She is also unpredictable, enigmatic, funny and tragic. And then one day, she vanishes, leaving behind a heartbroken husband and desolate daughter. Irenie refuses to accept that Yasmeen is gone; she haunts the house with the scents and sounds of her dazzling mother in an effort to maintain the illusion of her presence. Five years after her mother's disappearance, Irenie discovers a box of letters, beautiful, intimate love letters, which reveal a different Yasmeen, a woman who, all her life, was in love with a man named Ahmed. Why did the two never get together? What really happened to Yasmeen? On a quest for answers she suspects her father, James, has long suppressed, she travels to Islamabad, where she uncovers a trove of secrets for which she may not be ready. Over the course of a summer, father and daughter find that they must help each other move out of Yasmeen's shadow and forge their own stories. Simultaneously intricate and expansive, shattering and uplifting, this is a sophisticated debut about obsessive love, family ties and a desperate search for closure.

    When Nadine learns that the Indian woman she thought her nanny is, in fact, her mother, she rebels against her English father and he arranges for her to be wed to an Australian merchant many years older. She is whisked off to her new husband's plantation in Malaya but as the Second World War rages throughout the East, Nadine is taken captive by the Japanese. She is held at a camp in Sumatra with other women and forced to entertain the soldiers and satisfy their desires. In the most unlikely circumstances, Nadine finds an ally and protector in a Japanese—American major caught up in the war. The two bond over their conflicted identities and gradually fall in love. But can Nadine survive long enough to find happiness? Don't miss this emotional and powerful saga about a woman's determination to beat the odds, perfect for fans of Renita D'Silva, Dinah Jefferies and Julia Gregson.

    His collection brings together the best of Kalki’s short stories, which contain some of his most colourful and enduring characters and themes of Tamil popular fiction of the nineteen thirties and forties. There is in these stories the heady urgency of the freedom struggle, the piquant humour of the parodied Tamil gothic and devastating social satire. In her sensitive translations, Gowri Ramnarayan has succeeded in capturing the nuances of the gently mordant wit that made Kalki’s stories the highlight of the magazines they were originally published in, creating for themselves a dedicated following that flourishes undiminished to this day.Coinciding with the centenary of Kalki’s birth, this volume is a well-deserved tribute to a writer whose breadth of vision and genius imagined and served a new India.

    Murakami takes this phenomenon to another level, in which monkeys have become like leprechauns or elves, who steal personal items from folks and explain themselves when captured.

    Even more so, he did not believe that there could be someone with great kindness and sense of justice, who would be so considerate of others without asking anything in return.One day, Shen Qiao, who was the sect leader of Mount Xuandu, the number one Daoist sect under the heavens, was challenged to a duel but somehow fell off the cliff.Yan Wushi happened to pass by down there.Seeing Shen Qiao who was seriously injured to the point of dying, he suddenly came up with a perfect idea…After thousands of autumns, who could stay eternal?(-novelupdates.com)Unofficial English Translationsnowycodex.com/translations/novels/ta/

    Despite her initial resistance, she is ensnared in a steamy love affair with the young, noble aristocrat, Dimitri. However, as the daughter of a chieftain warrior, Siwhetta is defiant, passionate, and determined to return to her homeland. Dimitri, on the other hand, enamored of this nubile, ebony beauty is possessive and takes what he wants, and thus far, his eyes are set on Siwhetta. Intent on possessing her, he will stop at nothing to get her into his arms even if it meant breaking every rule in the book.Disclaimer: Please note that this book includes information that may be upsetting to some persons. ExcerptSiwhetta inhaled and looked into his cobalt eyes and pointed out calmly, “I am a slave and you are the slave master’s grandson.” Siwhetta repeated then began to sob. “This is not what I want. I would like to experience true love like my parents did. One day, I would like to live a normal life again. I don’t want this!” She began pushing at him again. Defeated, Dimitri rolled on his back next to her on the ground. He looked at the canopy of trees hanging over their heads. There was no doubt that he cared for her. He wished he knew how he could make her trust him. “I will take you home with me.”Horrified, Siwhetta gasped then turned to look at him. She searched his eyes curiously.As if he knew that she doubted him, he repeated: “I will take you home with me.”Siwhetta sat up with relief, heart palpitating. She finally felt like there was hope; that she could finally have a life of freedom again; a chance to fall in love; a chance to have a family; to start a new life somewhere new. Tears of joy finally ran down her cheeks. “I can finally be free again?” she placed her hand on her chest in disbelief. “Maybe,” she paused, biting on her lower lip then whispered in awe, “maybe someday go back home?” Dimitri tensed, he scowled. “You will remain with me.”As if wounded, Siwhetta grimaced then lowered her head in confusion. She lifted her chin proudly and with blazing eyes yelled, “I would never!”Dimitri said, firmly, “You will remain with me.”

