It is also a moving portrayal of the fallibility of love.Ambition, passion
and raw courage are Atul Malhotra’s key aides to realizing his dreams as he learns the art of gambling for high stakes. What follows is a game of treachery, infidelity and murder.The book lays bare the sordid corporate-politico nexus that compels this once middle-class boy to deftly learn the ropes and negotiate a world where dirty deals and power plays can make or break lives, where one wrong choice could be fatal.A tale of yachts and hidden Swiss accounts, sordid affairs of lust, intrigue and exhilarating highs, Nilesh Rathod’s Destiny of Shattered Dreams is also the story of innocence forever lost.

    You've been nothing but an inconvenience. Guised as an instructive manual, A Handbook For My Lover chronicles six years in the life of an unconventional affair between a young woman writer and her older photographer lover.The sensuous epistle documents the woman's demands and desires, her fantasies and eccentricities as she negotiates the minefield that is their relationship.A Handbook For My Lover is a poetic, erotic account of two lovers fated to seek refuge in the transient. It is a celebration of all that is momentary and fleeting rather than that which is permanent.

    Caught in extreme states of tension, in a world of shifting borders, of instability, Rao's characters must rely on their own wits. When Partition established Pakistan and India as sovereign states, the new boundary resulted in a colossal transfer of people, the largest peacetime migration in human history. This mass displacement echoes throughout Rao's story couplets, which range across the twentieth century, moving beyond the subcontinent to Europe and America. Told with dark humor and ravaging beauty, An Unrestored Woman unleashes a fearless new voice on the literary scene.

    Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Franz Kafka is now one of the world’s most widely read and discussed authors. His nightmarish novels and short stories have come to symbolize modern man’s anxiety and alienation in a bizarre, hostile, and dehumanized world. This vision is most fully realized in Kafka’s masterpiece, “The Metamorphosis,” a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature. Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. “The Judgment,” which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and “The Stoker,” which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with “The Metamorphosis,” form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,” and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.Also included are “In the Penal Colony,” a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and “A Hunger Artist,” about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.Jason Baker is a writer of short stories living in Brooklyn, New York.

    The splendour of imperial Delhi flares one last time. The young daughter of a craftsman in the city elopes with an officer of the East India Company. And so we are drawn into the story of Wazir Khanam: a dazzlingly beautiful and fiercely independent woman who takes a series of lovers, including a Navab and a Mughal prince--and whom history remembers as the mother of the famous poet Dagh. But it is not just one life that this novel sets out to capture: it paints in rapturous detail an entire civilization.Beginning with the story of an enigmatic and gifted painter in a village near Kishangarh, The Mirror of Beauty embarks on an epic journey that sweeps through the death-giving deserts of Rajputana, the verdant valley of Kashmir and the glorious cosmopolis of Delhi, the craft of miniature painting and the art of carpet designing, scintillating musical performances and recurring paintings of mysterious, alluring women. Its scope breathtaking, its language beguiling, and its style sumptuous, this is a work of profound beauty, depth and power.

    Young Lenny Sethi is kept out of school because she suffers from polio. She spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws. It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, religious intolerance, and the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her. Lenny enjoys a happy, privileged life in Lahore, but the kidnapping of her beloved Ayah signals a dramatic change. Soon Lenny’s world erupts in religious, ethnic, and racial violence. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the domestic drama serves as a microcosm for a profound political upheaval.

    It knits 3,700 years, powerful ancient and modern-day characters and a nail-biting conspiracy - all in one literary thriller. Harappa is the first among a series of four books. 2017, Delhi – Vidyut’s dying ancestor summons him to Banaras. The old Brahmin chieftain of the Dev-Raakshasa Matth, or the God-Demon Clan, bears a chilling secret. Their bloodline carries an ancient curse that will plague mankind - towards its own violent extinction.1700 BCE, Harappa – Harappa is a magnificent city on the banks of the mighty Saraswati river. The darkness of treachery, taantric exorcism and bloodshed unleashes itself on the last devta, paving the way for his devastating revenge…and the horrifying truth behind the fall of the glorious civilisation.2017, Paris – The world’s most powerful religious institution is rattled. Europe’s dreaded crime lord meets a mysterious man in Paris. A lethal assassin boards a train, as Rome fears the worst. The prophesied devta has returned.What connects Banaras, Harappa and Rome? What was the ancient curse and who was the last devta? What is the terrible secret behind the fall of the colossal Indus Valley? Read on as you travel through a saga of violence and deceit, gods and demons, love and ambition.

