Happy Stories!: Real-Life Inspirational Stories from Around the World


Will Bowen - 2013
    The path to happiness is not determined by your circumstances, but by aligning your thoughts, words, and actions to focus on the goal of happiness. Now, through fifty true stories, Bowen shares how people have taken his philosophies to heart—and are becoming measurably happier!

Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist


Richard Dawkins - 2017
    Science in the Soul brings together forty-two essays, polemics, and paeans--all written with Dawkins's characteristic erudition, remorseless wit, and unjaded awe of the natural world.Though it spans three decades, this book couldn't be more timely or more urgent. Elected officials have opened the floodgates to prejudices that have for half a century been unacceptable or at least undercover. In a passionate introduction, Dawkins calls on us to insist that reason take center stage and that gut feelings, even when they don't represent the stirred dark waters of xenophobia, misogyny, or other blind prejudice, should stay out of the voting booth. And in the essays themselves, newly annotated by the author, he investigates a number of issues, including the importance of empirical evidence, and decries bad science, religion in the schools, and climate-change deniers.Dawkins has equal ardor for "the sacred truth of nature" and renders here with typical virtuosity the glories and complexities of the natural world. Woven into an exploration of the vastness of geological time, for instance, is the peculiar history of the giant tortoises and the sea turtles--whose journeys between water and land tell us a deeper story about evolution. At this moment, when so many highly placed people still question the fact of evolution, Dawkins asks what Darwin would make of his own legacy--"a mixture of exhilaration and exasperation"--and celebrates science as possessing many of religion's virtues--"explanation, consolation, and uplift"--without its detriments of superstition and prejudice.In a world grown irrational and hostile to facts, Science in the Soul is an essential collection by an indispensable author.Praise for Science in the Soul"Compelling . . . rendered in gloriously spiky and opinionated prose . . . [Dawkins is] one of the great science popularizers of the last half-century."--The Christian Science Monitor "Dawkins is a ferocious polemicist, a defender of reason and enemy of superstition."--John Horgan, Scientific American

Night Terrors III


Theresa DillonPaul Tremblay - 2014
    A wave of sinkholes appears on the anniversary of a rural tragedy, and local residents begin to hear the voices of the dead. A woman encounters a predator from her youth—and a chance to turn the tables. A child’s inner beast takes on a sinister life of its own. An undetectable serial killer raises tensions on a college campus. Experimental physics reveals another world, and it might mean the end of ours. Shrouded in darkness, lurking in the shadows, NIGHT TERRORS III awaits you. The third installment of the chilling Night Terrors anthology series includes stories from Jack Ketchum, Steve Rasnic Tem, Dennis Etchison, Taylor Grant, Eric J. Guignard, Aric Sundquist, Jennifer Brozek, John McNee, Simon McCaffery, Patty Templeton, and many more!

The Anthropocene Reviewed


John GreenJohn Green - 2021
    In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.

Toast Marmalade and Other Stories


Emma Bridgewater - 2014
    Her designs are jaunty, friendly, sometimes quietly funny. They call to mind childhood picnics, summer gardens and busy kitchens, with their motifs of Sweet Peas and Figs or bold calligraphic patterns such as Toast & Marmalade. Above all the name Emma Bridgewater suggests home and welcome. This book combines beautiful photographs of Emma's life and designs with a collection of warm stories of her family, along with the inspirations for and characters involved in the success of this particularly English brand.

The Illicit Happiness of Other People


Manu Joseph - 2012
    His wife Mariamma stretches their money, raises their two boys, and, in her spare time, gleefully fantasizes about Ousep dying. One day, their seemingly happy seventeen-year-old son Unni—an obsessed comic-book artist—falls from the balcony, leaving them to wonder whether it was an accident. Three years later, Ousep receives a package that sends him searching for the answer, hounding his son’s former friends, attending a cartoonists’ meeting, and even accosting a famous neurosurgeon. Meanwhile, younger son Thoma, missing his brother, falls head over heels for the much older girl who befriended them both. Haughty and beautiful, she has her own secrets. The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry, and poignant novel—teases you with its mystery, philosophy, and unlikely love story.

