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The Belial Series: Books 4-7
R.D. Brady - 2016
She didn't realize there was one thing left for her to lose. . . Her life. Life has not been easy for fifteen-year old Lou Thomas. In the last few years, her once happy family has been whittled down to just herself and her unreliable older sister Charlotte. It's been a daily struggle to make it through. And it's about to get worse. Because Lou's abilities - enhanced strength, speed, and healing - have just awakened. While Lou may not understand what is happening to her, another group does. And they won't let anyone get in the way of gathering their new recruit. Jennifer Witt, though, is determined to keep that from happening. She sees herself in the tough teenager and will do whatever is necessary to keep her safe. But how can you keep someone safe when they insist on running into danger? *** The Belial Children. All children should be safe from harm . . . Someone didn't get the message. Life has not calmed down for Delaney McPhearson now that she has become the ring bearer. For the last few months, she, Henry Chandler, and Jake Rogan have been finding the camps of the teenage potentials left behind by Amar. In their search, they've come across something they didn't expect: More children are missing but these children are younger - much younger. One of the largest lines of investigation leads them to early American history and the legends of an ancient race of giants. But are they getting closer to the missing children or heading down a path that will only lead them farther away? Together, Laney, Jake, and Henry have faced incredible odds together and won. But this time the cost feels that much steeper. Because this time it's not just their lives at risk - this time it's children who may pay the ultimate price. *** The Belial Origins Revelations, death, and destiny The three forces have ruled Delaney's McPhearson's life for the last two years. But the greatest revelation is yet to come . . . And the greatest sacrifice. *** The Belial Search. The world is reaching a crisis point as an ancient threat re-emerges. And the clock has just begun ticking on a whole new battlefront. Delaney McPhearson is still reeling from the events in Heaven's Gate six months ago. Henry and Jake are physically healing and while Laney might look fine, not all wounds are so easy to see. At the same time, the Fallen have made themselves known across the globe. Laney is being pulled from one crisis to another. But soon a new threat arises that requires all of her focus: Someone is targeting the people who are connected to the Fallen. And they are not distinguishing between the good and the bad. The quest to stop the murders ranges across the Pacific and back in time to a dark period in human history when human sacrifices were commonplace. Laney will do whatever she must to stop these people. But the question is, will that be enough?
Kanpur Koofiya pvt Ltd
Richa S. Mukherjee - 2019
Accustomed to tracking down missing pets and cheating lovers, he is about to have his world change completely when a new case requires him to tail actress Shailaja Kapoor. What seems like a simple request turns into a dramatic dive into her murky past, wading through which is not going to be easy. Or safe. Soon Prachand and his wife, and partner against crime, Vidya, fall under the glare of the police as Shailaja Kapoor is abducted right before their eyes. Now he must put his skills to the test before they become victims at the end of a dark and dangerous game.
3 and a Half Murders
Salil Desai - 2017
. . a woman lying dead on her bed, a man hanging from the ceiling fan. A suicide note cum murder confession. And a name . . . Shaunak Sodhi.When the case comes their way, Senior Inspector Saralkar has just been diagnosed with hypertension and PSI Motkar is busy with rehearsals of an amateur play.What appears at first to be a commonplace crime by a debt-ridden, cuckolded husband, who has killed his unfaithful wife and then hung himself, soon begins to unfold as a baffling mystery.As clues point to a seven-year-old unsolved murder in Bangalore and other leads emerge closer home, Saralkar and Motkar find themselves investigating shady secrets, bitter grudges, fishy land deals, carnal desires, the dead woman Anushka Doshi’s sinister obsession with past life regression and her husband’s links to a suspicious, small-time god-man, Rangdev Baba. And then, suddenly, the murderer resurfaces and yet another life is in grave danger . . . Can Saralkar and Motkar get to the bottom of an unimaginably shocking motive and stop the malevolent killer from committing the fourth murder . . .?
The Forest of Enchantments
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - 2019
In this brilliant retelling, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita’s version. The Forest of Enchantments is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, Mandodari. A powerful comment on duty, betrayal, infidelity and honour, it is also about women’s struggle to retain autonomy in a world that privileges men, as Chitra transforms an ancient story into a gripping, contemporary battle of wills. While the Ramayana resonates even today, she makes it more relevant than ever, in the underlying questions in the novel: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’
Countdown
Amitav Ghosh - 1999
Countdown is partly a result of conversations with many hundreds of people in India, Pakistan and Nepal and Ghosh concludes, that "the pursuit of nuclear weapons in the subcontinent is the moral equivalent of civil war?"
Forever is a lie
Novoneel Chakraborty - 2017
She meets a mysterious man, almost double her age, known as the Mean Monster in the city's party circuit. Intrigued she falls for him and pursues him. However there is one problem. Prisha doesn't know that whoever the Monster loves, dies.
