100 books like Reliable in Bangkok

By Valerie Goldsilk, Julian Stagg,

Here are 100 books that Reliable in Bangkok fans have personally recommended if you like Reliable in Bangkok. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of A Clean Kill in Tokyo

Philippe Espinasse Author Of Hard Underwriting

From my list on thrillers set in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've lived in Asia for more than 22 years and have extensively traveled around the region, both for work and pleasure, from the Middle East and central Asia to Japan, and Australia, New Zealand, and every country in between. Asia is the perfect setting for a thriller, as a region that’s deeply rooted in traditions, but where modernity and growth are also breathless. There can be political instability at times, and even corruption, unsurpassed wealth and shocking poverty, bankers, and prostitutes. I worked for many years as an investment banker and my experiences inspired me to write my debut thriller, Hard Underwriting, in Hong Kong, and uncover the dark side of Asia’s financial capital. 

Philippe's book list on thrillers set in Asia

Philippe Espinasse Why did Philippe love this book?

This is one of the best books in Eisler’s John Rain series, featuring half-American, half-Japanese assassin and Vietnam veteran John Rain.

Eisler himself was a covert operative with the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, and his descriptions of fieldcraft, surveillance, torture, and killing techniques all ring so true, as does his extensive knowledge of modern Japan.

Tokyo is, of course, a fascinating playground for Rain’s adventures. Eisler’s books and unputdownable, and well worth discovering.

By Barry Eisler,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Clean Kill in Tokyo as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Previously published as Rain Fall

Name: John Rain.
Vocation: Assassin.
Specialty: Natural Causes.
Base of operations: Tokyo.
Availability: Worldwide.

Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn’t care about why…

Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist—and the daughter of his latest kill.

A Clean Kill in Tokyo was previously published as Rain Fall, the first in the bestselling John Rain assassin series.


Book cover of Hungry Ghost

Philippe Espinasse Author Of Hard Underwriting

From my list on thrillers set in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've lived in Asia for more than 22 years and have extensively traveled around the region, both for work and pleasure, from the Middle East and central Asia to Japan, and Australia, New Zealand, and every country in between. Asia is the perfect setting for a thriller, as a region that’s deeply rooted in traditions, but where modernity and growth are also breathless. There can be political instability at times, and even corruption, unsurpassed wealth and shocking poverty, bankers, and prostitutes. I worked for many years as an investment banker and my experiences inspired me to write my debut thriller, Hard Underwriting, in Hong Kong, and uncover the dark side of Asia’s financial capital. 

Philippe's book list on thrillers set in Asia

Philippe Espinasse Why did Philippe love this book?

A fast-paced thriller set in Bangkok and (mainly) Hong Kong in 1991, prior to the retrocession of the Crown colony to Chinese rule.

The plot includes assassins, kidnapers, triads, gangs, and the police, in a well-researched book that is difficult to put down.

For readers who have lived in Asia, there is a ring of authenticity to what Leather writes, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given his previous life as a journalist on the South China Morning Post. Well worth a read, alongside Leather’s many other thrillers.

By Stephen Leather,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hungry Ghost as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hong Kong, 1991. The colony is preparing for Chinese rule.

Geoff Howells, a government-trained killing machine, is brought out of retirement and sent to there. His brief: to assassinate Chinese Mafia leader, Simon Ng. Howells devises a dangerous and complicated plan to reach his intended victim - only to find himself the next target.

Patrick Dugan, a Hong Kong policeman, has been held back in his career because of his family connections: his sister is married to Simon Ng. But when Ng's daughter is kidnapped and Ng himself disappears, Dugan gets caught up in a series of violent events and…


Book cover of Blowback Burma

Philippe Espinasse Author Of Hard Underwriting

From my list on thrillers set in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've lived in Asia for more than 22 years and have extensively traveled around the region, both for work and pleasure, from the Middle East and central Asia to Japan, and Australia, New Zealand, and every country in between. Asia is the perfect setting for a thriller, as a region that’s deeply rooted in traditions, but where modernity and growth are also breathless. There can be political instability at times, and even corruption, unsurpassed wealth and shocking poverty, bankers, and prostitutes. I worked for many years as an investment banker and my experiences inspired me to write my debut thriller, Hard Underwriting, in Hong Kong, and uncover the dark side of Asia’s financial capital. 

Philippe's book list on thrillers set in Asia

Philippe Espinasse Why did Philippe love this book?

This is the latest book in Boczar’s Eric Ketch series, which follows the adventures of an American international man of mystery across Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Burma, in the pursuit of rubies, exotic women, and ruthless assassins.