Love without a story


Arundhathi Subramaniam - 2019
    Circling themes of intimacy and time, they return to the urgency of conversation: that fragile bridge across the frozen attitudes that divide our world. But at the heart of the collection is a deeper preoccupation, with those blurry places where humans might walk with gods, where the body might touch the beyond, where the enchanted might intersect effortlessly with the everyday. Where one stumbles upon what the poet simply calls ‘love without a story’.

On the Open Road: Three Lives. Five Cities. One Startup.


Stuti Changle - 2017
    Kabir wonders what life would be to build on his own. Sandy drops out of college to work on the next big startup idea. Ramy inspires millions of his generation on his travel blog - On the Open Road. On the Open Road - Three Lives. Five Cities. One Startup, revolves around the lives of these restless and dreamy 20-somethings as they battle their inner demons and the societal taboos to live life on their terms. It is an emotional journey of following one’s heart. The journey entails undying friendship, love and loss, happiness and depression, fear and conquest, dreaming and achieving. Will they be able to embark on the hard yet empowering journey to startup a company? Or succumb to the hardships on their road to freedom?

Bombay Stories


Saadat Hasan Manto - 2012
    Bombay Stories is a collection of Manto’s work from his years in the city. Freshly arrived in 1930s Mumbai, Manto saw a city like no other—an exhilarating hub of license and liberty, and a city bursting with both creative energy and helpless despondency. It was to be Manto’s favourite city, and he was among the first to write the Bombay characters we are now familiar with from countless stories and films—prostitutes, pimps, lowlifes, writers, intellectuals, aspiring film actors, thugs, conmen and crooks. His hard-edged, moving stories remain, a hundred years after his birth, startling and provocative--in searching out those forgotten by humanity, Manto wrote about what it means to be human. Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad’s translations reach into the streets and capture in contemporary, idiomatic English the feeling that Urdu’s most celebrated short-story writer’s work stories provide in the original.

Through Apache Eyes: Verbal History of Apache Struggle (Annotated and Illustrated)


Geronimo Chiricahua - 2011
    Yet, the one constant in the history of the Apache People is their constant struggle to survive in a world where they are surrounded by various enemies, including other Indian tribes, the Mexicans and finally their brutal nemesis the United States Army. Attacked, tricked, lied to and double crossed by all of those who surround and outnumber them, the Apache people continued their struggle until they were for all intent and purposes almost totally wiped out. One Apache’s name stands out in their brave yet woeful history and it is Geronimo, who at age 30 witnessed the massacre of his mother, wife and two young children.I’ve taken his recollections or accounts of the struggle of the Apache people and intertwined them with some archeological facts about this extraordinary tribe. In addition, I have searched and included some of the best photos of Apaches from that era, which I collected from Library of Congress Archives. What impressed me most about Geronimo was his brevity of words, yet his ability to take a knife to the heart of anyone who reads his verbal history. Like most Apaches, Geronimo said little, but what he did say was profound and truthful. But most powerful is what Geronimo didn’t say in his recollections. It is between this silence one can feel the pain, sorrow, pride and bravery of the Apache People. Chet DembeckPublisher of One

The Panipuri Crimes


S.B. Akshobhya - 2021
    His plan is to put the humble cane-panipuri vendor, found in every other street in a metropolitan city, on a digital platform.As they gear up to launch an app to sell panipuri, the cloud of risk looms large. All five entrepreneurs who earlier ventured into the business had died in road accidents. But all that is overlooked and forgotten in the excitement of the team reaching the verge of a VC funding.Is the death of all five entrepreneurs a coincidence? Can Sagar and his team overcome the odds? Why are the ordinary vendors dying one after another like a pack of cards?The Panipuri Crimes is a thrilling story weaving together the world of entrepreneurship and struggle, love and other demons, and the murky world of crime.

