You are My Reason to Smile


Arpit Vageria - 2016
    He is a good lover; he adores Adah and can forego any comfort of the world for her sake. But even then, he is not happy. Because his true calling is not in the corporate; it’s in writing. After much deliberation, he takes the plunge and leaves his job to write full-time. While he struggles for balance, Adah also starts keeping herself away. Was she really in love with him, or was it just a facade?Amidst all this confusion, Pihu Sharma enters his life – his first ever fan, who seems to be head over heels in love with him. While Ranbir’s equation with Adah deteriorates, Pihu leaves behind her luxurious life to shift in with him. Is this the true love Ranbir had been waiting for?Join Ranbir as he makes his way through a world that kills for money and dies for love.

Untouchable


Mulk Raj Anand - 1935
    This novel describes a day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, as he searches for a meaning to the tragic existence he has been born into - and comes to an unexpected conclusion.

HARAPPA: Curse of the Blood River


Vineet Bajpai - 2017
    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.

Sleeping on Jupiter


Anuradha Roy - 2015
    A young woman jumps off. She has wild hair, sloppy clothes, a distracted air. She looks Indian, yet she is somehow not. The sudden violence of what happens next leaves the other passengers gasping. The train terminates at Jarmuli, a temple town by the sea. Here, among pilgrims, priests and ashrams, three old women disembark only to encounter the girl once again. What is someone like her doing in this remote corner, which attracts only worshippers? Over the next five days, the old women live out their long-planned dream of a holiday together; their temple guide finds ecstasy in forbidden love; and the girl is joined by a photographer battling his own demons. The full force of the evil and violence beneath the serene surface of the town becomes evident when their lives overlap and collide. Unexpected connections are revealed between devotion and violence, friendship and fear as Jarmuli is revealed as a place with a long, dark past that transforms all who encounter it. This is a stark and unflinching novel by a spellbinding storyteller, about religion, love, and violence in the modern world.

A Dilli-Mumbai Story ...when Love Won Over Terror


Abhimanyu Jha
    Aniruddh and Apu."My Ducati and my 6' 1" height was enough to impress or intimidate most people. I didn't want to bring my IQ in on top of that." - Aniruddh.Not a word more. I am Aparajita... remember? The unbeatable." - Apu"If you were to stay forever in the way you died, how would you want to die?""Kissing you."Aniruddh. a Ducati riding, economics loving dude studying in St. Stephen's. And Apu - a girl from Goa who loves thelawala food and super large ear rings. Opposites in a lot of ways, they fell for each other the Instant they met.But then on a pleasant November night, when India was going to sleep, Aniruddh's love for his saanwli memsaab met a terrifying enemy...Will it survive the horror they bring?

The Extra Class


Sidharth Oberoi - 2011
    Desperate to get noticed, Ananya takes some big steps.Over the weekend, Ananya is a changed person. Her skirt's shorter, her shirt's tighter and her hair falls stylishly over her shoulders. This is not what she wanted, but it wasn't about what she wanted anymore.Soon she realizes that changing just the outer appearance is not enough. The culture shock is too much for her to take. Will she survive the transition, without losing her integrity?

If God Was a Banker


Ravi Subramanian - 2007
    Sundeep is ambitious and selfish, which leads him to achieve his goals through unscrupulous means. Swami is the exact opposite as he sticks to his morals and ethics to ensure success in his career. Swami's ideal and ethics keeps him behind Sundeep in terms of performance at the New York International Bank where they both work. Sundeep's rapid rise up the corporate ladder and his popularity with colleagues disguises his real motives and cunning mind. The story also has a main character, who is a friend and counsellor to both of them and he has his own philosophy which is based on his experience and is genuine. He always taught what he deemed right. Inspite of all the facts, the temptation of untold riches was too strong for Sundeep and he continued on his quest for more ill-gotten financial gain. All through the novel, the backdrop is the corporate bank environment, which is so polluted that the characters are portrayed as people who are ready to deviate from the righteous path at the drop of a hat. Women throw themselves at their bosses to advance their position. If God Was A Banker was published in 2007 and it won the Indiaplaza Golden Quill Book Award. The book has sold more than 260,000 books and has been a national bestseller.

If I Stay Collection


Gayle Forman - 2014
    Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.

Gora


Rabindranath TagoreJanko Moder - 1910
    The story reflects the social, political and religious scene in Bengal at the turn of the century. The forces that were operating in Bengal at that time were one of the intense nationalism and revival of ancient spiritual values and also that of liberal western thought. What makes Gora a great prose epic is not only its social content but also its brilliant story of self-searching, of resolution, of conflicts and of self discovery.

Cracking India


Bapsi Sidhwa - 1988
    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.

Safe Harbour


Danielle Steel - 2003
    At eleven, Pip Mackenzie's young life has already been touched by tragedy; nine months before, a terrible accident plunged her mother Ophelie into inconsolable grief. But on this chilly July afternoon, Pip meets artist Matt Bowles, who offers to teach the girl to draw--and can't help but notice her beautiful, lonely mother.Matt Bowles senses something magical about Pip, who reminds him of his own daughter at that age, before a bitter divorce tore his family apart and swept his children halfway across the world. At first, Ophelie is thrown off-balance by her daughter's new companion--until she realizes how much joy he is bringing into their lives. As Matt confronts unfinished business from his past, and Ophelie is struck by a stunning betrayal, out of the darkness that has shadowed them both comes an unexpected gift of hope.

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas


Arun Joshi - 1971
    A thought provoking novel, in which the normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, illusion and reality, resignation and desire rub shoulders.

That Long Silence


Shashi Deshpande - 1989
    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.

I Am Heartless: A Real Confession


Vinit K. Bansal - 2012
    It is the story of his life which encompasses love, dedication, eccentricity, friendship and overall his discovery of his true love and also the anguish of losing it due to his obstinacy and self-centeredness. It is a repertoire of moments coated with velvetiness of love and bruised by the thorns of betrayal. It highlights the situations which ultimately turns him into a devil, who wants to annihilate the whole world with his impiety, consequences being the least he cares about; and eventually loses his happiness, identity and even himself in this process.I could neither speak in words, nor could ever write it downThe loneliness, the emptiness your absence left behind....Those moments spent in the warmth of your cuddleStill linger in a cruel heart...... in a guilty mind!!!Whenever I dream, I see you so tranquilCan I trace the reason of my going away and getting back never?If by closing my eyes I see you happy sweetheart,I promise I shall close my eyes FOREVER!

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife


Meena Kandasamy - 2017
    As he sets about reducing her to his idealised version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back - a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce and courageous When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India.