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Randomly assigned number
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Name
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Author
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Short Description
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Current status
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1
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Beloved Witch
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Ipsita
Roy Chakraverti
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Self-indulgent
diary of a witch as a soothsayer. And a social butterfly.
In the
end the book is an ode from her to herself. But it does leave you bewitched.
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Available
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2
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Any Place I Hang My Hat
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Susan
Isaacs
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Amy was
barely born with a spoon in her mouth let alone a silver one. Her mother
abandoned her before her first birthday and her father, a small-time crook,
was in jail more time than he was out. Raised by her flaky and slightly
felonious grandmother, Amy worked hard and managed to get scholarships to
boarding school, then Harvard, then the Columbia School of Journalism. But
now -- a few years into her stint as a reporter for a prestigious magazine --
she doesn't know who she is or how to connect with the world. Seeking
answers, she sets out to find the mother she never knew...and maybe a place
to belong.
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Shampa
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3
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Have a Little Faith
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Mitch
Albom
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In Have
a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a
remarkable eight-year journey between two worlds--two men, two faiths, two
communities--that will inspire readers everywhere. Have a Little Faith is a
book about a life's purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about
the divine spark inside us all. It is one man's journey, but it is everyone's
story.
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Pompi
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4
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For One More Day
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Mitch
Albom
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"Every
family is a ghost story..."
Mitch
Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his number one New York Times
bestsellers, The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. For
One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that
covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if
you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?
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Pompi
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5
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Baumgartner’s Bombay
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Anita
Desai
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A "beautifully
written, richly textured, and haunting story" (Chaim Potok),
BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a
story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows
Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany -- and his Jewish heritage -- for
India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay
at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek
tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny" (NEW LEADER), Desai's "capacious
intelligence, her unsentimental compassion" (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their
full height.
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Shampa
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6
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The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall
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Anne
Bronte
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Gilbert
Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young
widow who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick
to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behavior becomes the
subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his
trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read
her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of her past.
Told
with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony, The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall is a powerfully involving read.
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Shampa
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7
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Fruit of the Lemon
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Andrea
Levy
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From
Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and winner of the Whitbread Book of the
Year and the Best of the Best Orange Prize, comes a story of one woman and
two islands. Fruit of the Lemon spans countries and centuries, exploring
questions of race and identity with humor and a freshness, and confirms
Andrea Levy as one of our most exciting contemporary novelists.
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Available
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8
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
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Betty
Smith
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The
beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of
the century, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving
tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with
life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic
Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of
Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than
sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting,
the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and
tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that
brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich
moments of universal experience.
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Shampa
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9
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An Obedient Father
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Akhil
Sharma
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As an
inspector for the Physical Education Department in the Delhi school system,
Ram Karan supports his widowed daughter and eight-year-old granddaughter by
collecting bribes for a small-time Congress Party boss. On the eve of Rajiv
Gandhi's assassination, one reckless act bares the lifetime of violence and
sexual shame behind Ram's dingy public career and involves him in a farcical,
but terrifying, political campaign that could cost him his life.
An
astonishing character study, a portrait of a family--and a country--tormented
by the past.
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Kenneth
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10
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Mistress
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Anita
Nair
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When
travel writer Christopher Stewart arrives at a riverside resort in Kerala,
India to meet Koman, Radha's uncle and a famous dancer, he enters a world of
masks and repressed emotions. From their first meeting, both Radha and her
uncle are drawn to the enigmatic young man with his cello and his incessant
questions about the past. The triangle quickly excludes Shyam, Radha's
husband, who can only watch helplessly as she embraces Chris with a passion
that he has never been able to draw from her. Also playing the role of
observer-participant is Koman; his life story, as it unfolds, captures all
the nuances and contradictions of the relationships being made—and unmade—in
front of his eyes.
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Kunal
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11
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Clear light of day
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Anita
Desai
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Set in
India's Old Delhi, CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY is Anita Desai's tender, warm, and
compassionate novel about family scars, the ability to forgive and forget,
and the trials and tribulations of familial love. At the novel's heart are
the moving relationships between the members of the Das family, who have
grown apart from each other. Bimla is a dissatisfied but ambitious teacher at
a women's college who lives in her childhood home, where she cares for her
mentally challenged brother, Baba. Tara is her younger, unambitious,
estranged sister, married and with children of her own. Raja is their
popular, brilliant, and successful brother. When Tara returns for a visit
with Bimla and Baba, old memories and tensions resurface and blend into a
domestic drama that is intensely beautiful and leads to profound
self-understanding.
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Kunal
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12
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Bone China
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Roma
Tearnes
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An epic
novel of love, loss and a family uprooted, set in the contrasting landscapes
of war-torn Sri Lanka and immigrant London. Grace de Silva, wife of the
shiftless but charming Aloysius, has five children and a crumbling marriage.
Her eldest son, Jacob, wants desperately to go to England. Thornton, the most
beautiful of all the children and his mother's favourite, dreams of becoming
a poet. Alicia wants to be a concert pianist. Only Frieda has no ambition,
other than to remain close to her family. But civil unrest is stirring in Sri
Lanka and Christopher, the youngest and the rebel of the family, is soon
caught up in the tragedy that follows. As the decade unfolds against a
backdrop of increasing ethnic violence, Grace watches helplessly as the life
she knows begins to crumble. Slowly, this once happy family is torn apart as
four of her children each make the decision to leave their home. In London,
the de Silvas are all caught in a clash between East and West
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Malini
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13
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The Jadu House
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Laura
Roychowdhury
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A
cultural and confessional journey into the heart of the Anglo-Indian
community in India.
Even
today, the Anglo-Indian and Eurasian community in India, a legacy of the
British Raj, is tainted with outcast status. Laura Roychowdhury travelled to
West Bengal to hear their stories.
Part
travelogue, part historical inquiry, part love story, The Jadu House explores
the tangled web of passion, hatred and longing that has bound India and
Britain together for over two hundred years.
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Kenneth
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14
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The Piano Teacher
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Elfried
Jelinek
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The
Piano Teacher, the most famous novel of Elfriede Jelinek, who was awarded the
2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, is a shocking, searing, aching portrait of a
woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires.Erika Kohut
is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who
still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears to
be a seamless tissue of boredom, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old,
secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and
sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed,
seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to
seduce her. She resists him at first, but then the dark passions roiling under
the piano teacher's subdued exterior explode in a release of sexual
perversity, suppressed violence, and human degradation.
Celebrated
throughout Europe for the intensity and frankness of her writings and awarded
the Heinrich Böll Prize for her outstanding contribution to German letters,
Elfriede Jelinek is one of the most original and controversial writers in the
world today. The Piano Teacher was made into a film, released in the United
States in 2001, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.