The Jeera Packer


Prashant Yadav - 2016
    One shot, one man. Right man, wrong man. But that was thirty years ago. I shot people through their heads then. I pack jeera in a basement now.This is me and here is my story.He was the best sharpshooter in the state. A true bullet artist. But he gave it all up to lead a happy, normal, stable life . . . with his loving wife and dear son. And that proved to be his undoing. Resonant and deeply affecting, The Jeera Packer is the gripping tale of a man who after three decades of playing the happy family man returns to his profession of old for one final work—to shoot the chief minister.Convinced that this is his raison d'etre, will he manage to pull off this one last act, as his concluding hat tip to the man he could have been? Will he be able to brush away the jeera dust and rediscover himself? Or has the middle-aged family man already throttled the sharpshooter in him?

Pentacles


Sabarna Roy - 2010
    The work delightfully bridges the gap between the mundane and arcane writings of today and provides an interesting, yet intellectually stimulating, treat for the discerning reader. New Life is a long story written from the perspective of a successful adult whose mother had deserted the family for another man. The teenage angst and the scars it has left behind on the psyche of the protagonist are subtly reflected in the character. The different elements and characters of the story are beautifully interwoven to produce an intense and compelling story of an adult haunted by the trauma of being deserted by his mother. The work is interspersed with thought-provoking views on issues like love and socio-economic conditions in India. The traditional rhyme and metre dominated poems are on love, loss and longing. Unshackled by the bonds of rhyme and metre, Sabarna s free verses evoke the stark reality of urban life, hitting you straight in the guts. The use of everyday urban imagery adds to the appeal of the compositions. The concrete prison of urban life and the unfulfilled desire to escape to a simple life is aptly brought out in The Tower. The other poems of the collection are more biographical in nature with the protagonist being the member of the fairer sex. The free verses sketch out their life story with its attendant pathos, poignancy and logic. The best part of all the compositions is that the reader will definitely identify with the poet and will, in one form or other, have similar stories to narrate.

Small is Big: A collection of 100 micro tales


Rafaa Dalvi - 2017
    That’s about to change! With Small is Big, Rafaa Dalvi has created a potpourri of 100 diverse micro tales (140 characters or less) that will provide you a rich experience in easy-to-digest fragments and urge you to read one page after another before you finally finish the book. And the best part is that there’s a story for everyone, including YOU! If you’re a romantic at heart, this micro tale is for you- She kissed his cheek as he smiled back. Nothing had changed much since two decades. Her husband called her. She hid the photo in the closet. If you love happy endings, this micro tale is for you- You rested on my lap, opened yourself before me and shared your fantasies with me. Then the stories ended and you turned back into a book. If you ever had a tough time fitting in, this micro tale is for you- Nerd. Not anymore. A new college. A new identity. Math. First lecture. Finished my test first. Teacher graded me aloud- 20/20. I had failed. If you are a big fan of word play, this micro tale is for you- They’re lying in bed. “You’re the one,” he says; he’s lying. “I never doubted it,” she says; she’s lying. They’re lying in bed. And if you like thrillers, this micro tale is for you- There were two of us and one vacant position. He would die for this job and I would kill for it. No wonder it worked out just fine for me. In fact, there are 100 such small tales that will have a big impact on you. So what are you waiting for? Scroll to the top of this page, buy the book and start reading today. About the Author: Rafaa Dalvi is a vibrant mess of innumerable thoughts, quotes and movie dialogues, who tries to escape from the mundane with words and contemplates about befriending the voices in his head. He dreams about changing the world, one smile at a time. Already published numerous times, his stories can be read in the anthologies – Curtain Call (editor), Terribly Tiny Tales- Volume 1, Kaleidoscope, Myriad Tales, and many others. He’s the recipient of Indian Bloggers League Booker Prize 2013 and a Select Writer at Terribly Tiny Tales.

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay


Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi - 2010
    Along the way, he discovers unlikely allies: Samar, an eccentric pianist; Zaira, the reclusive queen of Bollywood; and Rhea, a married woman who seduces Karan into a tender but twisted affair. But when an unexpected tragedy strikes, the four lives are irreparably torn apart. Flung into a Fitzgeraldian world of sex, crime and collusion, Karan learns that what the heart sees the mind's eye may never behold. Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay is a razor sharp chronicle of four friends caught in modern India 's tidal wave of uneven prosperity and political failure. It's also a profoundly moving meditation on love's betrayal and the redemptive powers of friendship.