim Ee Waun
Pepper Dog Press/ Paperback/128 pages/ $12/Books Ahoy!, Books Kinokuniya, Woods In The Books, Tango Mango and localbooks.sg
In 1930s Singapore, eight-year-old Sing leads a carefree life with her nine brothers and sisters in their wooden house in Palmer Road, frog-hunting and running from guard geese.
The book, meant for children aged seven to 12, is based on 83-year-old Si-Hoe's experiences of life before World War II.
THE GHOST WITH DIRTY FEET
By Sharon Ismail
Write.Speak.Play/ Paperback/ 36 pages/$15/ My Imagination Kingdom and www.closetfulofbooks.com
Ali, an adopted child, is afraid that his family will give him away due to hard times in the kampung. He plots to convince them otherwise by winning three months' supply of rice for the family.