Boczar himself knows the region very well, having lived in Hong Kong for over three decades, and worked as a war correspondent, on the porous borders of the golden triangle and in Lebanon during the civil war.

The descriptions, whether of cities, weapons, smugglers, or guerilla fighters, all feel true, and Boczar knows only too well how to tell a convincing and edge-of-your-seat story that is difficult to put down.

By Peter Boczar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Blowback Burma as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Southeast Asia. Eric Ketch returns to take down bad guys while still making time to take out bad girls. Some things have stayed the same while some things have changed. Communist countries have become capitalist markets. But powerful, entitled elites continue to control politics and business. The communist cadres have simply become the capitalist kingpins.
Ketch gets hired as a freelance agent to do what he does best. Delivering justice. His way. However, the game board continues to elude him and he still gets torn between completing the mission and doing the right thing. Meanwhile, he remains vulnerable to exotically…


Book cover of Ultimatum

Philippe Espinasse Author Of Hard Underwriting

From my list on thrillers set in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've lived in Asia for more than 22 years and have extensively traveled around the region, both for work and pleasure, from the Middle East and central Asia to Japan, and Australia, New Zealand, and every country in between. Asia is the perfect setting for a thriller, as a region that’s deeply rooted in traditions, but where modernity and growth are also breathless. There can be political instability at times, and even corruption, unsurpassed wealth and shocking poverty, bankers, and prostitutes. I worked for many years as an investment banker and my experiences inspired me to write my debut thriller, Hard Underwriting, in Hong Kong, and uncover the dark side of Asia’s financial capital. 

Philippe's book list on thrillers set in Asia

Philippe Espinasse Why did Philippe love this book?

A best seller from BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner.

MI6 agent Luke Carlton is on a mission to uncover a secret cave system at a military complex south-east of Tehran, in which scientists work round-the-clock on a banned nuclear device, at the behest of ultra-conservative Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Gardner himself was ambushed and left paralyzed by Islamist gunmen, while on assignment in Riyadh. This is a rare thriller set in Iran, although the action also extends to neighbouring countries such as Armenia.

Fast-paced, well-written, and authentic. What more can you ask for?

By Frank Gardner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ultimatum as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Authentic, unnervingly current and action-packed, Ultimatum is the explosive new thriller from BBC security correspondent and No.1 bestseller Frank Gardner.
Deep within a cave system at a military complex south-east of Tehran, hidden from the prying eyes of Western satellites, scientists are working round-the-clock on a banned device. Acting on the orders of a renegade cell within the ultra-conservative Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, their intention is to propel Iran into the elite club of nuclear-armed nations - and seal its domination of the Middle East.

Britain's intelligence agencies know something is up. They have someone on the inside ready to…


Book cover of Bangkok Wakes to Rain

John Burgess Author Of A Woman of Angkor

From my list on fiction set in Southeast Asia throughout time.

Why am I passionate about this?

I first saw Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire, in 1969 as a teenager and was bowled over by the place. I kept coming back as a journalist and author. They say you should write about things that truly crank your engine, and I found mine—imperial conquest, Hindu and Buddhist spirituality, astounding architecture, and the lives of the millions of people who inhabited and built the place. I’ve now written three non-fiction books and two historical novels set in the civilization’s twelfth-century peak. The novels are an effort to recreate life in the old days. They draw heavily on my years in Southeast Asia, experiencing what life is like in the present day.

John's book list on fiction set in Southeast Asia throughout time

John Burgess Why did John love this book?

I lived in Bangkok for six years. This is the rare novel that captures the sounds, the smells, the spirit, and spirituality of the place. Bangkok in fact is the main character, with supporting roles by humans who make their lives there, from the nineteenth century to the present and into the not-so-distant future, when water lays permanent claim to a city built more or less at sea level. You can expect lyrical writing and engaging characters, whether human or urban. 

By Pitchaya Sudbanthad,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bangkok Wakes to Rain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Recreates the experience of living in Thailand's aqueous climate so viscerally that you can feel the water rising around your ankles." —Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Important, ambitious, and accomplished." —Mohsin Hamid, New York Times bestselling author of Exit West

A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of nineteenth-century Siam. A post-World War II society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting her solitary fate. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the house's resident spirits. In the present, a…


Book cover of Mercy's Heroes: The Fight for Human Dignity in the Bangkok Slums

Dian Seidel Author Of Kindergarten at 60: A Memoir of Teaching in Thailand

From my list on helping “farangs” understand what makes Thailand tick.

