She thinks the woman who wore it must have possessed a wild sexual nature. A feeling of companionship envelops her; the sexual lives of the two women begin to mingle and blur.In Hypnosis, another young woman-a TV journalist on perpetual night duty-has an unconsummated but passionate affair with a famous musician that leaves her shattered. In the nightmarish sequence of events that follows, she allows herself to be hypnotized and drugged to aid her search for love.Exposing our darkest desires and deepest fears when it comes to love, the effect of Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay's ferocious storytelling is deliciously anarchic and deeply unsettling.

    The Middle East is a tinderbox waiting to ignite, while Afghanistan and Iraq are already exploding as the guns continue to boom and bombs go off with unfailing regularity. Pakistan is in flames as its besieged military dictator clings to power in the face of increasing opposition. Then the two besieged leaders come together to strike a secret deal. The prize: the most wanted man in the world. It is at this point that Salim, old ISI hand and former Brigadier in the Pakistan army, jumps into the fray. Egged on by the rogue ISI leadership, his terror cohorts fan out to unleash a global strike of unthinkable proportions. Caught in the eye of the impending storm, the Indian Prime Minister turns yet again to Force 22, the secret Indian strike action group and the final barrier between Salim's secret weapons and the death of thousands of innocent civilians...

    Looking for safe harbour, livelihood, and a new place to call home. Communities congregated around churches and markets, sharing lord and land with the native East Indians. The young among them were nudged on to the path of marriage, procreation and godliness, though noble intentions were often ambushed by errant love and plain and simple lust. As in the story of Annette and Benji (and Joe) or Michael and Merlyn (and Ellena).Lovers and haters, friends and family, married men and determined singles, churchgoers and abstainers, Bombay Balchão is a tangled tale of ordinary lives – of a woman who loses her husband to a dockyard explosion and turns to bootlegging, a teen romance that drowns like a paper boat, a social misfit rescued by his addiction to crosswords, a wife who tries to exorcise the spirit of her dead mother-in-law from her husband, a rebellious young woman who spurns true love for the abandonment of dance. Ordinary, except when seen through their own eyes. Then, it’s legend.Set in Cavel, a tiny Catholic neighbourhood on Bombay’s D’Lima Street, this delightful debut novel is painted with many shades of history and memory, laughter and melancholy, sunshine and silver rain.

