Soldiers, mercenaries, free-booters. Europeans all, braving the heat and dust of India. They fought for wealth, for glory, and for sheer fun. Their glorious and inglorious exploits are full of thrill, romance, and violence. Ruskin Bond has recreated the turbulent and colourful India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the soldiers of fortune strutting across the subcontinent. The saga of their lives and loves in Delhi, Jaipur, Aligarh, Sardhana, and Lucknow reads stranger than fiction.

    Novel set in 3rd and 4th century India

    With his honour and reputation at stake, Akbar asks his trusted advisor Birbal to solve the mystery. The murder has taken place in a garden, at a spot between two mango trees, and the two guards who are eyewitnesses have conflicting versions of what could have happened. Was it suicide? Was it Akbar himself who ordered the killing or was it the Rajputs who accompanied Sujjamal, his uncles and cousin, who are guilty?Set in a period that has been described as the golden age of the Mughals, the novel draws us into the royal court of Agra, abuzz with political intrigue, personal enmities and hidden rivalries, where everyone is a suspect until proven otherwise.

    Humour flows effortlessly for her, which is the biggest strength of the novel.' The Hindu‘I am very grateful to have my faith in new Indian fiction restored. This is a classic, timeless book that illuminates and entertains by turn.’ Suchi Govindarajan‘A delightful read from start to finish. There were places where I was grinning so much as I read it that my kids were looking at me strangely. But under the humour, the frivolity, the nostalgia of an Eighties life, there are several growing-up lessons taking place. Yet, the book never gets maudlin… although it does leave you with an ache for things that could have been. Brilliant writing.’ Andaleeb WajidSet in small-town Kerala of the 1980s, Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth is part coming-of-age story, part social satire and part comedy of errors. Geetha, elevenish, is off for the annual family vacation in Kerala and is looking forward to all the fun with her cousins – visits to the beach and trips to the market to buy glass bangles and kites and shuttlecocks, evenings in the veranda listening to her grandfather’s ridiculous ghost stories which he swears are all true, marathon card games and ferocious boys-versus-girls battles with the bristles of brooms made from coconut fibre… But as the summer unfolds, Geetha finds herself spending more time instead at the back of the house with the free-spirited cook, the hypochondriac cleaner, the virile gardener, a cheeky helper girl… ...And Babu, son of Koovait Kannan, the bumbling plumber who made good. Babu’s family is immersed, meanwhile, in the wedding preparations for Babu’s sister, who is marrying the most eligible bachelor in the neighbourhood: Constable Venu, an expert thrasher of suspects and son of that wealthy black-marketer of supplies, Ration Raaman. But Babu’s mind is otherwise occupied… with thoughts of a face as rounded as a Malgova mango, of an oiled plait as thick as the ropes used to tie the fishing boats, of eyes that sparkle like the sea on a sunlit morn… As Geetha and Babu’s closely linked but widely divergent lives intersect, both are about to lose some of the blissful ignorance and innocence of childhood. Charmingly quirky and often laugh-out-loud hilarious, Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth gently explores the themes of growing up, loss of innocence and the intimate yet aloof nature of upstairs-downstairs relationships.

    Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian."—Graham GreeneOffering rare insight into the complexities of Indian middle-class society, R. K. Narayan traces life in the fictional town of Malgudi. The Dark Room is a searching look at a difficult marriage and a woman who eventually rebels against the demands of being a good and obedient wife. In Mr. Sampath, a newspaper man tries to keep his paper afloat in the face of social and economic changes sweeping India. Narayan writes of youth and young adulthood in the semiautobiographical Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. Although the ordinary tensions of maturing are heightened by the particular circumstances of pre-partition India, Narayan provides a universal vision of childhood, early love and grief."The experience of reading one of his novels is . . . comparable to one's first reaction to the great Russian novels: the fresh realization of the common humanity of all peoples, underlain by a simultaneous sense of strangeness—like one's own reflection seen in a green twilight."—Margaret Parton, New York Herald Tribune"The novels of R.K. Narayan are the best I have read in any language for a long time. . . . His work gives the conviction that it is possible to capture in English, a language not born of India, the distinctive characteristics of Indian family life."—Amit Roy, Daily Telegraph

    Hari and Lila were born and raised in the village, but now their family is falling into despair: the father to alcohol while the mother is seriously ill. As for money, that there is not even enough to meet the most basic needs between.

    From hunting in the woods to killing enemies, she was the pride of her father, but the pain of her mother. When she is sent to France to find a suitable match, Madeleine attracts the eye of the most desirable bachelor. James II of Crussol is the ideal man for every woman, but he is not the one that wakes up her passion... Fyn Stewart never imagined that in a court filled with French roses he would find a Scottish thistle. From the first moment, Madeleine steals his heart, haunts his dreams and fuels his desires. But the road to everlasting love is long and there are many secrets that the dashing Fyn must find the courage to reveal. Like his true name...

    Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the legendary Pandavas brothers in the Mahabharat, the novel gives us a new interpretation of this ancient tale. The novel traces the princess Panchaali's life, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom. Panchaali is swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, remaining at their side through years of exile and a terrible civil war involving all the important kings of India. Meanwhile, we never lose sight of her strategic duels with her mother-in-law, her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husbands' most dangerous enemy. Panchaali is a fiery female redefining for us a world of warriors, gods, and the ever-manipulating hands of fate.