Why am I passionate about this?

After retiring from a career in climate science, I reinvented myself as an English teacher, a yoga instructor, and a writer. I write personal essays about my life experiences, in particular my time teaching in Thailand. Before I traveled to Thailand, while I was there, and when I returned home to the US, I devoured every book I could find that could help me make sense of Thai culture and manage as a farang (foreigner, Westerner) in the Land of Smiles. Here are my five picks for helping other farangs understand Thailand.

Dian's book list on helping “farangs” understand what makes Thailand tick

Dian Seidel Why did Dian love this book?

Tom Crowley is an American writer who has experienced Thailand from many perspectives over many decades: as a soldier during the Vietnam War, as a corporate executive, as a US foreign service officer, and as a volunteer at Mercy Centre, a Catholic charitable organization.

This poignant memoir is a series of vignettes that focus on Crowley’s traumatic wartime experiences and the healing he found years later working with desperate children in one of Bangkok’s poorest slums. I picked this book because it shows a part of Thailand that most farangs never see.

By Tom Crowley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mercy's Heroes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Mercy's Heroes, a Vietnam veteran battling with PTSD turns from the business world to life as a volunteer, helping to rescue and protect street kids in Bangkok's biggest slum.

Here Tom Crowley details the children's efforts to survive abuse and the struggle for dignity waged by the poorest of families. Interwoven throughout, the author's combat experiences and pain highlight the question of how to find personal reconciliation amid the struggles of abused children in the slums. In his efforts to help others, he gains a spiritual understanding worth much more than his financial loss. At the same time, he…


Book cover of Many Lives

Dian Seidel Author Of Kindergarten at 60: A Memoir of Teaching in Thailand

From my list on helping “farangs” understand what makes Thailand tick.

Why am I passionate about this?

After retiring from a career in climate science, I reinvented myself as an English teacher, a yoga instructor, and a writer. I write personal essays about my life experiences, in particular my time teaching in Thailand. Before I traveled to Thailand, while I was there, and when I returned home to the US, I devoured every book I could find that could help me make sense of Thai culture and manage as a farang (foreigner, Westerner) in the Land of Smiles. Here are my five picks for helping other farangs understand Thailand.

Dian's book list on helping “farangs” understand what makes Thailand tick

Dian Seidel Why did Dian love this book?

The “many lives” in this series of linked short stories are those of eleven passengers who perish when a Bangkok-bound boat capsizes in a fierce storm.

I relished each story of each life, both as a literary gem and as an insight into something fundamental about Thai society, such as the importance of social class, the role of urban migration in altering provincial life, the potentially stifling aspects of intergenerational family obligations, and the overriding role of karma in Thai conceptions of life and death.

To me, Many Lives is to Thai culture what Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town is to American culture.

By M. R. Kukrit Pramoj, Meredith Borthwick (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Many Lives as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"That night, the rain poured and wind howled, raindrops crashing like solid objects onto the ground and water. A passenger boat from Ban Phaen to Bangkok, packed with people, pressed on through the current amidst the rising clamor of the rain and storm. . . ." The boat capsizes in the torrent, and washed up on the shore the next morning are the sodden bodies of the many passengers who lost their lives.

Thus begins M. R. Kukrit Pramoj's classic novel set in the Thailand of the early 1950s and first published in 1954. The life of each passenger who…


Book cover of Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture

Tom Vater Author Of The Monsoon Ghost Image

From my list on Thailand from some unique perspectives.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a writer and journalist with an eye on South and Southeast Asia. I first worked in Thailand in 1999, researching the Thailand chapter for the first edition of the Rough Guides Southeast Asia Guide. Since 2001, I’ve been a Thailand correspondent for German publisher Reise Know How. For the past decade, I have worked as Thailand Destination Expert for The Daily Telegraph. I co-wrote the bestselling Sacred Skin – Thailand’s Spirit Tattoos with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, and have written countless articles about Thai culture, politics and tourism. It took 20 years to write a novel set in Thailand – The Monsoon Ghost Image – a testament to the complexities of Thai society. 

Tom's book list on Thailand from some unique perspectives

Tom Vater Why did Tom love this book?

A brilliant reference book on all aspects (and yes, this book is very thorough) of Thai popular culture. Concise chapters on anything from spirit tattoos to meat on a stick illuminate the far corners of contemporary Thai society, illustrated by hundreds of great photographs. This is a standard work for anyone interested in how Thai society ticks. Cornwel-Smith has served up a second title recently – Very Bangkok – which offers a similarly thorough picture of the Thai capital. 