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Pompi
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15
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Afterwards
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Jaishree
Misra
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When
Rahul Tiwari arrives in Kerala for a short break from London, he has no
premonition of a life-changing moment. But one glance over the fence at his
lovely but reticent neighbour. Maya is enough to launch him on a path of no
return. He finds himself playing friend, partner, co-conspirator, and finally
the entirely unexpected role of saviour as Maya, suffocating under the weight
of a loveless marriage and a suspicious husband, turns to him for help. With
characteristic case and insight, Jaishree Misra writes in her new novel of
the transforming power of love and of the joy and heartbreak of giving
yourself to another, for better or for worse.
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Kenneth
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16
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Becoming a writer
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Dorothea
Brande
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Refreshingly slim, beautifully written and
deliciously elegant. Brande believed passionately that although people have
varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. She also insists that writing
can be both taught and learned. This is Dorothea Brande's legacy to all those
who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound,
practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on
finding "the writer's magic."
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Pompi
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17
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Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
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Kiran
Desai
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Sampath
Chawla was born in a time of drought that ended with a vengeance the night of
his birth. All signs being auspicious, the villagers triumphantly assured
Sampath's proud parents that their son was destined for greatness.
Twenty
years of failure later, that unfortunately does not appear to be the case. A
sullen government worker, Sampath is inspired only when in search of a quiet
place to take his nap. "But the world is round," his grandmother
says. "Wait and see Even if it appears he is going downhill, he will
come up the other side. Yes, on top of the world. He is just taking a longer
route." No one believes her until, one day, Sampath climbs into a guava
tree and becomes unintentionally famous as a holy man, setting off a series
of events that spin increasingly out of control. A delightfully sweet comic
novel that ends in a raucous bang, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is as
surprising and entertaining as it is beautifully wrought.
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Karthik
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18
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Tamarind Mem
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Anita
Rau Badami
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A
beautiful and brilliant portrait of two generations of women. Set in India’s
railway colonies, this is the story of Kamini and her mother Saroja,
nicknamed Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While in Canada beginning her
graduate studies, Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying she has
sold their home and is travelling through India. Both are forced into the
past to confront their dreams and losses and to explore the love that binds
mothers and daughters everywhere.
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Kenneth
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19
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That Long Silence
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Shashi
Deshpande
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Jaya's
life comes apart at the seams when her husband is asked to leave his job
while allegations of business malpractice against him are investigated. Her
familiar existence disrupted, her husband's reputation in question and their
future as a family in jeopardy, Jaya, a failed writer, is haunted by memories
of the past. Differences with her husband, frustrations in their
seventeen-year-old marriage, disappointment in her two teenage children, the
claustrophia of her childhood—all begin to surface. In her small suburban
Bombay flat, Jaya grapples with these and other truths about herself—among
them her failure at writing and her fear of anger. Shashi Deshpande gives us
an exceptionally accomplished portrayal of a woman trying to erase a 'long
silence' begun in childhood and rooted in herself and in the constraints of
her life.
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Kenneth
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20
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On Chesil Beach
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Ian
McEwan
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It is
June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward
and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in
their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the
wedding night to come...
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Pompi
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21
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Lorna Doone
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R D
Blackamore
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First
published in 1869, Lorna Doone is the
story of John Ridd, a farmer who finds love amid the religious and social
turmoil of seventeenth-century England. He is just a boy when his father is
slain by the Doones, a lawless clan inhabiting wild Exmoor on the border of
Somerset and Devon. Seized by curiosity and a sense of adventure, he makes
his way to the valley of the Doones, where he is discovered by the beautiful
Lorna. In time their childish fantasies blossom into mature love—a bond that
will inspire John to rescue his beloved from the ravages of a stormy winter,
rekindling a conflict with his archrival, Carver Doone, that climaxes in
heartrending violence. Beloved for its portrait of star-crossed lovers and
its surpassing descriptions of the English countryside, Lorna Doone is R. D.
Blackmore’s enduring masterpiece.
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Pompi
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22
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Death Comes For the Archbishop
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Willa
Cather
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There
is something epic—and almost mythic—about this sparsely beautiful novel by
Willa Cather, although the story it tells is that of a single human life,
lived simply in the silence of the desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour
comes as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory
of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in
custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his
faith in the only way he knows—gently, although he must contend with an
unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and
his own loneliness. One of these events Cather gives us an indelible vision
of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.
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Pompi
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23
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Nights at the Circus
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Angela
Carter
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Is
Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake?
Courted
by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste
extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman,
part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the
truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the
scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its
magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and
Siberia.
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Available
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24
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Pomegranate Soup
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Marsha
Mehran
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Beneath
the holy mountain Croagh Patrick, in damp and lovely County Mayo, sits the
small, sheltered village of Ballinacroagh. To the exotic Aminpour sisters,
Ireland looks like a much-needed safe haven. It has been seven years since
Marjan Aminpour fled Iran with her younger sisters, Bahar and Layla, and she
hopes that in Ballinacroagh, a land of “crazed sheep and dizzying roads,”
they might finally find a home.
Infused
with the textures and scents, trials and triumph,s of two distinct cultures,
Pomegranate Soup is an infectious novel of magical realism. This richly
detailed story, highlighted with delicious recipes, is a delectable journey
into the heart of Persian cooking and Irish living.
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Available
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25
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Thw World According to Garp
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John
Irving
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This is
the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields--a feminist
leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and
her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes--even of sexual
assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet
the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald
and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries--with
more than ten million copies in print--this novel provides almost cheerful,
even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: "In the world according
to Garp, we are all terminal cases."
The
World According to Garp is a comic and compassionate coming-of-age novel that
established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his
generation. A worldwide bestseller since its publication in 1978, Irving's
classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T.
S. Garp, novelist and bastard son of Jenny Fields--a feminist leader ahead of
her time. Beyond that, The World According to Garp virtually defies synopsis.
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Available
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26
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The Plumed Serpent
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D H
Lawrence
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The
story of a European woman's self-annihilating plunge into the intrigues,
passions, and pagan rituals of Mexico. Lawrence's mesmerizing and unsettling
1926 novel is his great work of the political imagination.
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Pompi
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27
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The Holder of the World
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Bharti
Mukherjee
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This is
the remarkable story of Hannah Easton, a unique woman born in the American
colonies in 1670, "a person undreamed of in Puritan society."
Inquisitive, vital and awake to her own possibilities, Hannah travels to
Mughal, India, with her husband, and English trader. There, she sets her own
course, "translating" herself into the Salem Bibi, the white lover
of a Hindu raja.