    The smoke-spewing, banshee-wailing, fearsome black thing hisses like a thousand cobras... and the villagers declare that this Thing is an Iron Demon—a yakada yaka.The Burghers who drive these Iron Demons have a penchant for challenging authority and courting trouble, sometimes just to liven things up in the railway outposts... and so it is that Sonnaboy and Meerwald chase a large group of villagers all across Anuradhapura, mother-naked but not much bothered by it, Ben Godlieb conjures up a corpse in his cowcatcher, Dickie Byrd single-handedly demolishes a Pentecostal Mission and is hailed as the messiah of the Railway fraternity, and Basil Van der Smaght filches a human heart and feeds it to the Nawalapitiya railway staff ...and to cap it all, Sonnaboy takes French Leave to act in The Bridge on the River Kwai!

    For many a curious reader, Faith: Understanding Hinduism will prove to be a delightful and eye-opening introduction to the intricacies of one of the world’s most practiced religions.

    He traveled the world, earned a fortune, and made a lifetime of memories, but now he longs to put down roots. Time hasn’t been kind to his hometown, and Dax wants to help—if only he can convince everyone he’s not the same petulant boy he used to be. Especially the one woman who has every reason not to trust him.Librarian Callie Colton cherished summers with her grandparents, in the town her ancestors helped build, in spite of the boy who called her names. Now that Colton is her home, life is quiet until Dax returns…and, along with him, threatening letters on her doorstep. He may still have the power to hurt her, but she’s not the same scared little girl she used to be.But as the danger escalates, Dax will have to face his past to find a way forward for the relationship they were cheated of once before.

    The famous verse that gives the title to this book is about “love”—but not the ordinary love we know from novels and movies.Speak to us of Love gives a taste of a contemporary mystic at work, trying to disrupt our dreams, illusions, and the state of unconsciousness that prevents us from enjoying life to the fullest.This is about and for the millions of people in the world who have killed their love with their own hands, and who are now miserable. They never wanted to kill it, there was no intention to kill their love, but in their unconsciousness they started possessing. Husbands possess their wives, wives possess their husbands, and parents possess their children. Teachers are trying in every possible way to possess their students. Politicians are trying to possess countries. Religions are trying to possess millions of people and control every aspect their lives.This book shows that life can only thrive in freedom. Love never allows anyone to possess it, because love is our very soul.For Osho, the basis of all our neuroses or psychoses is simple: our souls are not nourished. Love, the basic nourishment, is missing. Osho comprehensively trounces the so-called religious and philosophical approaches to life. All that is of worth is to be found, not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary; not in fantastical ideas of the “other world” beyond death, but in this very world that we find ourselves in here and now. In short, this book shows that making a simple yet utterly basic shift in our lives will awaken the silence in our beings and bring joy into our every moment.

    His authentic voice is captured in this candid memoir and is recommended reading for anyone interested in Malaysian politics and the law.

    Phone is getting cut off tomorrow. Rent is due next week. There are more important things to stress over. It’s high time something good happened to her, and an unexpected phone call offers just that. Les is out here living his best life, making money and forgetting faces. There’s nothing he wants that he can’t have, and once his eyes land on her, he wants Tali. A relationship is the last thing either is interested in, but once they fall in, fighting is pointless. Dark points from both of their pasts make it difficult to get on solid ground. She’s damaged, and so is he. Can they piece each other together enough to make this work?

    She grew up in the house of one of the richest families in the world . . . in the servants’ quarters with her mother, the family cook. The life of luxury is all she knows, but it isn’t really her life. Unhappy in school, invisible at home, she lives inside her head, in a world made of books and movies. Outside, Manila is in turmoil: protest rallies, a bloodless revolution, coup attempts, and the Web hasn’t even arrived yet. When is Guada going to leave her imaginary shelter and get a life? Funny, caustic, and moving, The Age of Umbrage is the first novel from one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Filipino writing.

    Aranya discovers that her family has been fighting a decade-long legal battle over her grandfather’s expansive estate, all the while not only keeping her in the dark, but also keeping her very existence out of the court’s knowledge!A cesspool of emotions, half-truths, betrayals, and the unspooling of long buried dirty family secrets threaten to overpower Aranya and disrupt what modicum of peace and balance she has in her life as a single mother of two children. At the centre of this storm is the one woman who, ever since the day Aranya was born, has had nothing but curses and abuses for her; who has deliberately kept her name out of the court; who has wished her dead for every day of her life; who refuses to now remember her birth. The woman who is her mother. Her own mother.This is the story of a woman fighting against power, money, deceit, and treachery for her right to be recognised as a daughter. A daughter by court order . . .