By Philip Cornwel-Smith, John Goss (photographer),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Very Thai as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This pioneering insight into contemporary Thai folk culture delves beyond the traditional Thai icons to reveal the casual, everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle. From floral truck bolts and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and drinks in a bag, the same exquisite care, craft and improvisation resounds through home and street, bar and wardrobe. Never colonised, Thai culture retains nuanced ancient meaning in the most mundane things. The days are colour coded, lucky numbers dictate prices, window grilles become guardian angels, tattoos entrance the wearer. Philip Cornwel-Smith scoured each region to show how indigenous wisdom both…


Book cover of Traveling Below the Speed Limit

Ma Thanegi Author Of Nor Iron Bars a Cage

From my list on a combination of personalities, travel, and food.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a painter and a writer from Myanmar. The former profession is what I chose when I was 15 and began at 21, featured in a group exhibition of modern art and the only woman among several men. Since then I have exhibited in several group shows and have had seven solos. In the early 2000s by chance - and financial need - I became the Contributing Editor for the Myanmar Times weekly and a travel magazine until they closed down. Since then I have written around 20 books on food, culture, and travels and it kept me so busy that my art was put on hoId, but I hope to resume one day soon.

Ma's book list on a combination of personalities, travel, and food

Ma Thanegi Why did Ma love this book?

Always eloquent, insightful and at times, funny...such as how a mispronounced word in the tonal languages of the region might end in shared hilarity or bloodshed, Janet Brown describes her travels in Thailand and other SE Asian countries with warmth and joy. Her slow pace exudes sympathy, understanding, and enjoyment of the people and their lifestyles.

She said she learned from great travel writers that 'curiosity and observation can make a walk around the block become a journey', and I felt I was right by her side, enjoying the mood, the people, and especially, the food.

By Janet Brown,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Traveling Below the Speed Limit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

Everyone has their favorite way to travel, from cruise ship voyagers to vagabonds on the open road. It’s an all-consuming addiction--but what happens when age begins to slow a traveler down?

Traveling Below the Speed Limit describes different ways of travel and exploration: living in a foreign city, exploring familiar turf, venturing into the unknown territory of aging. A bus pass can serve as a passport; a city of residence can offer undiscovered experiences; a distant metropolis can become home for a month--or a year. And growing old, as that indomitable traveler Martha Gellhorn discovered, can be the last great…


Book cover of Bangkok: Recipes and Stories from the Heart of Thailand

Felicia Campbell Author Of The Food of Oman: Recipes and Stories from the Gateway to Arabia

From my list on best international cookbooks for both culture and food.

Why am I passionate about this?

Felicia Campbell is a food writer, editor, and author of The Food of Oman: Stories and Recipes from the Gateway to Arabia, the first English-language cookbook on Omani cuisine. She earned her masters degree in culinary anthropology from New York University with a specialization in Middle Eastern foodways. She has lectured on Omani food and food in zones of conflict at the Smithsonian Institute, Leiden University, New York University, and Arizona State University. She is currently developing a documentary series about endangered cuisines around the world. 

Felicia's book list on best international cookbooks for both culture and food

Felicia Campbell Why did Felicia love this book?

Leela Punyaratabandhu doesn’t dumb things down in her cookbook, which is an ode to the city of her birth. Hers are Bangkok-style Thai dishes as they are cooked in Thailand. Through it we learn not only how to caramelize beef using jaggery (an unprocessed sugar), but also how to pair it with deeply savory and spicy dishes for a meal that harmonizes contrasting flavors and textures. The suggested meals in her book require cooking sets of dishes, often four or more. While not the makings of an easy weeknight dinner, if you follow her instructions, the results are truly transportive.

By Leela Punyaratabandhu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bangkok as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From one of the most respected authorities on Thai cooking comes this beautiful and deeply personal ode to Bangkok, the top-ranked travel destination in the world.

WINNER OF THE ART OF EATING PRIZE

Every year, more than 16 million visitors flock to Thailand’s capital city, and leave transfixed by the vibrant culture and unforgettable food they encounter along the way. Thai cuisine is more popular today than ever, yet there is no book that chronicles the real food that Thai people eat every day—until now.

In Bangkok, award-winning author Leela Punyaratabandhu offers 120 recipes that capture the true spirit of…


Book cover of A Clean Kill in Tokyo
Book cover of Hungry Ghost
Book cover of Blowback Burma

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Interested in Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Thailand?

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