It is
also the story of Beigh Masters, born in New England in the mid-twentieth
century, an "asset hunter" who stumbles on the scattered record of
her distant relative's life while tracking a legendary diamond. As Beigh
pieces together details of Hannah's journeys, she finds herself drawn into
the most intimate and spellbinding fabric of that remote life, confirming her
belief that with "sufficient passion and intelligence, we can deconstruct
the barriers of time and geography...."
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Shampa
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28
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Zora
Neale Hurston
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When Janie, at sixteen, is caught kissing
shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old
man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the
man of her dreams, who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds
...
'For me, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is one of the very greatest American
novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is
so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous,
convincing and dazzling piece of prose, as emotionally satisfying as it is
impressive. There is no novel I love more.' Zadie Smith
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Pompi
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29
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The Arabian Nightmare
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Robert
Irwin
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The hero and guiding force of this epic
fantasy is an insomniac young man who, unable to sleep, guides the reader
through the narrow streets of Cairo-a mysterious city full of deceit and
trickery. He narrates a complex tangle of dreams and imaginings that describe
an atmosphere constantly shifting between sumptuously learned orientalism,
erotic adventure, and dry humor. The result is a thought-provoking puzzle box
of sex, philosophy, and theology.
Reminiscent of Italo Calvino, and Umberto
Eco, this cult classic is finally back in print!
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Shampa
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30
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My Invented Country
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Isabel
Allende
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Two life-altering events inflect the
peripatetic narration of this book: The military coup and violent death of
her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into
exile and transformed her into a writer. The terrorist attack of September
11, 2001, on her newly adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth
from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My
Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself,
ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author's past
and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us,
who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.
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Malini
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31
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Strait is the Gate
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Andre
Gide
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A delicate boy growing up in Paris, Jerome
Palissier spends many summers at his uncle's house in the Normandy
countryside, where the whole world seems 'steeped in azure'. There he falls
deeply in love with his cousin Alissa and she with him. But gradually Alissa
becomes convinced that Jerome's love for her is endangering his soul. In the
interests of his salvation, she decides to suppress everything that is
beautiful in herself - in both mind and body.
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Malini
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32
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The Red Carpet
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Lavanya
Sankaran
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Wry humor and a delicious grasp of the
friction between generations in Bangalore are the hallmarks of Lavanya
Sankaran’s fresh, deeply nuanced debut collection. “A potpourri of beggars
and billionaires and determinedly laid-back ways,” Bangalore, India’s own
Silicon Valley, is a crucible for prosperity, and at the chaotic crossroads
between past and present. Here, American-trained professionals like Tara
return to their old-fashioned families with heads full of Quentin Tarantino
dialogue; a successful entrepreneur is shaken when his partner suddenly
reneges on their plan to return to America; a traditional Indian mother slyly
circumvents her Western-educated daughter’s resistance to marriage; a
neighborhood gossip is determined to discover what goes on behind the closed
curtains of the hip young couple across the street; a chauffeur must
reconcile his more orthodox credos with his employer’s miniskirt lifestyle.
Witty, affectionate, and wonderfully wise,
Lavanya Sankaran’s first collection attests to her remarkable literary
talent.
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Available
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33
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A Spool of Blue Thread
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Anne
Tyler
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A freshly observed, joyful and wrenching,
funny and true new novel from Anne Tyler
"It was a beautiful, breezy,
yellow-and-green afternoon." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins
the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The
Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an
indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all
families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the
picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only
tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies,
disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. from Red's father and mother,
newly-arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red's grandchildren
carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here
are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the
sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.
Brimming with all the insight, humour, and
generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler's work, A Spool of
Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in
all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.
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Malini
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34
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Ancient Promises
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Jaishree
Misra
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the story of an affectionate and dutiful
daughter, a compassionate but guilty lover, a restless and miserable wife, a
helpless and despairing mother - a woman constantly in search of an identity,
a woman pursuing her rightful share of happiness.
It is a revelation simply because she did not attempt
to set the literary world on fire with dense prose - her writing wasn’t
ostentatious, rather she concentrated on keeping things simple with realism
thrown in good measure.
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Available
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35
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Beloved
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Toni
Morrison
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Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of
slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful
as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio,
but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of
Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new
home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose
tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as
taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate
Toni Morrison.
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Pompi
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36
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Idris, Keeper of Light
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Anita
Nair
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A powerful historical novel from a well-loved
and celebrated author.
The year is 1659. Idris, a Somalian trader,
is in Kerala to attend the Mamangam festivities. By a strange twist of fate,
he meets his nine-year-old son whose existence he had been unaware of. In an
attempt to keep his son close to him, he embarks with him on a voyage that
ends in the diamond mines of Golconda. Packed with passion, adventure and
fascinating aspects of life in the seventeenth century in southern India,
Idris is a page-turner that will intrigue and excite readers everywhere.
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Shampa
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37
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The Writing Diet
|
Julia Cameron
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Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way,
offers a revolutionary diet plan: Use writing to take off the pounds!
Over the course of the past twenty-five
years, Julia Cameron has taught thousands of artists and aspiring artists how
to unblock wellsprings of creativity. And time and again she has noticed an
interesting thing: Often when her students uncover their creative selves they
also undergo a surprising physical transformation—invigorated by their work,
they slim down. In The Writing Diet, Cameron illuminates the relationship
between creativity and eating to reveal a crucial equation: Creativity can
block overeating.
This inspiring weight-loss program directs
listeners to count words instead of calories, to substitute their writing's
'food for thought' for actual food. The Writing Diet presents a brilliant
plan for using one of the soul's deepest and most abiding appetites—the
desire to be creative—to lose weight and keep it off forever.
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Kenneth
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38
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A Walk Between Heaven & Earth
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Burghild
Nina Holzer
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Talking to paper is talking to the divine.
Paper is infinitely patient. Each time you scratch on it, you trace part Of yourself,
and thus part of the world, and thus part of the grammar of the universe. It
is a huge language, but each of us tracks his or her particular understanding
of it."
From A Walk Between Heaven and Earth
Unlike any other guide to journal writing, A
Walk Between Heaven and Earth is itself written as a personal journal and as
a meditation on the flow of creation. Burghild Nina Holzer demonstrates that
the creative process is in fact a large, ongoing movement in our lives and
that we may gradually discover the pattern and direction of it by trusting
whatever it is we choose to confide to the page. She helps would-be writers
recognize the power and importance of opening themselves to the present
moment and recording whatever they find there. Holzer's book is both
inspiration and model. It will appeal not only to those who wish to explore
the creative process as a mystical path, but to all who desire to express
themselves through writing.
