As a religious novel about a decaying brahmin colony in the south Indian village ofKarnataka, Samskara serves as an allegory rich in realistic detail, a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths, and a serious, poetic study of a religious man living in a community of priests gone to seed. A death which stands as the central event in the plot brings in its wake aplague, many more deaths, live questions with only dead answers, moral chaos, and the rebirth of one man. The volume provides a useful glossary of Hindu myths, customs, Indian names, flora, and other terms. Notes and an afterword enhance the self-contained, faithful, and yet readabletranslation.

    The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So pick a page, and find out which of your favorite authors had a really bad first kiss? Who found true love at 18? Who wishes he’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard? Some authors write diary entries, some write letters, and a few graphic novelists turn their stories into visual art. And whether you hang out with the theater kids, the band geeks, the bad boys, the loners, the class presidents, the delinquents, the jocks, or the nerds, you’ll find friends--and a lot of familiar faces--in the course of Dear Teen Me.

    Kuper’s electric drawings—which merge American cartooning with German expressionism—bring Kafka’s prose to vivid life, reviving the original story’s humor and poignancy in a way that will surprise and delight readers of Kafka and graphic novels alike. “A brilliant illustrated adaptation of Franz Kafka’s famous story. It’s a real pleasure to read and one in which everyone will recognize the existential drama and uncanny wit of the original text."—Susan Bernstein, associate professor of comparative literature and German studies, Brown University

    Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.

    As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.

    In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been. With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.

    Translated from the French by Justin O'Brien.The six works featured in this volume are: "The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère") "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat ou un esprit confus") "The Silent Men" ("Les Muets") "The Guest" ("L'Hôte") "Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste au travail") "The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")

    A hunted, haunted Brahmin youth vows revenge for the gruesome murder of his beloved father. Cold, calculating, cruel and armed with a complete absence of accepted morals, he becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod, Alexander the Great. Pitting the weak edges of both forces against each other, he pulls off a wicked and astonishing victory and succeeds in installing Chandragupta on the throne of the mighty Mauryan empire.History knows him as the brilliant strategist Chanakya. Satisfied—and a little bored—by his success as a kingmaker, through the simple summoning of his gifted mind, he recedes into the shadows to write his Arthashastra, the ‘science of wealth’. But history, which exults in repeating itself, revives Chanakya two and a half millennia later, in the avatar of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in smalltown India who becomes puppeteer to a host of ambitious individuals—including a certain slumchild who grows up into a beautiful and powerful woman.Modern India happens to be just as riven as ancient Bharat by class hatred, corruption and divisive politics and this landscape is Gangasagar’s feasting ground. Can this wily pandit—who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance—bring about another miracle of a united India? Will Chanakya’s chant work again? Ashwin Sanghi, the bestselling author of The Rozabal Line, brings you yet another historical spinechiller.

    From the primitive peasant who kills without understanding that he is destroying life to the anxious antihero of Notes from Underground—who both craves and despises affection—the writer's often-tormented characters showcase his evolving outlook on our fate.Thomas Mann described Dostoyevsky as "an author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul" and Notes from Underground as "an awe- and terror- inspiring example of this sympathy."

    It is is a story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side.Seven years in the making, Sacred Games is an epic of exceptional richness and power. Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh—and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs on the Mumbai police force, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But "the silky Sikh" is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip-off as to the secret hide-out of the legendary boss of G-Company, he's determined that he'll be the one to collect the prize. Vikram Chandra's keenly anticipated new novel is a magnificent story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side. Drawing inspiration from the classics of nineteenth-century fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra's own life and research on the streets of Mumbai, Sacred Games evokes with devastating realism the way we live now but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.

    Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption--the most satisfying tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape since The Count of Monte Cristo.Apt Pupil--a golden California schoolboy and an old man whose hideous past he uncovers enter into a fateful and chilling mutual parasitism.The Body--four rambunctious young boys venture into the Maine woods and in sunlight and thunder find life, death, and intimations of their own mortality.The Breathing Method--a tale told in a strange club about a woman determined to give birth no matter what.source: stephenking.com

    Set in the old-world Calcutta of the Raj, these stories featuring the astute investigator and his chronicler friend Ajit are still as gripping and delightful as when they first appeared.Byomkesh’s world, peopled with wonderfully delineated characters and framed by a brilliantly captured pre-Independence urban milieu, is fascinating because of its contemporary flavor. In the first story, Byomkesh works undercover to expose an organized crime ring trafficking in drugs. In ‘The Gramophone Pin Mystery’, he must put his razor-sharp intellect to good use to unearth the pattern behind a series of bizarre roadside murders. In ‘Calamity Strikes’, the ace detective is called upon to investigate the strange and sudden death of a girl in a neighbour’s kitchen. In the next story, he has to lock horns with an old enemy who has vowed to kill him with an innocuous but deadly weapon. And in ‘Picture Imperfect’, Byomkesh Bakshi unravels a complex mystery involving a stolen group photograph, an amorous couple, and an apparently unnecessary murder.Available in English for the first time in a superb translation, these stories will captivate every lover of crime fiction, young and old alike.

    She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her unforgettable last essay for the Yale Daily News, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. She had struck a chord.Even though she was just twenty-two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. The Opposite of Loneliness is an assem­blage of Marina’s essays and stories that, like The Last Lecture, articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world.

    He attributed his prolific writings to a wide range of alternate selves, each of which had a distinct biography, ideology, and horoscope. When he died in 1935, Pessoa left behind a trunk filled with unfinished and unpublished writings, among which were the remarkable pages that make up his posthumous masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague." Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

    By 1807 there was a growing interest in German folk tales. The Grimm brothers were academics who invited friends to their home and asked them to relate stories they had heard. They soon published their first collection of tales and from there several more volumes followed.This compilation of fairy tales which includes the complete canon of over 200 tales has become a beloved set of classical stories the world over. Included in this collection are Hansel and Gretel, Briar Rose, The Fisherman and His Wife, Rapunzel, The Frog Prince, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Thumb, and many more. These stories are a delight to read and will rekindle up many childhood memories as they are reread. Presented here in this edition is the faithful translation of Margaret Hunt.