Ashvamedha - The Game Of Power
Aparna Sinha - 2016
I was itching to defeat the single most powerful person, but there wasn't any. I was left with only one choice — to create one."Little does Ashwin Jamwal know that the last twenty-five years of his life have been controlled by a master manipulator, who wanted to make him the most powerful man on earth, though for a reason! Ashwin steps up to take oath as the youngest Prime Minister of India and is unknowingly thrown into a vortex of power and authority as the entire world is threatened by a faceless enemy — Hades.The world starts to look up to Ashwin as the savior, but he was just a pawn, reared only to be sacrificed in the end.A story of greed, lies, deceptions, manipulations and corruption, Ashvamedha is a thriller revolving around the infamous game of power in a maddening bid to seek absolute control.
Kalkatta
Kunal Basu - 2015
Smuggled into India from Bangladesh and given refuge by his uncle, a leader of the ruling Communist Party, he grows up in Zakaria Street—a Little Baghdad of the old—dreaming of becoming a pukka Kalkatta-wallah. When friendship with a local gang disqualifies him from school, he ends up as assistant to a passport forger, and then a masseur. Soon enough, innocent massage leads to ‘plus plus treatments’, and Kalkatta opens its doors, drawing Jami into the world of the rich and famous, housewives, tourists and travelling executives, and occasionally to high-paying and dangerous ‘parties’. Danger looms, too, from rivals and the police, and the ever-present risk of losing his cover. Jami’s shadowy double life takes a turn for the unexpected when he meets Pablo, a young boy who suffers from leukemia, and his single mother Mandira. Made to oscillate between his refugee family, the neighbourhood gang, his massage-parlour clients, even the cultured world of Bengali intellectuals inhabited by Mandira, he succeeds in becoming a true Kalkatta-wallah, but a stranger to himself. Until his love for Pablo threatens to destroy everything, and drive him away even from his beloved Kalkatta.
Standing on an Apple Box: The Story of a Girl among the Stars
Aishwaryaa Rajinikanth Dhanush - 2017
Growing up in Bangalore and then Madras, in a household that resolutely kept out any hint of her father's superstardom, she was a quiet, introverted child whose greatest pleasure was a visit to Marina Beach and an occasional meal out. It was not cinema but law that became a preoccupation when she started thinking about college and career - but fate, and her mother, had other plans for her.Aishwaryaa writes with disarming honesty about life as Rajinikanth's daughter, of falling in love and raising two boys with Dhanush, of fighting her own demons and finding satisfaction in a career of her choice. She reflects on the many roles a woman has to juggle at home and outside - in her case, under the watchful gaze of cameras and celebrity-watchers.Intensely personal, but also inspirational, Aishwaryaa's memoir is an unusually frank insight into growing up in cinema-land. A playful meditation on the joys and difficulties of being a woman in this age, Standing on an Apple Box is as much a celebration of individual fulfilment as it is of family.
Jasmine Days
Benyamin - 2014
She thrives in her job as a radio jockey and at home she is the darling of the family. But her happy world starts to fall apart when revolution blooms in the country. As the people's agitation gathers strength, Sameera finds herself and her family embroiled in the politics of their adopted land. She is forced to choose between family and friends, loyalty and love, life and death.Jasmine Days is the heart-rending story of a young woman in a city where the promise of revolution turns into destruction and division.
Dahanu Road
Anosh Irani - 2010
It happened all the time—men lay themselves on train tracks, hanged themselves from trees, consumed rat poison, and women set their kerosene-soaked bodies alight in front of their husbands. These were blazing ends to insignificant journeys. But in all this, there was always one man who, in that final gush of blood, in that final breaking of neck and bone, set things in motion.”Zairos Irani, a young man of inherited leisure, is meandering through his family’s lush chickoo orchards near Mumbai when he comes across a distressing sight: Hanging from one of the fruit trees is the lifeless body of Ganpat, a worker from the indigenous Warli tribe. Ganpat’s ancestors once owned the land, before his father’s alcohol debts caused the deed to be transferred to Zairos’s grandfather Shapur. The two family destinies have been entwined ever since, ancient grudges once again awoken by Ganpat’s final desperate act.Zairos feels obliged to notify Ganpat’s family before the authorities come to ask needless questions and extract bribes. A tractor bearing Ganpat’s sister and anguished daughter Kusum soon trundles into the orchard, and when Kusum alights, Zairos’s curiosity is piqued. As a landowner, he knows that he is well above her station, and yet her dignity and beauty lead him to cast aside taboos and risk the wagging tongues of neighbourhood gossips. Though wary at first, the grieving Kusum comes to return his affection, asking only that he assist her in achieving what her dead father could not- by putting an end to the violence she has endured at the hands of a drunken husband.Zairos cannot get advice from his father Aspi, whose clownishness masks thinly-veiled nihilism. Nor can he confide in his beloved grandfather Shapur, whose massive hands planted the chickoo trees that he adores as much as his own sons. Shapur built the family empire from a desperate start as an orphaned refugee, and any act that might threaten the delicate legacy spawned by his sacrifices would only provoke rage in the old man, who increasingly dwells in memories. So Zairos whiles away his time at Anna’s, the local haunt for the male leisure class, dreaming of a future with Kusum. There, with the support of some equally underemployed sidekicks, Zairos hatches a scheme to scare Kusum’s husband into releasing her, while keeping his own moral integrity intact. But alas, Zairos’s scheme will not unfold as planned, and along the way he will unwittingly expose family secrets that may well be better left buried…With brilliant gusto, Irani has built his Dahanu Road upon the pathways forged by authors of tragicomic romance spanning centuries and continents, from the Persian classic Layla and Majnun, to Romeo and Juliet to Wuthering Heights. Dahanu Road is a suspense-filled family saga, a sprawling romantic epic in which the delineations between the oppressor and the oppressed, or between love and hate, are demonstrated to be maddeningly deceptive.