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Pompi
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39
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The Early Ayn Rand
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Collection
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This remarkable, newly revised collection of
Ayn Rand's early fiction-including her previously unpublished short story The
Night King-ranges from beginner's exercises to excerpts from early versions
of We the Living and The Fountainhead.
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Pompi
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40
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The Old Cape Magic
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Richard
Russo
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Following Bridge of Sighs—a national best
seller hailed by The Boston Globe as “an astounding achievement” and “a
masterpiece”—Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the
other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises
of youth.
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep
introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man
confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his
daughter’s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what
in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great
comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and
heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and
unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
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Available
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41
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Sister of My Heart
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C
Divakaruni Bannerjee
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Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste
Calcutta family; her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of the
family. Sudha is as beautiful, tenderhearted, and serious as Anju is plain,
whip-smart, and defiant. yet since the day they were born, Sudha and Anju
have been bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend.
The cousins' bond is shattered, however, when
Sudha learns a dark family secret. Urged into arranged marriages, their lives
take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a
rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with her new husband
and learns to live her own life of secrets. Then tragedy strikes them both,
and the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between
them, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of India
and America, this is an exceptionally moving novel of love, friendship, and
compelling courage.
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Pompi
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42
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A Fine Balance
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Rohinton
Mistry
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With a compassionate realism and narrative
sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel
captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India.
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed
city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in
whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted
from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste
violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share
one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to
friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring
panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.
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Kunal
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43
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East of Eden
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John Steinbeck
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Set in the rich farmland of California’s
Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined
destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations
helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain
and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and
explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity; the
inexplicability of love; and the murderous consequences of love’s absence.
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Pompi
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44
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The Bastard of Istanbul
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Elif
Shafak
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In her second novel written in English, Elif
Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set
in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the
"bastard" of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves
Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the
Kazancı family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul:
Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlor and
is Asya's mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant;
Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed
with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with
his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies
to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazancı sisters and
becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two
families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full
of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, The Bastard of Istanbul is a
bold, powerful tale that will confirm Shafak as a rising star of
international fiction.
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Karthik
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45
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Odysseus Abroad
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Amit
Chowdhury
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From the widely acclaimed writer, a beguiling
new novel, at once wistful and ribald, about a day in the life of two Indian
men in London--a university student and his bachelor uncle--each coping in
his own way with alienation, solitariness, and the very art of living.
It is 1985. Twenty-two-year-old Ananda has
been in London for two years, practicing at being a poet. He's homesick,
thinks of himself as an inveterate outsider, and yet he can't help feeling
that there's something romantic, even poetic, in his isolation. His uncle,
Radhesh, a magnificent failure who lives in genteel impoverishment and
celibacy, has been in London for nearly three decades. Odysseus Abroad
follows them on one of their weekly, familiar forays about town. The
narrative surface has the sensual richness that has graced all of Amit
Chaudhuri's work. But the great charm and depth of the novel reside in
Ananda's far-ranging ruminations (into the triangle between his mother,
father, and Radhesh--his mother's brother, his father's best friend; his
Sylheti/Bengali ancestry; the ambitions and pressures that rest on his
shoulders); in Radhesh's often artfully wielded idiosyncrasies; and in the
spiky, needful, sometimes comical, yet ultimately loving connection between
the two men.
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Pompi
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46
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White Teeth
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Zadie
Smith
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On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones
sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his
Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie—working-class, ordinary, a failed
marriage under his belt—is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the
flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop
(annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs
on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this
richly imagined, uproariously funny novel.
Zadie Smith's dazzling first novel plays out
its bounding, vibrant course in a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an
Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant
café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute. A winning debut in
every respect, White Teeth marks the arrival of a wondrously talented writer
who takes on the big themes —faith, race, gender, history, and culture— and
triumphs.
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Shampa
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47
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Mahasweta
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Sudha
Murty
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Anupama looked into the mirror and shivered
with shock. A small white patch had now appeared on her arm.' Anupama's
fairytale marriage to Anand falls apart when she discovers a white patch on
her foot and learns that she has leukoderma. Abandoned by her uncaring in-laws
and insensitive husband, she is forced to return to her father's home in the
village. The social stigma of a married woman living with her parents, her
steother's continual barbs and the ostracism that accompanies her skin
condition force her to contemplate suicide. Determined to rebuild her life
against all odds, Anupama goes to Bombay where she finds success, respect and
the promise of an enduring friendship. Mahashweta is an inspiring story of
courage and resilience in a world marred by illusions and betrayals. This
poignant tale offers hope and solace to the victims of the prejudices that
govern society even today.
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Available
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48
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The Glass Palace
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Amitav
Ghosh
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Set in Burma during the British invasion of
1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor
boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create
an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family
out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young
woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He
cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are
today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni
calls “a master storyteller.”
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Pompi
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49
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The Hero’s Walk
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Anita
Rau Badami
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The Hero's Walk, the second novel by Anita
Rau Badami, is a big, intimate book, the kind that seldom strays beyond the
doors of a single residence. Set in the sweltering streets of Toturpuram, a
small city on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk, which won the 2001
Commonwealth Writers Prize for best book in Canada and the Caribbean,
explores the troubled life of Sripathi Rao, an unremarkable, middle-aged
family man and advertising copywriter. As The Hero's Walk opens, Sripathi's
life is already in a state of thorough disrepair. His mother, a domineering,
half-senile octogenarian, sits like a tyrant at the top of his household,
frightening off his sister's suitors, chastising him for not having become a
doctor, and brandishing her hypochondria and paranoia with sinister abandon.
It is Sripathi's children, however, who pose the biggest problems: Arun, his
son, is becoming dangerously involved in political activism, and Maya, his
daughter, broke off her arranged engagement to a local man in order to wed a
white Canadian. Sripathi's troubles come to a head when Maya and her husband
are killed in an automobile accident, leaving their 7- year-old daughter,
Nandana, without Canadian kin. Sripathi travels to Canada and brings his
granddaughter home, while his family is shaken by a series of calamities that
may, eventually, bring peace to their lives. --Jack Illingworth
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Pompi
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50
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Aftertaste
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Namita
Devidayal
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In her bestselling novel Aftertaste (over
5000 hardback copies sold), Namita Devidayal provides a captivating account
of a baniya family settled in Punjab headed by a matriarch, Mummyji, who is
in hospital after a stroke. The Todarmal family, glued together by money not
love, includes the weak and emasculated Rajan Papa who is desperately in need
of cash; Sunny, the dynamic head of the business with an ugly marriage and a
demanding mistress; Suman, the spoilt and greedy beauty of the family who is
determined to get her hands on Mummyji’s best jewels; and Saroj, Suman’s
unlucky sister, who has always lived in her shadow. Each one of them wants
Mummyji to die.