    Set in the American Midwest, England, and India (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, rural Gujarat) the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. Whether they are chasing money, power, recognition, love, or simply trying to make a decent living, their hunger is as intense as any grand love affair. Straddling the fault lines of race, class, caste, gender, nationality, globalization, and more, they go against sociocultural norms despite challenges and indignities until singular moments of quiet devastation turn the worlds of these characters—auto-wallah, housemaid, street vendor, journalist, architect, baker, engineer, saree shop employee, professor, yoga instructor, bartender, and more—upside down."Challenging assumptions, confronting power, manipulating barriers whenever possible-even at grave personal cost-Bhatt's cast surprises, inspires, frightens, beguiles, but never disappoints." ~Shelf Awareness (starred review)Most anticipated debuts of 2020 at Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, Entropy Magazine, Debutiful, Ms. Magazine, Bustle. Best story collections of 2020 at Bustle and Largehearted Boy. Best collections of 2020 by Asian authors at Book Riot.". . . rich debut . . . a powerful expression of the hunger for success on one's own terms." ~Publishers Weekly". . . nuanced, clear-eyed tales of unvarnished humanity. [...] A formally diverse collection with exquisitely crafted stories about longing, striving, and learning what we can control." ~Kirkus Reviews"With this powerful, complex work, Bhatt should be launched into a wider readership that is fully deserved, and the literary world should rejoice in discovering a bright new star." ~Dallas Morning News. . . you will feel that you have encountered this level of skill, craft, and complexity before in reading the masters of the short story genre--even while the author subverts what we so often encounter in the genre about notions of loss and lonely voices and who gets to tell their own stories." ~Texas Public Radio". . . Bhatt peels back shells of self-awareness, revealing understandings of the often subtle distinctions of gender, race, and family expectations that define and confine them." ~The National Book Review". . . Bhatt gets under the skin of her characters with an ease that is difficult to achieve when creating characters beyond the pale of capital and caste. [. . .] using lively, sculpted language that avoids the stilted, literary English often afflicting Indian English writing." ~The Hindu". . . variety of literary techniques of plot, style, and voice--including the refreshing second-person singular and first-person plural--Bhatt's stories effortlessly straddle class, caste, gender, and race divides spanning the US, England, and India." ~Open The Magazine"Taken together, [the stories] show Bhatt's wide range, both in theme and style, and her ability to inhabit characters who couldn't be more different from each other." ~New York Journal of Books"Interspersing loss and longing, survival and success, in an array of memories, shades, moods, dreams [. . .] Bhatt packs in a powerful compilation, rich in prose and poetry . . ." ~NRI Pulse". . . brings a range of lived experience, experimentation, and stylistic variety, which announces a seasoned practitioner rather than a newcomer to fiction." ~India Currents". . . a collection that is as important in the telling as in remembering the times we live in and the times to come." ~The Hindu Business Line"Bhatt's deliberate expansion of established tropes about Indians and the Indian diaspora deserves special accolades." ~Leonard Prize 2020 Nominations, National Book Critics Circle" . . . exploration of South Asian identity in the workplace through a wide lens instead of the traditional representations. . ." ~Puerto del Sol". . . characters who are bound to their work, either by choice or circumstance, as they attempt to thwart societal expectations and break down barriers . . ." ~Phoebe Journal". . . as compulsively readable as it is sharp and as enjoyable as it is thought-provoking [. . .] an accomplished and impressive debut." ~Vagabond City"[. . .] interact with multiple voices, listening to the struggles of various characters, and enjoying cultural details through the incredible use of language and literary techniques [. . .] the entire collection is an enlightening voyage." ~Platform Magazine"Jenny Bhatt's gorgeous stories in Each of Us Killers remind me why I love to read a good book. It is such a pleasure to be immersed in the worlds of her characters, in their hunger for love or money, and in their local and global struggles to live. With mouth-watering detail, Bhatt serves up a rich and varied feast." ~Devi S. Laskar, Author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues"The potent stories in this collection evoke the complexities of a shifting, multilingual world with great precision. Bhatt moves between countries and realities with tremendous skill and insight." ~Idra Novey, author of Those Who Knew"In a series of thrilling, beautiful stories, Jenny Bhatt moves through the moods, thoughts, subversions involved in the experience of interracial relationships, East-West communications, theft, justice, migration. The collection works brilliantly both as an evocative amalgam of insightful observations about race, class, gender, aspirations, as well as on the sentence level. Bhatt writes, "polish it carefully, till it glitters with the hope of a false diamond and refracts your stark life into a spectrum of luminous rays, lighting up the darkness briefly"-referring to a character's particular memory, but could just as well be referring to the collection as a whole." ~Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Author of White Dancing Elephants"In Each of Us Killers, Jenny Bhatt excavates her characters with incisiveness, nuance, and complexity. The cast of vibrant characters in this wonderful collection is absolutely unique and memorable." ~Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order"This is a gorgeous collection. Bhatt weaves together, with the lightest touch, profound themes--work, ambition, displacement, class, and gender, and so much more. Her plots are beautifully rendered and her scope vast; her characters and her settings come to life on the page. These stories are full of bitter heartbreak with a measure of joy--a wonderful collection from a hugely talented writer." ~Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State"Sex, death, redemption, betrayal--this collection has it all, from the sordid to the divine. Bhatt's vivid imagination and well-voiced characters will take you on a ride you won't soon forget." ~Mathangi Subramanian, author of A People's History of Heaven"These stories are filled with wisdom and compassion, bristling with dark occurrences and gleaming with quiet moments of joy: an enriching collection." ~Mahesh Rao, author of Polite Society"Moving, haunting stories that explore a wide range of complex social inequities and yet share an undercurrent of a deep and very human kind of longing." ~Aatif Rashid, author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan"Each of Us Killers offers up a complex portrait of our times. From caste-based violence to domestic power play, from yoga to the under-seam of real-estate development, Bhatt uses a dozen devices to examine the lives of people around us, the choices that define them and, ultimately, our selves." ~Annie Zaidi, author of Unbound, 2000 Years of Indian Women's Writing"Ambitious, sensitive, this collection locates some essential Indian truths, especially its hidden violence." ~Prayaag Akbar, author of Leila

    In this debut collection, she conjures the disturbing and often hilarious experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City. Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent; an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God.Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat — dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck — these seven stories showcase Zhang's compassion and moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy's Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again.

    The mighty black river, after which the town is named, is now no more than a trickle. People have begun to listen to weather forecasts on the radio rather than looking out of the window to see if it’s going to rain. The jackfruit tree in the middle of town has suddenly started fruiting. And, most seismic of all, Paachu Yemaan, the Inspector of Police, who has terrorized the town for decades has retired. Desperate to find him something to do, his wife, Sharada, and the good-hearted Barber Sureshan decide that ex-Inspector Paachu’s post retirement project will be the reforming of the town drunk, Joby. What the two good Samaritans haven’t counted on is the chain of extraordinary events that their project is about to set in motion.

    Concerns about society, gender and imperialism dovetail irresistibly with flights of speculative wonder. And with a kitchen sink in the corner of even her wildest stories, Suzuki reminds us that while society may be limitless, relationships remain impossible

    As Bonamy Dobree said, "It releases us into a different and quite complete world. Mr. Ahmed Ali makes us hear and smell Delhi...hear the flutter of pigeons’ wings, the cries of itinerant vendors, the calls to prayer, the howls of mourners, the chants of qawwals, smell jasmine and sewage, frying ghee and burning wood." The detail, as E.M. Forster said, is "new and fascinating," poetic and brutal, delightful and callous. First published by the Hogarth Press in 1940. Twilight in Delhi was widely acclaimed by critics and hailed in India as a major literary event. Long since considered a landmark novel, it is now available in the U.S. as a New Directions Classic. Twilight in Delhi has also been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Urdu.

