5 Fiction Books by Filipino Authors Your Book Club Should Read

Are you or your book club looking for a new read or to add to your diverse fiction shelves but want to support Filipino/a/x authors? Check out the following fiction novels and their summaries for some great new additions to your library. 

Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala

Things are heating up for Lila Macapagal. Not in her love life, which she insists on keeping nonexistent despite the attention of two very eligible bachelors. Or her professional life, since she can’t bring herself to open her new café after the unpleasantness that occurred a few months ago at her aunt’s Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie’s Kitchen. No, things are heating up quite literally, since summer, her least favorite season, has just started.

To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila’s little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago—a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case—because it looks like one of them might be next

About the Author:

​​Mia P. Manansala is a writer from Chicago who loves books, baking, and badass women. She uses humor (and murder) to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, queerness, and her millennial love for pop culture.

Glad You Exist by Kaye Rockwell

Three years ago, Liz lost everything and everyone, nearly destroying herself in the aftermath. But as graduation nears her family sensing her growing loneliness, urge her to stop hiding from the rest of the world and do what she should have done years ago and right some wrongs. As fate would have it, she starts getting thrown into circumstances forcing her to face the mistakes she made including dealing with the fallout with her three best friends.

Brad has been living his life trying to fill that void she leaves behind. He searches for friendships to compensate for the ones he had lost and seeks out relationships to get Liz out of his head. Now that fate seems intent on placing them back in each other's lives again and again. Is he ready to forgive and forget?

But then who he finds is not the same girl he knew so will this version of her change the way he feels?

Will the secrets they kept from each other keep them further apart or will a sudden tragedy bring them closer together and help mend the broken pieces of their friendship?

What will happen when the lines between love and friendship start to blur?

About the Author:

​​Influenced by her mother, Kaye Rockwell discovered her love of reading pretty early on in life.  At the age of 10, she finally put a pen to paper and wrote her first poem.  At age 14, she wrote her first story, a novel that will become "Glad You Exist."  Throughout the years writing poems and stories became an escape for her.

Now that she's a mom and has found her own happily-ever-after, she is determined to write swoon-worthy and heartwarming stories that speak about the journey to finding HEA (Happily Ever After) even after loss and life happen.

Ordinary World by Jose Miguel Arguelles

It is an Ordinary World that we live in, but what would you do if... You kidnap a seven-month old child and his parents refuse to ransom him and tell you that you could keep him? The woman of your wet dreams finally shows up outside your window, but you live on the 34th floor and your window side has no balcony? The people on the bus to whom you are speaking the Word of the Lord suddenly become hostile? You find out that most of your Grade Three classmates have killed themselves after leaving the same message on their social media accounts? You wake up to discover that the apocalypse which your church has predicted has not come to pass and you have to live the rest of your life after you just gave up everything because you thought you were going to die anyway? These are just some of the possibilities explored in Jose Miguel Arguelles’s newest collection. Our darkest hours are over. Welcome to the ordinary world, where it can be more terrifying.

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few...

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.

About the Author:

Olivie Blake is a lover and writer of stories, and is the pen name of Alexene Farol Follmuth. As Olivie, she has been published as the featured fiction contributor for Witch Way Magazine, as well as the writer for the self-published graphic series Alpha and a variety of other titles. As Alexene, My Mechanical Romance (her debut YA novel) is due for release in May 2022 from Holiday House. Alexene lives and works in Los Angeles, where she is generally tolerated by her rescue pit bull. She can be loosely defined as the sort of person who picked up sparring to help her write fight scenes.

Smaller And Smaller Circles by FH Batacan

Written by Maria Felisa H. Batacan (F.H. Batacan), a Filipino author and journalist, Smaller and Smaller Circles is considered one of the first Filipino crime novels. Originally published in 1996, it is Batacan’s debut novel. The story follows two Catholic priests, Fathers Gus Saenz and Jerome Lucero, who use their expertise as forensic investigators to track down a serial killer who has been mutilating and murdering young boys in Manila’s impoverished Payatas slum. Smaller and Smaller Circles won the Carlos Palanca Grand Prize for the English Novel in 1999, as well as the 2002 Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Award and the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award in 2003.

Smaller and Smaller Circles was also turned into a 2017 Philippine mystery thriller film directed by Raya Martin with a screenplay written by Ria Limjap and Moira Lang, The film features stars Nonie Buencamino and Sid Lucero as the Jesuit priests and forensic investigators Gus Saenz and Jerome Lucero, Carla Humphries as journalist Joanna Bonifacio, with Gladys Reyes, Ricky Davao, Bembol Roco, Christopher De Leon and Tessie Tomas in supporting roles. 

About the Author:

F.H. Batacan was born in Manila and graduated from the University of the Philippines with a BA in communications and an MA in art history. After ten years of working in the Philippine intelligence community, she turned to broadcast journalism. Smaller and Smaller Circles, her first novel, won the prestigious Philippine National Book Award and is widely regarded as the first Philippine crime novel.

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