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Available
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51
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Salt and Saffron
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Kamila
Shamsi
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A beautiful novel detailing the life and
loves of a Pakistani girl living in the U.S.
Aliya may not have inherited her family's
patrician looks, but she is as much a prey to the legends of her family that
stretch back to the days of Timur Lang. Aristocratic and eccentric-the clan
has plenty of stories to tell, and secrets to hide.
Like salt and saffron, which both flavor food
but in slightly different ways, it is the small, subtle differences that
cause the most trouble in Aliya's family. The family problems and scandals
caused by these minute differences echo the history of the sub-continent and
the story of Partition.
A superb storyteller, Kamila Shamsie writes
with warmth and gusto. Through the many anecdotes about Pakistani family
life, she hints at the larger tale of a divided nation. Spanning the
subcontinent from the Muslim invasions to the Partition, this is a magical
novel about the shapes stories can take- turning into myths, appearing in
history books and entering into our lives.
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Available
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52
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The Moons of Jupiter
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Alice
Munro
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Witty, subtle, passionate, The Moons of
Jupiter is exceptionally knowledgeable about the content and movement - the
entanglements and entailments - of individual human feeling. And the
knowledge it offers can't be looked up elsewhere' New York Times The characters
who populate an Alice Munro story live and breathe. Passions hopelessly
conceived, affections betrayed, marriages made and broken: the joys, fears,
loves and awakenings of women echo throughout these twelve unforgettable
stories, laying bare the unexceptional and yet inescapable pain of human
contact. About the Author Acclaimed author of one novel and several
collections of stories, winner of the WH Smith Award, the Giller Prize and
the Governor General's Award in her native Canada, and shortlisted for the
Booker Prize.
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Ahona
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53
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The Music Room
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Namita
Devidayal
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When Namita is ten years old, her mother
takes her to Kennedy Bridge, a seamy neighborhood in Bombay, home to hookers
and dance girls. There, in a cramped one-room apartment lives Dhondutai, the
last living disciple of two of the finest Indian classical singers of the
twentieth century: the legendary Alladiya Khan and the great songbird
Kesarbai Kerkar. Namita begins to learn singing from Dhondutai, at first
reluctantly and then, as the years pass, with growing passion. Dhondutai sees
in her a second Kesarbai, but does Namita have the dedication to give herself
up completely to the discipline like her teacher? Or will there always be too
many late nights and cigarettes? And where do love and marriage fit into all
of this?
A
bestseller in India, where it was a literary sensation, The Music Room is a
deeply moving meditation on how traditions and life lessons are passed along
generations, on the sacrifices made by women through the ages, and on a
largely unknown, but vital aspect of Indian life and culture that will
utterly fascinate American readers.
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Meena
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54
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What The Day Owes The Night
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Yasmina
Khadra
|
Younes is still an impressionable young boy
when his family loses everything and is forced to move to the Algerian slum
of Jenane Jato.
His father is an overly proud man who refuses
help from his wealthy brother, Mahi. But life in the city is difficult and he
grudgingly agrees to let Younes live with Mahi to give him a chance at life.
Mahi, a pharmacist, is married to a Christian
woman, Germaine, and they have no children. Both long for a child of their
own.
Younes is the answer to their prayers and
they welcome him into their home with open arms. Germaine renames him Jonas
and so life begins in the affluent European town of Rio Salado.
Despite the overwhelming love of Germaine and
Mahi and a unique friendship between him and three other boys in Rio Salado,
Younes never really fits in.
But life is good and the four friends form an
enduring bond that nothing will shake |- not even the Algerian war.
But when Emilie arrives in the town an epic
love story is set in motion that will challenge the boys' friendship.
Suddenly Younes is forced to confront the
burden of choosing between two worlds - Algerian or European; loyal or
selfish; surrendering to fate or taking control of his destiny.
Set against the Algerian war of independence,
this story is more than just a love story. It examines with powerful
compassion and empathy the rifts between lovers, family and friends who love
one country but in so many different ways.
Beautifully written, this is a
heartbreakingly sad story of love, loss and humanity. - Meneesha Govender
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Shampa
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55
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Birthday Letters
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Ted
Hughes
|
Formerly Poet Laureate to Queen Elizabeth II,
the late Ted Hughes (1930-98) is recognized as one of the few contemporary
poets whose work has mythic scope and power. And few episodes in postwar
literature have the legendary stature of Hughes's romance with, and marriage
to, the great American poet Sylvia Plath.
The poems in Birthday Letters are addressed
(with just two exceptions) to Plath, and were written over a period of more
than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963. Some
are love letters, others haunted recollections and ruminations. In them,
Hughes recalls his and Plath's time together, drawing on the powerful imagery
of his work--animal, vegetable, mythological--as well as on Plath's famous
verse.
Countless books have discussed the subject of
this intense relationship from a necessary distance, but this volume--at
last--offers us Hughes's own account. Moreover, it is a truly remarkable
collection of poems in its own right.
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Malini
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56
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A Sin of Colour
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Sunetra
Gupta
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Debendranath Roy, presumed dead, leaves
behind a pale, languishing wife and a mystery that takes 20 years to unfold.
His hidden passion for his brother's wife, his own wife's unrequited love and
his niece's obsession to uncover the truth create the beauty, power and
tension of this story.
A Sin of Color tells the story of three
generations, and of a house in Calcutta called Mandalay. It is to Mandalay
that Debendranath's father brings his young bride after their wedding. And it
is to Mandalay that Debendranath's older brother brings his own wife, the
woman with whom Debendranath falls in love. Fleeing the house, his family and
his ill-fated love for a married woman, Debendranath leaves for England. But
he cannot escape his passion-and years later, neither can his niece,
Niharika, a beautiful and talented writer.
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Available
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57
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Change 101
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Bill O’ Hahlon
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Drawing on thirty years of clinical
experience, Bill O’Hanlon—one of psychotherapy’s most innovative
practitioners and teachers—examines this simple yet often elusive aspect of
successful therapy: change. With his characteristic wit and style, O’Hanlon
presents the key concepts and most powerful methods for achieving personal
transformation. Readers are provided with the perspective and inspiration
necessary to embrace the risk and reward of change.
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Pompi
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58
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Tiger Hills
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Sarita
Mandanna
|
As the first girl to be born into the
Nachimanda family in over thirty-five years, the beautiful Devi is the object
of adoration of her entire family. Spirited and strong-willed, she befriends
the shy Devanna, a young boy whose mother has died in tragic circumstances.