    A young PR man working at General Electric sold his first magazine piece. By the time he'd sold his third, he decided to quit his job and join the likes of Salinger, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, and make a living as a full-time writer. That young man was Kurt Vonnegut.Bagombo Snuff Box collects Vonnegut’s favourite stories from the postwar years that sharpened his dark, vaudevillian and quietly subversive voice. Here we see the mind-bending wit and central themes of his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five. A must-read for Vonnegut aficionados new and old.

    It is a formidable world and the people who live there are constantly subjected to extremes—both of geography and of culture.The Wandering Falcon begins with a young couple, refugees from their tribe, who have traveled to the middle of nowhere to escape the cruel punishments meted upon those who transgress the boundaries of marriage and family. Their son, Tor Baz, descended from both chiefs and outlaws, becomes “The Wandering Falcon,” a character who travels throughout the tribes, over the mountains and the plains, in the towns and tents that comprise the homes of the tribal people. The media today speak about this unimaginably remote region, a geopolitical hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks, and conflict—now, told in the rich, dramatic tones of a master storyteller, this stunning, honor-bound culture is revealed from the inside.Jamil Ahmad has written an unforgettable portrait of a world of custom and compassion, of love and cruelty, of hardship and survival, a place fragile, unknown, and unforgiving.

    Obsessed with each other, they move from a small town to the big city, where the man, who dreams of being a writer, works feverishly on a novel, stopping only to feed his ceaseless desire for his beautiful wife.A chance occurrence allows the lovers to abandon the city for a mist-shrouded spur of the lower Himalayas and move into a sprawling old house, which they hope will embody their love. At first they pursue their deep physical need with a reckless intensity. But during renovations of the house, a set of diaries written by the original inhabitant—a glamorous American adventuress—is unearthed, and the narrator finds himself irresistibly drawn away from his wife and thrust into another world and time, into the hole of history. As his life and love fall apart, he slowly begins to uncover the dark secrets at the heart of her story, until the shocking truth is laid bare and all certainties are overturned.Inventive, playful, heartbreaking, brimming with ideas and memorable characters, The Alchemy of Desire celebrates the chaotic spirit of a country during a time of great change. It also offers, in searing, lucid prose, a deeply sensual and moving meditation on the nature of desire, history, truth, and art. This is a major novel by one of the most significant new voices of his generation.

    Ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and Jeffrey Archer's trademark of deliciously unexpected conclusions, this new collection has the added bonus of thirteen charming illustrations by the internationally acclaimed artist Ronald Searle. Some of these twelve stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St. Petersburg---with unexpected consequences. "The Red King" is a tale about a con man who discovers that an English lord requires one more chess piece to complete a set that would be worth a fortune. In another tale of deception, "The Commissioner," a Bombay con artist ends up in the morgue after he uses the police chief as bait in his latest scam. "The Perfect Murder" reveals how a convict manages to remove an old enemy while he's locked up in jail, and then set up two prison officers as his alibi. In "Charity Begins at Home," an accountant realizes he has achieved nothing in his life, and sets out to make a fortune before he retires. And then there is Archer's favorite, "In the Eye of the Beholder," in which a handsome star athlete falls in love with a three-hundred-pound woman . . . who happens to be the ninth-richest woman in Italy. Jeffrey Archer is the only author to have topped international bestseller lists with his fiction, nonfiction, and short stories. "Cat o'Nine Tales" is Archer at his best: witty, poignant, sad, surprising, and unforgettable.

    Rehash national icons: the truth about racial riot fodder-girl Maria Hertogh living out her days as a chambermaid in Lake Tahoe, a mirage of the Merlion as a ladyboy working Orchard Towers, and a high-stakes fantasy starring the still-suave lead of the 1990s TV hit serial The Unbeatables.Heartfelt and sexy, the stories of Amanda Lee Koe encompass a skewed world fraught with prestige anxiety, moral relativism, sexual frankness, and the improbable necessity of human connection. Told in strikingly original prose, these are fictions that plough, relentlessly, the possibilities of understanding Singapore and her denizens discursively, off-centre. Ministry of Moral Panic is an extraordinary debut collection and the introduction of a revelatory new voice.

    In each of these tales Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: in a few brief pages we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age.  By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery.  Richly layered and disturbing, poignant at times and scathingly witty at others, the stories in Wilderness Tips take us into the strange and secret places of the heart and inform the familiar world in which we live with truths that cut to the bone.Contents:True trash --Hairball --Isis in darkness --The bog man --Death by landscape --Uncles --The age of lead --Weight --Wilderness tips --Hack Wednesday.

    In them we find loneliness, love, and the passage of time, demonstrating the range and complexity of a true master of short fiction.