    But he did the devil's work. Thomas Thorpe hides his carnal desires under the mask of a pious lay preacher. When Ann Spencer rejects his advances, he evicts her from her home, claiming she is living in sin with a young man

    She is a perplexed botch, who never thinks before she talks. Megha realises that she fancies the creative course of action involved in making ad films, rather than her current job of creating marketing strategies for products. Her ornery boss is not electrified with the idea of brand managers turning into ad conceptualizing officers, though.Megha then meets the creative head of the company, Yudhistir Joshi. Yudi seems to bring out Megha’s atrocious side. Although he’s an exceptionally good looking man, Megha and Yudi publicly fight and argue. He hates her guts and she vice-versa. Yudi apprises her to quit from the creative team every single time, however, Megha, who’s finally in a blissful atmosphere, refuses to abandon her ecstatic ship. Little does she know that their friction will give way to sparks!Concurrently, ‘Vile’ Varun, Megha’s boss, puts her down in front of his bosses at every opportunity. He claims that she is inadequate for her profile.On the other hand, there is a crowd of eligible NRI bachelors on her list of problems, as Megha’s mother decides to put her up on the marriage market.No Deadline For Love is a first person narrative by the protagonist, Megha. The book reads almost like a journal entry, and is full of icy observations. The occasional hilarious quotes lighten up the reader’s mood, and the elementary pinch in the storyline, apart from her spontaneous description of the events, are the comical nicknames given to characters.

    As she stares death in the face, her memories travel back to the beginning of her story, to life's unfairness at every point: A fiercely intelligent princess who wilfully blindfolded herself for the sake of her peevish, visually-impaired husband; who underwent a horrible pregnancy to mother one hundred sons, each as unworthy as the other; whose stern tapasya never earned her a place in people's hearts, nor commanded the respect that Draupadi and Kunti attained; who even today is perceived either as an ingratiatingly self-sacrificing wife or a bad mother who was unable to control her sons and was, therefore, partly responsible for the great war of the Mahabharata.In this insightful and sensitive portrayal, Aditi Banerjee rescues Gandhari from being reduced to a mere symbol of her blindfold. She builds her up, as Ved Vyasa did, as an unconventional heroine of great strength and iron will - who, when crossed, embarked upon a complex relationship with Lord Krishna, and became the queen who cursed a God.

    He has but one. Love. Tavia is the adopted child of an apothecary and former priest. Besides loving her, Tavia’s father passed on to her his medical skills and also taught her French and Latin, giving her a better education than most men of her time.Blair is the son of the Laird and a handsome man that every single woman in the village desires. He is respected by his tenants and he is a capable man, always wiling to help and protect them.When Blair has an accident close to Tavia’s house, she uses her medical skills to heal his wounds. Blair finds in her beautiful eyes a unique woman that can give meaning to his life.He can not accept that he won’t see her again after this meeting, so he asks Tavia to give him French lessons. Tavia accepts and that only makes the heat between them grow… They both know though, that Tavia is a peasant girl, and marrying her is forbidden by society’s rules. But Blair wants to defy all of them! Determined to find a solution he will start discovering clues about Tavia’s real parents and her past, making things take a turn none of them could ever imagine."Highlander’s Lost Daughter" is a story packed with romance, mystery, and salvation, set on the beautiful backdrop of the Scottish Highlands.

    Between Em, the mother, driven frequently to hospital after her failed suicide attempts, and The Big Hoom, the father, trying to hold things together as best he could, they tried to be a family.

    When Devdas returns to his village, now a handsome lad of nineteen, Paro asks him to marry her. But Devdas is unable to stand up to parental opposition to the match and rejects the proposition. Stunned, Paro agrees to marry an elderly widower. Devdas returns to Calcutta, but every waking hour of his is now filled with thoughts of Paro and his unfulfilled love for her. Desperate to resolve the situation somehow, he runs to Paro who is now married and asks her to elope with him, but she refuses.Heartbroken, he seeks solace in alcohol and in the company of the courtesan Chandramukhi. Chandramukhi falls in love with Devdas, but even when he is with her he can only think of Paro. It is now his destiny to hurtle on relentlessly on the path to self-destruction. Devdas’s tortured life ends when, dying of a liver ailment brought on by alcoholism, he journeys to Paro’s house to see her one last time. Arriving in the middle of the night, he dies unknown, untended, on her doorstep. Paro comes to know of his death only the following morning. Devdas has enthralled readers and filmgoing audiences alike for the better part of a century. This new translation brings the classic tale of star-crossed lovers alive for a new generation of readers.

    . . - Dorset, 1917. If it's not enough that a girl from a good background is forced to work as a maid, Livia Carr is then violated by her master and falls pregnant. But help unexpectedly comes from her attacker’s son, Richard, a WWI hero who is not expected to live much longer. He marries her, and his death, though expected, comes as a great blow. Into the breach steps Livia's first love, Denton Elliott - but he does not know the truth about her child's parentage . . .