Together they grow up amidst the luscious jungles, rolling hills, and coffee
plantations of Coorg in Southern India; cocooned by an extended family whose
roots to this beautiful land can be traced for centuries. Their futures seem
inevitably linked, but everything changes when, one night, they attend a
"tiger wedding." It is there that Devi gets her first glimpse of
Machu, the celebrated tiger killer and a hunter of great repute. Although she
is still a child and Machu is a man, Devi vows to marry him one day. It is
this love that will gradually drive a wedge between Devi and Devanna, sowing
the seed of a devastating tragedy that will change the fate of all three ---
an event that has unforeseen and far-reaching consequences for generations to
come.
Told in rich, lyrical prose and set against
the background of a changing society, TIGER HILLS is a sweeping saga about
one woman's determination to live life on her own terms --- and a riveting
novel about the choices we make in the name of family, nation, and love.
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Available
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59
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The Sum of Our Days
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Isabel
Allende
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In this heartfelt memoir, Isabel Allende
reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of tragic
loss—the death of her daughter, Paula. Recalling the past thirteen years
from the daily letters the author and her mother, who lives in Chile, wrote
to each other, Allende bares her soul in a book that is as exuberant and full
of life as its creator. She recounts the stories of the wildly eccentric,
strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her that becomes a new
kind of family. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom,
The Sum of Our Days is a portrait of a contemporary family, bound together by
the love, fierce loyalty, and stubborn determination of a beloved,
indomitable matriarch.
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Pompi
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60
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The Valley of Masks
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Tarun j
Tejpal
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(This novel has been longlisted for Man Asian
Literary Prize 2011 for Fiction)'This is my story. And the story of my
people.'The Valley of Masks examines the pathologies of power, purity and
dogma to give us a frightening yet ultimately redemptive vision of the
future. In the words of Ashis Nandy, critic and social commentator, 'This
brilliant, superbly imaginative but terribly disturbing novel transcends
borders, cultures, reading habits and literary fashions. As a story of the
inhumanity of any human search for absolute perfection, it probably has no
parallel in our literature. As a fable, it has a moral that will return to
haunt you.'About the AuthorTarun J. Tejpal has been a journalist for close to
thirty years. He is the editor of Tehelka, a news organization famed for its
public interest journalism. His novels The Alchemy of Desire and The Story of
My Assassins have received worldwide recognition. He lives in New Delhi.
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Karthik
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61
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Beach Boy
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Ardashir
Vakil
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'I have been bunking off school to go to the
movies. I have stolen money, I have sold things, I have double-crossed my
friends and - I cannot bear to think of the thought - have been into the
bathroom with my brother's friend, Darab.'
Eight-year old Cyrus Readmoney, son of
wealthy parents, voluntarily lives like a vagabond, roaming the streets of
Bombay and inviting himself into the homes and lives of the neighbours.
Obsessed with the sensual delights of food, colourful Hindi films and his
growing sexual awareness, precocious Cyrus lives day to day on the margins of
the adult world - treating it as a playground for his boyish exuberance.
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Arijit
Dey
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62
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The Good Muslim
|
Tahmina
Anam
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From prizewinning Bangladeshi novelist
Tahmima Anam comes her deeply moving second novel about the rise of Islamic
radicalism in Bangladesh, seen through the intimate lens of a family.
Pankaj Mishra praised A Golden Age, Tahmima
Anam's debut novel, as a "startlingly accomplished and gripping novel
that describes not only the tumult of a great historical event . . . but also
the small but heroic struggles of individuals living in the shadow of
revolution and war." In her new novel, The Good Muslim, Anam again
deftly weaves the personal and the political, evoking with great skill and
urgency the lasting ravages of war and the competing loyalties of love and
belief.
In the dying days of a brutal civil war,
Sohail Haque stumbles upon an abandoned building. Inside he finds a young
woman whose story will haunt him for a lifetime to come. . . . Almost a
decade later, Sohail's sister, Maya, returns home after a long absence to
find her beloved brother transformed. While Maya has stuck to her
revolutionary ideals, Sohail has shunned his old life to become a charismatic
religious leader. And when Sohail decides to send his son to a madrasa, the
conflict between brother and sister comes to a devastating climax. Set in
Bangladesh at a time when religious fundamentalism is on the rise, The Good
Muslim is an epic story about faith, family, and the long shadow of war.
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Shampa
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63
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The Sly Company of People Who Care
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Rahul
Bhattacharya
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In flight from the tame familiarity of home
in Bombay, a twenty-six-year-old cricket journalist chucks his job and
arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerizing beauty.
Amid beautiful, decaying wooden houses in Georgetown, on coastal sugarcane
plantations, and in the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond
hunters, he grows absorbed with the fantastic possibilities of this new place
where descendants of the enslaved and indentured have made a new world.
Ultimately, to fulfill his purpose, he prepares to mount an adventure of his
own. His journey takes him beyond Guyanese borders, and his companion will be
the feisty, wild-haired Jan.
In this dazzling novel, propelled by a
singularly forceful voice, Rahul Bhattacharya captures the heady adventures
of travel, the overheated restlessness of youth, and the paradoxes of
searching for life’s meaning in the escape from home.
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Pompi
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64
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The Temple Goers
|
Aatish
Taseer
|
A young man returns home to Delhi after
several years abroad and resumes his place among the city's cosmopolitan
elite - a world of fashion designers, media moguls and the idle rich. But
everything around him has changed - new roads, new restaurants, new money,
new crime - everything, that is, except for the people, who are the same,
only maybe slightly worse. Then he meets Aakash, a charismatic and
unpredictable young man on the make, who introduces him to the squalid
underside of this sprawling city. Together they get drunk and work out, visit
temples and a prostitute, and our narrator finds himself disturbingly
attracted to Aakash's world. But when Aakash is arrested for murder, the two
of them are suddenly swept up in a politically sensitive investigation that
exposes the true corruption at the heart of this new and ruthless society. In
a voice that is both cruel and tender, "The Temple-goers" brings to
life the dazzling story of a city quietly burning with rage.
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Available
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65
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The Narrow Road to the Deep North
|
Richard
Flanagan
|
A novel of the cruelty of war, and
tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love.
Richard Flanagan's story — of Dorrigo Evans,
an Australian doctor haunted by a love affair with his uncle's wife —
journeys from the caves of Tasmanian trappers in the early twentieth century
to a crumbling pre-war beachside hotel, from a Thai jungle prison to a
Japanese snow festival, from the Changi gallows to a chance meeting of lovers
on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Taking its title from 17th-century haiku poet
Basho's travel journal, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about the
impossibility of love. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour
camp in August 1943. As the day builds to its horrific climax, Dorrigo Evans
battles and fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs, a man is
killed for no reason, and a love story unfolds.
