Where to Begin
The Kenyalang Series tells the story of love, family and togetherness across novels, novellas, and short fiction. The novels form the spine; each one a complete story, each one advancing the lives of Samuel, Julian, and Ravi through the vanishing world of the Edwardian Malay Archipelago.
The novellas and short stories are companions to that world rather than chapters in it. Some are set before the events of the first novel, but they are best encountered after you have read The Kenyalang — when the characters are already known to you, and the earlier glimpses of their lives carry the weight they deserve.
You, of course, may read in any order.
The Novels
1
2
The Heart of Borneo
Jesselton, British North Borneo and Sarawak, 1912
Deeper into the interior, deeper into the conspiracy and deeper into the lives of the three people at the heart of it. The jungle does not forgive mistakes. Neither does empire.
3
The Chartered Men
Bombay 1917
Novella
The novellas are a different kind of reading. Each one stands alone; a complete story in its own right, set within the same world. They do not advance the main plot but open doors the novels pass by: earlier lives, quieter moments, the histories that shaped the people you meet in the books. They are best read after The Kenyalang, when the characters are already known to you and those earlier glimpses carry the weight they deserve.
In Every Prospect: a Prequel to Book 1
South Africa, 1900 to 1902.
Twelve letters written in a tent on the South African veldt. A love that could not be spoken aloud and so was written down instead, addressed to a name that meant nothing to any hostile reader and everything to one man. The letters that were not delivered for eleven years… and what happened when they finally were.
4
The 7th Earl
Singapore & Jesselton , 1914
War is coming to the world and the conspiracy is closing in at home. Samuel is recalled to CIS work while Julian and Ravi build the plantations and expand their hold on Borneo. The life the three of them have built is about to be tested as never before.
Jesselton and Sandakan , British North Borneo 1915
5
The Kenyalang
November 1910 to January 1911
From a cold damp Wiltshire to the tropical heat of British North Borneo, via India and Singapore. Trains, ships, formal dinners, Chinese shophouses, and a love that grows in the space between one world and another. A family is born. Togetherness endures.
The Lost Inheritance
British North Borneo 1919
Short Stories
Prequels to Book 1
The following short stories give readers additional information about the main characters in the Kenyalang Series. They are all set before Book 1 The Kenyalang but best read after the reader has encountered the character,
Meena’s Son
The Butler and the Sleeper Agent
The Companion in Cairo
Prequels Stories set Between Book 1 and 2
The following short stories are set in an around Jesselton between 1911 and 1914. These are additional stories to be read between Books 1 and 3
James Investigates
The Man on Gaya Street
The Rain Before England
6
The Returning Season
Beyond Beaufort: a Prequel to Book 3
North Borneo, 1st August 1914
The day the North Borneo Railway became a single company, Julian signed for a hundred and forty acres of the Beaufort plain. The train home carried four people, a derailment, a stopped afternoon, six paintings and the last quiet day before the world changed. What the speeches did not record, and what the country went on doing anyway.