Koi Good News?
Zarreen Khan - 2018
The size of the Deol family – it put any Sooraj Barjatya movie to shame.2. The fertility of the Deol family – they reproduced faster than any other species known to mankind.It’s been four years since their wedding, and Mona and Ramit have done the unthinkable – they’ve remained childless. Of course, that also means that they’ve battled that one question day in and day out: ‘Koi Good News?’It doesn’t matter that they have been happy to be child-free – they are married; they are expected to make babies. After all, there are grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts and even colony aunties in waiting.Now, the truth is, Ramit and Mona had been trying to conceive for the past one year. But having a baby isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be.Finally, aided by the wine at their highly glamorous neighbours’ party, Mona gets pregnant. And so begins a crazy journey – complete with interfering relatives, nosy neighbours, disapproving doctors, and absolutely no privacy!Honest, relevant and thoroughly irreverent, Koi Good News? is the funniest book you’ll read this year.
The Web of Karma
Anurag Shrivastava - 2019
Control over law and order has long since passed from the hands of the administration to caste-based gangs and organized crime syndicates enjoying political patronage. Kidnapping has become one of the flourishing businesses of the state, while every other industry has dwindled down and the development plank has gone on a pause mode, on account of Rangdari, which is yet another booming business apart from contract killing, smuggling, illegal tree cutting, and vehicle snatching. Migration to other states is at peak: not only of big businessmen, but also of lowly laborers. And those who can’t leave the state are either sucked into the crime world or are forced to live under fear. Albeit the local newspapers everyday sketch the sordid saga of the state, the execrable condition is not likely to improve by any means in the near future. Digambar Babu, a middle-aged man of a small town Motihari (the place of Mahatma Gandhi's Champaran Satyagrah), is dejected and dismayed for his family falling apart, and so sets himself on a mission to make amends for the mistakes he has done in the past. Shakuntala Devi, his wife, infuriated at herself for having devoted her whole life selflessly and arduously for her ungrateful family, wants to make up for the injustice she has done to herself, by living the rest of her life selfishly. Sarvesh, their asthmatic son, whose first marriage perished about a decade ago, is still struggling with both his career and his married life, and Nisha, their daughter, is married to someone whom she thinks she will never be able to love. The biggest threat to the already troubled family is Nisha’s ex-lover Kanhaiya Tiwari, who is the youngest corporator of the town, and has sworn to ruin the family. Shyam, Nisha’s husband, who is ‘the absorber of the emotions’, in keeping with his fluidity, writhes in pain but transforms time and again, in order to win his wife’s heart, while Savita, Sarvesh’s current wife, colludes with Kanhaiya Tiwari in his evil intent, in order to have all the strings of the family in her hands. Benighted in Sodom, they weave their web of Karma, and fabricate their fates, but the biggest sufferer in the ruthless game of dominance and survival are the innocent children of the family.The story tries to draw parallels between Digambar Babu’s disarrayed family and the disordered town. The novel is inspired from the real events happened in the town during 90’s era of jungle-raaj.
The Immortals of Meluha
Amish Tripathi - 2010
In what modern Indians mistakenly call the Indus Valley Civilisation. The inhabitants of that period called it the land of Meluha a near perfect empire created many centuries earlier by Lord Ram, one of the greatest monarchs that ever lived. This once proud empire and its Suryavanshi rulers face severe perils as its primary river, the revered Saraswati, is slowly drying to extinction. They also face devastating terrorist attacks from the east, the land of the Chandravanshis. To make matters worse, the Chandravanshis appear to have allied with the Nagas, an ostracised and sinister race of deformed humans with astonishing martial skills!The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient legend: When evil reaches epic proportions, when all seems lost, when it appears that your enemies have triumphed, a hero will emerge.Is the rough-hewn Tibetan immigrant Shiva, really that hero? And does he want to be that hero at all? Drawn suddenly to his destiny, by duty as well as by love, will Shiva lead the Suryavanshi vengeance and destroy evil?