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Himel
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66
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The year of Magical Thinking
|
Joan
Didion
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From one of America's iconic writers, this is
a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak
to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. This is a stunning
book of electric honesty and passion. Several days before Christmas 2003,
John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall
ill.
At first they thought it was flu, then
pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and
placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve - the
Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John
suffered a massive and fatal coronary.
In a second, this close, symbiotic
partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled
through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and
underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre to relieve a
massive hematoma.
This powerful book is Didion's 'attempt to
make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever
had about death, about illness, about marriage and children and memory, about
the shallowness of sanity, about life itself'. The result is an exploration
of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage,
and a life, in good times and bad
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Available
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67
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The Whole World Over
|
Julia
Glass
|
Julia Glass, author of the award-winning
novel Three Junes, tells a vivid tale of longing and loss, revealing the
subtle mechanisms behind our most important connections to others. In The
Whole World Over, she pays tribute once again to the extraordinary
complexities of love.
Greenie Duquette lavishes most of her
passionate energy on her Greenwich Village bakery and her young son. Her
husband, Alan, seems to have fallen into a midlife depression, while Walter,
her closest professional ally, is nursing a broken heart. At Walter’s
restaurant, the visiting governor of New Mexico tastes Greenie’s coconut cake
and decides to woo her away to be his chef. For reasons both ambitious and
desperate, she accepts–heading west without her husband. This impulsive
decision, along with events beyond Greenie’s control, will change the course
of several lives around her.
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Available
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68
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A Son of the Circus
|
John
Irving
|
A Hindi film star . . . an American
missionary . . . twins separated at birth . . . a dwarf chauffeur . . . a
serial killer . . . all are on a collision course. In the tradition of A
Prayer for Owen Meany, Irving's characters transcend nationality. They are
misfits--coming from everywhere, belonging nowhere. Set almost entirely in
India, this is John Irving's most ambitious novel and a major publishing
event.
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Himel
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69
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Memmoirs of a Geisha
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Arthur
Golden
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A literary sensation and runaway bestseller,
this brilliant debut novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite
lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.
In Memoirs
of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a
girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained
to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It
is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic,
suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.
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Pompi
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70
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Miss Mackenzie
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Anthony
Trollope
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In "Miss Mackenzie" Trollope made a
deliberate attempt "to prove that a novel may be produced without any
love," but as he candidly admits in his "Autobiography," the
attempt "breaks down before the conclusion."
In taking for his heroine an middle-aged
spinster, his contemporaries of writing about young girls in love. Instead he
depicts Margaret Mackenzie, overwhelmed with money troubles, as she tries to
assess the worth and motives of four very different suitors.
Although her creator calls her
"unattractive," most readers will warm to Miss Mackenzie and admire
her modesty, dignity, and shrewdness.
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Available
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71
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Two Virgins
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Kamala
Markandaya
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Saroja lives in a village with her parents,
aunt and beautiful elder sister Lalitha. Saroja's life is uncomplicated, and
simple things give her joy like the birth of a calf or a taste of one of
Chingleput's sweets. Lalitha, on the other hand, believes she is too good for
the village. Ambitious and spoilt, she has dreams of being a movie star that
are fulfilled when a film-maker casts her in his documentary on village life.
Overnight Lalitha becomes the talk of the town; her latent sexuality
manifests itself and she uses her elevated status to her advantage. Basking
in Lalitha's reflected glory Saroja tries to imitate her womanly wiles, which
results in confused ideas about sexuality and ambition. But when the family
is faced with a scandal, Saroja emerges with a practical outlook on life.
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Meena
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72
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Ecstasy
|
Sudhir
Kakar
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From the celebrated author of the bestselling
cult classic Trainspotting, a new work of fiction that triumphantly puts the
E back in Eros.
With three delightful tales of love and its
ups and downs, the ever-surprising Irvine Welsh virtually invents a new genre
of fiction: the chemical romance .
In "Lorraine Goes to Livingston," a
bestselling authoress of Regency romances, paralyzed and bedridden, plans her
revenge on gambling, whoring husband with the aid of her nurse Lorraine. In
"Fortune's Always Hiding," flawed beauty Samantha Worthington
enlists a smitten young soccer thug to find the man who marketed the drug
that crippled her from birth―in order to give his a taste of his own
disastrous medicine. In the upbeat final tale "The Undefeated," we
experience the transfiguring passion of the miserably married young yuppie
Heather and the raver Lloyd from Leith―a grand affair played out to a house
music beat.
As these fools for love pursue it in all the
wrong places, Ecstasy is guaranteed to set pulses racing and hearts aflutter.
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Pompi
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73
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Ithaca
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David
Davidar
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By bestselling author David Davidar, Ithaca
is a thrilling account of international publishing.
In the early years of the 21st Century,
sweeping change is taking place in the publishing industry. Ill-equipped to
handle the transformation of their world, a number of publishing houses
struggle to survive – one of these is Litmus, an independent firm in the UK.
The onus of ensuring that the company remains viable falls upon its
publisher, Zachariah Thomas, who also edits its most successful author,
Massimo Seppi. Seppi’s quartet of novels, featuring angels and archangels,
has sold millions of copies worldwide.
By turns compelling and thought-provoking,
this eagerly anticipated new novel by one of the industry’s foremost figures
masterfully depicts the exhilarating and surprisingly turbulent world of book
publishing.
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Himel
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74
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The Toss of a Lemon
|
Padma
Viswanathan
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In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami
is about to embark on a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some
renown as an astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal.
In keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his
horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a weak one,
that he will die in his tenth year of marriage.
Despite the ominous horoscope, Sivakami’s
parents hesitate only briefly, won over by the young man and his family’s
reputation as good, upstanding Brahmins. Once married, Sivikami and
Hanumarathnam grow to love one another and the bride, now in her teens,
settles into a happy life. But the predictions of Hanumarathnam’s horoscope
are never far from her new husband’s mind. When their first child is born, as
a strategy for accurately determining his child’s astrological charts,
Hanumarathnam insists the midwife toss a lemon from the window of the
birthing room the moment his child appears. All is well with their first
child, a daughter, Thangam, whose birth has a positive influence on her
father’s astrological future. But this influence is fleeting: when a son,
Vairum, is born, his horoscope confirms that his father will die within three
years.
Resigned to his fate, Hanumarathnam sets
himself to the unpleasant task of readying his household for his imminent
death. Knowing the hardships and social restrictions Sivakami will face as a
Brahmin widow, he hires and trains a servant boy called Muchami to help
Sivakami manage the household and properties until Vairum is of age.
