Book Talk: The Mystical Mister Kay

Hi there! I’m the author of the Miss Cassidy trilogy, which includes The Formidable Miss Cassidy, The Enigmatic Madam Ingram, and the latest - The Mystical Mister Kay.

Join me in this fun and informal chat sesh! Grab a coffee, munch a cake, and get cozy!

About The Mystical Mister Kay:

The Mystical Mister Kay follows the adventures of Miss Cassidy's friend (ahem), the indefatigable Straits Chinese businessman Mr Kay Wing Tong, who also possesses the third eye - he can see ghosts. Miss Cassidy is missing, presumed dead. Mr Kay refuses to believe it. He journeys to Great Britain in the early 1900s in search of her, and decides to travel in disguise. His chosen disguise - that of a hokey mystic - requires him to pretend to be a white man in yellowface...

Complicating matters, he gets entangled in the mysterious death of a princess in a bathtub, and the machinations of a sinister tailor named Mr Ruby, who is also a little bit... supernatural.

About the Series:

The Formidable Miss Cassidy co-won the Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2021, and Best Literary Work at the Singapore Book Awards. As this was my first properly published novel, you can imagine how thrilling this was!

In 2023, the sequel The Enigmatic Madam Ingram was shortlisted for EBFP, and later longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. It also made it to the Popular Reader's Choice Award.

In 2025, The Mystical Mister Kay - the completion of the trilogy - won the Epigram Books Fiction Prize. I was truly, truly grateful and stunned.

The Miss Cassidy stories have now been published in UK, Italy, Albania, and this year in the U.S and Canada.

About the Moderator: Jason Erik Lundberg has been the editor of this series from the beginning. He's edited a huge number of Singapore's greatest literary works, including multiple EBFP winners, and a number of anthologies. He is also an accomplished author in his own right.

What's Happening?

Come find out more about the story, its inspirations, its challenges, and just how weird the author (me) really is...

We'll swap ghostly tales, plunge into folk magic and world mythologies, and ramble about colonialism, feminism, and many other -isms.

Join us in a cake-n-coffee chat with us at Singapore's coziest coffee corner, Book Bar! Entry to this event is free. Please purchase food, drinks and (best of all) BOOKS from Book Bar to participate!