    Set in politically charged Shillong, this interconnected collection of stories speaks of the coming-of-age of a young woman–and the city and community she calls home.

    Yet along with the full-length fiction within The Human Comedy stand many shorter works, among the most brilliant and forceful of his fictions. Drawn always to the tradition of oral storytelling—to the human voice telling of experience—and to the kinds of reactions produced in the listeners to stories, Balzac repeatedly dramatizes both telling and listening, and the interactions of men and women around the story told. It’s in the short fiction that we get some of his most daring explorations of crime, sexuality, and artistic creation. As Marcel Proust noted, it is in these tales that we detect, under the surface, the mysterious circulation of blood and desire. Included here are tales of artists, of the moneylender who controls the lives of others, of passion in the desert sands and in the drawing rooms of Parisian duchesses, episodes of madness and psychotherapy, the uncovering of fortunes derived from crime and from castration. And stories about the creation of story, the need to transmit experience. All are newly translated by three outstanding translators who restore the freshness of Balzac’s vivid and highly colored prose.SARRASINEGOBSECKADIEUZ. MARCASA PASSION IN THE DESERTTHE DUCHESS OF LANGEAISTHE RED INNFACINO CANEANOTHER STUDY OF WOMANKIND

    The East India Company is seeking to make inroads into the region and the local people—in particular the Abor and Mishmee tribes—fear their coming and are doing all they can to keep them out of their territories. The author takes a recorded historical event—the mysterious disappearance of a French priest, Father Nicolas Krick in the 1850s and the execution of Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe for his murder—and woven a gripping, densely imagined work of fiction around it. And, even as the novel tells the story of an impossible journey and an elopement, it explores the themes of the lure of unknown worlds, the love people have for each other and their land and the forces of history. Gimur, a girl from the Abor tribe, runs away with Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe, and they settle down on his land near the Tibetan border. Father Krick’s attempts to reach Tibet to set up a Jesuit mission are foiled repeatedly by the local people not because of any personal animus towards the priests or their work, but because they feel—rightly—that once the priests come, the British, with their guns and their garrisons will follow. The story revolves around events in Gimur’s and Kajinsha’s villages and is also seen from the point of view of Father Krick, a gentle, intelligent man, devout but no bigot, whose determination to reach Tibet no matter what the cost, impacts tragically on all those who encounter him.

    The book features curated old favourites and brand new tales as well as exclusive entries by Penguin's bestselling authors.The page-turner of the year, the volume is sure to occupy a unique space on your shelf, making for great introspection and even better conversation.

    "A sort of frost seems to have descended on the souls of the human agents ... Every confrontation - and the play is a series of confrontations - instead of thawing the ice, leaves it a bigger iceberg.' -R.L.Nigam, in 'Enact'

    But you have died.’Anushtup Chatterjee is thirty-two years old.He hates his mother. His job is a dead end. And his girlfriend has left him.Then one silent moonlit night, he wakes up in a deserted field in the middle of nowhere, with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. His wallet is gone. So is his cell phone.He is not alone though.There is another man there, a stranger with a gentle voice and a humble mustache, who has something rather unbelievable to say to him.That he, Anushtup Chatterjee, has already died.Mysterious and achingly poignant, Arnab Ray’s Yatrik is a story about hope and aspiration, love and regret, of the choices we make and those that life makes for us.

    In The Ascetic of Desire, called a literary achievement of the highest order, by The Times (India), acclaimed author Sudhir Kakar tells the story of the man who is believed to be the author of the Kama Sutra, Vatsyayana, and the time in which he lived-the fourth century A.D., considered the golden age of Indian history. In The Ascetic of Desire, the elusive sage Vatsyayana recounts his youth to a young pupil. The young man, planning to write Vatsyayana's biography, listens dutifully as Vatsyayana shares stories of a childhood spent largely in the brothel where his favorite aunt worked. As Vatsyayana's story unfolds, the pupil finds, to his consternation, that his own life has begun to reflect and parallel the ascetic's narrative. At the point where their stories intersect, the unexpected happens. Like Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, Sudhir Kakar's novel is a startling combination of psychological insight and historical detail. With rights sold in eleven countries, this is a story of universal appeal imbued with a distant world's charm and exotic allure. The best novel on sex and sensuality I have ever read. (Khushwant Singh, author of Train to Pakistan)