When Sivakami is eighteen, Hanumarathnam dies
as predicted. Relentless in her adherence to the traditions that define her
Brahmin caste, she shaves her head and dons the white sari of the widow. With
some reluctance, she moves to her family home to raise her children under the
protection of her brothers, but then realizes that they are not acting in the
best interests of her children. With her daughter already married to an
unreliable husband of her brothers’ choosing, and Vairum’s future also at
risk, Sivakami leaves her brothers and returns to her marital home to raise
her family.
With the freedom to make decisions for her
son’s future, Sivakami defies tradition and chooses to give him a secular
education. While her choice ensures that Vairum fulfills his promise, it also
sets Sivakami on a collision course with him. Vairum, fatherless in
childhood, childless as an adult, rejects the caste identity that is his
mother’s mainstay, twisting their fates in fascinating and unbearable ways.
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Meena
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75
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The Secret Lives of People in Love
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Simon van
booy
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“Simon Van Booy’s stories have the power and
resonance of poems. They stay with you like a significant memory.”—Roger
Rosenblatt
“Van Booy is a remarkable young writer.
Taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, in spite of their evanescence, are
frozen for a moment in these stories and celebrated, along with their subtle
interconnection, in all the aspects of love.”—Fred Volkmer
The Secret Lives of People in Love is the
first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These
stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect
synthesis of grace, intensity, atmosphere, and compassion. Love, loss, frailty,
human contact, and isolation are Van Booy’s themes. In radiant prose he
writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity
and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.
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Malini
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76
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Mosquito
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Roma
Tearne
|
Set adrift by the recent death of his wife,
Theo Samarajeeva abandons his comfortable writer's life in London and returns
to Sri Lanka, his war-torn homeland. There he meets Nulani, a talented and
enigmatic young artist, and an unorthodox and tenuous love blossoms between
this unlikely pair. But when the insurgency explodes, their precarious world
is torn apart. Theo is held captive and stripped of everything he once held
dear. Nulani is forced into exile. By turns heartbreaking and uplifting,
Mosquito is a first novel of remarkable beauty and compelling power.
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Shampa
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77
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Ishq and Mushq
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Priya
Basil
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When Sarna Singh leaves the lustrous green
hills of Uganda for England, rows of cramped old houses were not what she was
expecting. Husband Karam has brought her to Clapham Common, hoping that the
greenery will remind her of Kampala.But Sarna is convinced they have moved to
England so he can visit his secret London lady friends. She has a devastating
secret of her own. How long before Sarna’s web of deceit destroys her own
family?
Against a backdrop that spans Partition from
India, Elizabeth II’s Coronation and Churchill’s funeral, to the present day,
Priya Basil’s explosive family drama is passionate and moving.
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Kenneth
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78
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The Gin Drinkers
|
Sagarika
Ghosh
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Uma, Dhruv, Madhavi – The Oxford returned
Indians, moving in a gilded world of social privilege and Jai Prakash. The
outsider with the ‘wrong’ accent, who has the mysterious power to change
their destinies. A many layered story that explores the conflicts of love,
ambition – and of being a stranger in your own land. Many forces seethe in urban India today,
and those who must participate in the social change stand to lose themselves
and their colonial attitudes. But in the process, they could also gain a new
world and perhaps a more just peace. A tragicomedy of manners, which holds up
the severe clashes of social class in modern India.
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Kunal
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79
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My Salinger Year
|
Joanna
Rakoff
|
Poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly
funny: a memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital
world on the cusp of vanishing, where a young woman finds herself entangled
with one of the last great figures of the century. Rakoff paints a vibrant
portrait of a bright, hungry young woman navigating a heady and longed-for
world, trying to square romantic aspirations with burgeoning self-awareness,
the idea of a life with life itself. Charming and deeply moving, filled with
electrifying glimpses of an American literary icon, My Salinger Year is the
coming-of-age story of a talented writer. Above all, it is a testament to the
universal power of books to shape our lives and awaken our true selves.
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Available
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80
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A Home at the End of the World
|
Michael
Cunningham
|
From Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of The Hours, comes this widely praised novel of two
boyhood friends: Jonathan, lonely, introspective, and unsure of himself; and
Bobby, hip, dark, and inarticulate. In New York after college, Bobby moves in
with Jonathan and his roommate, Clare, a veteran of the city's erotic wars.
Bobby and Clare fall in love, scuttling the plans of Jonathan, who is gay, to
father Clare's child. Then, when Clare and Bobby have a baby, the three move
to a small house upstate to raise "their" child together and, with
an odd friend, Alice, create a new kind of family. A Home at the End of the
World masterfully depicts the charged, fragile relationships of urban life
today.
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Available
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81
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The Invention of Wings
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Sue
Monk Kidd
|
Writing at the height of her narrative and
imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the
quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world—and it is now
the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection. Inspired by the historical figure
of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior
lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s
cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something
better.
This exquisitely written novel is a triumph
of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in
American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment,
and expression will leave no reader unmoved.
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Ahona
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82
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3, Zakia Mansion
|
Gouri
Dange
|
An Indian woman navigates, endures and makes
peace with her family circumstances. As the story takes us from her girlhood
through midlife, the reader gets a great sense of a claustrophobic family
upbringing. Our heroine has almost no life to speak of outside of her family,
going from her father's home to her husband's with no adult independence. The
family dynamics are intriguing. The hidden alliances and shifts of power are
interesting to observe. 3 Zakia Mansion is a quick read, not bogged down with
complicated language and comes to a satisfying resolution that avoids cliche.
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Available
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83
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Virtue
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Marquis
de Sade
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Herman and the noble and proud Ernestine, two
young lovers, find themselves confronted with a pair of libertines who will
stop at nothing—not even the confines of the law—to assuage their desires.
Count Oxtiern, villainous and dissolute, and his accomplice Madame Scholtz, a
widow of lusty temperament, will shrink from nothing, no lie, no treachery is
beneath them in their quest for sexual fulfillment. But does crime really
never pay? Or can virtue vanquish vice? This pair of stories showcases his
profound moral and social principles, and sets this elegant critique of class
prejudice apart from being a mere pornographic episode.
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Pompi
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84
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Poetry Please!
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Anthology
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Kunal
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85
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Object Lessons
|
Anna
Quindlen
|
It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City,
and twelve-year-old Maggie Scanlan begins to sense that despite the calm
surface of her peaceful life, everything is going strangely wrong.
When her all-powerful grandfather is struck
down by a stroke, the reverberations affect Maggie's entire family. Her
normally dispassionate father breaks down, her mother becomes distant and
unavailable, and matters only get worse when her cousin and her best friend
start doing things to each other that leave Maggie confused about sex and
terrified of sin.
With all of this upheaval, how can she be
sure that what she wants is even worth having?
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Available
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