A box of buttons, mother-of-pearl and plastic, metal and glass, rattling and untethered. A hundred-year-old pin, forgotten in a hem. Fragile silks and fugitive dyes, fans and crinolines, and the faint mark on leather from a buckle now lost. Claire Wilcox has worked as a curator in Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum for most of her working life. Down cool, dark corridors and in quiet store rooms, she and her colleagues care for, catalogue and conserve clothes centuries old, the inscrutable remnants of lives long lost to history; the commonplace or remarkable things that survive the bodies they once encircled or adorned. In Patch Work, Wilcox deftly stitches together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear: their stories, their secrets, their power to transform and disguise and acts as portals to our pasts; the ways in which they measure out our lives, our gains and losses, and the ways we use them to write our stories.

    In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story.

    British actor and comedian Michael Palin -- best known to American audiences for his work in Monty Python and the film A Fish Called Wanda -- follows in the footsteps of Jules Verne's fictional adventurer Phileas Fogg and circles the globe in 80 days.

    The fully updated guide includes unique cutaways, floor plans, and reconstructions of the must-see sights, from Humayun's Tomb and Rajput Fort-Palace to the world-famous Taj Mahal. Street-by-street maps of cities and towns help you navigate, whether you're in the bustling center of Delhi or the dusty, provincial town of Alwar. DK's insider travel tips and essential local information provides information on the great pantheon of Hindu gods, local wildlife, temples, bazaars, museums, and attractions. Detailed listings will guide you to hotels, restaurants, entertainment, and shops for all budgets.With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that brighten every page, "DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur" truly shows you this destination as no one else can.

    No set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under British rule--"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"--as Paul Scott's historical tour de force, " The Raj Quartet." "The Jewel in the Crown" opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for independence.

    There she befriends the locals, acquires an extensive vocabulary of French foul language and encounters the privileged lifestyle of the elegant, middle-class British families holidaying in 1920s France. Introduced for the first time to kindly, civilised and, above all, caring people Flora falls helplessly and hopelessly in love with not one but three young men.Over the next forty years Flora will grow from an awkward schoolgirl into a stunning beauty and explore, consummate and finally resolve each of these affairs.

    But every now and then, someone strikes a match that lights up the whole planet. Henry Every was the seventeenth century's most notorious pirate. The press published wildly popular--and wildly inaccurate--reports of his nefarious adventures. The British government offered enormous bounties for his capture, alive or (preferably) dead. But Steven Johnson argues that Every's most lasting legacy was his inadvertent triggering of a major shift in the global economy. Enemy of All Mankind focuses on one key event--the attack on an Indian treasure ship by Every and his crew--and its surprising repercussions across time and space. It's the gripping tale one of the most lucrative crimes in history, the first international manhunt, and the trial of the seventeenth century.Johnson uses the extraordinary story of Henry Every and his crimes to explore the emergence of the East India Company, the British Empire, and the modern global marketplace: a densely interconnected planet ruled by nations and corporations. How did this unlikely pirate and his notorious crime end up playing a key role in the birth of multinational capitalism? In the same mode as Johnson's classic non-fiction historical thriller The Ghost Map, Enemy of All Mankind deftly traces the path from a single struck match to a global conflagration.

    Arjun gets laid off like so many of his Silicon Valley peers, and in an act of desperation to keep his job, he releases a mischievous but destructive virus around the globe that has major unintended consequences. As world order unravels, so does Arjun's sanity, in a rollicking cataclysm that reaches Bollywood and, not so coincidentally, the glamorous star of Arjun's favorite Indian movie.

    Playing the traditional daughter- in-law role, she’s expected to clean, cook, and—because she doesn’t immediately get pregnant—find a job as well! But the job, at a glossy Hollywood gossip magazine, isn’t at all what Priya’s in-laws had in mind for a traditional Indian wife. She soon finds herself with a secret life that she must hide from her disapproving new family. All the while, she is growing into a marriage with a man whose loyalty is decidedly torn between his parents and his bride. This is hardly surprising, given that he met his wife only a week before their wedding. The question is, can this fragile new love survive the pull between tradition and ambition?

    In the course of a confession to a white 'sahib' the imprisoned Ameer Ali recounts his life as a devoted follower of Thuggee, a secret religious cult practising ritual mass murder and robbery. Taylor uncovered evidence of the crimes committed by bands of Thugs as a Superintendent of Police in India during the 1820s. Introducing a new standard of ethnographic realism to western fiction about India, Confessions of a Thug is a strikingly vivid, chilling and immensely readable thriller. This unique critical edition makes available a fascinating and significant work of Empire writing.

    The study covers almost all the outstanding thinkers on politics in India and is perhaps the first book which provides an overview of the Indian political thought from Manu to the present day.

    His charioteer, Krishna, expounds the eternal dharma for him. This exposition between two armies is the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindus Bible.BLUE GOD cuts back to Krishnas birth, and back again to the battlefield, and so on, chapter by chapter, until both narratives flow together near the books end. Never before have Krishnas sacred Gita and his colorful personality and life been put together in the same book, certainly not in English by a modern novelist for a modern audience.

    K. Hari Kumar, bestselling author of spine-chilling horror fiction, brings you the terrifying tales of some of India's most haunted places - including Bhangarh Fort, Malabar Hill's Tower of Silence and Jammu and Kashmir's notorious Khooni Nala. Whether you read them at night or in daylight, these stories will remain with you long after you've turned the last page.

    South Asia Studies. Selected and translated from the Tamil by Pritham Chakravarthy. Edited by Rakesh Khanna. The follow-up to 2008's successful first collection featuring stories by Indra Soundar Rajan, Medhavi, Jeyaraj, Pushpa Thangadorai, Rajesh Kumar, Indumathi, M.K.Narayanan, and Resakee. A young woman's fascination with blue films leads to a bizarre murder A bloodline of debauched maharajas falls prey to an evil curse A beautiful girl uses karate to retrieve a stolen idol Seven thrilling tales from seven Indian and Singaporean masters of action, suspense, and horrorContents:The palace of Kottaipuram by Indra Soundar RajanHighway 117 by Jeyaraj & Pushpa ThangadoraiThe hidden hoard in the cryptic chamber by MedhaviHold on a minute, I'm in the middle of a murder by IndumathiThe bungalow by the river by M.K. NarayananHello, dead morning! by Rajesh KumarSacrilege to love by Resakee

    It remains a day embedded in the memory of millions of people around the world—over 800 million people were watching at home on television.Of all the images from the day itself, the one that springs to mind immediately is that of Diana's arrival at St. Paul's Cathedral in the glass carriage and the public's first glimpse of the best kept secret of the day: the royal wedding dress.For the young designers, David Emanuel and Elizabeth Emanuel creating Diana's wedding dress was "a fairytale come true." Having only been introduced to Lady Diana Spencer in February 1981, the Emanuels quickly became one of her favored designers, which lead to a telephone call in March 1981 that would change their lives forever.Officially commissioned by Buckingham Palace, the Emanuels set about designing a dress that would never be forgotten. Each step of the process was completed in total secrecy to ensure that no one, especially the world's press, got a glimpse of the famous dress until that glorious July day.