As the daughter of starving refugees fleeing violent persecution in Persia, her fateful birth in a roadside tent sparked a miraculous reversal of family fortune, culminating in her father's introduction to the court of Emperor Akbar. She is called Mehrunnisa, the Sun of Women. This is her story.Growing up on the fringes of Emperor Akbar's opulent palace grounds, Mehrunnisa blossoms into a sapphire-eyed child blessed with a precocious intelligence, luminous beauty, and a powerful ambition far surpassing the bounds of her family's station. Mehrunnisa first encounters young Prince Salim on his wedding day. In that instant, even as a royal gala swirls around her in celebration of the future emperor's first marriage, Mehrunnisa foresees the path of her own destiny. One day, she decides with uncompromising surety, she too will become Salim's wife. She is all of eight years old -- and wholly unaware of the great price she and her family will pay for this dream.Skillfully blending the textures of historical reality with the rich and sensuous imaginings of a timeless fairy tale, The Twentieth Wife sweeps readers up in the emotional pageant of Salim and Mehrunnisa's embattled love. First-time novelist Indu Sundaresan charts her heroine's enthralling journey across the years, from an ill-fated first marriage through motherhood and into a dangerous maze of power struggles and political machinations. Through it all, Mehrunnisa and Salim long with fiery intensity for the true, redemptive love they've never known -- and their mutual quest ultimately takes them, and the vast empire that hangs in the balance, to places they never dreamed possible.Shot through with wonder and suspense, The Twentieth Wife is at once a fascinating portrait of one woman's convention-defying life behind the veil and a transporting saga of the astonishing potency of love.

    The three of them,coming from different worlds, are thrown into a fourth world called Karnataka. But it is not virgin beaches or exotic dancers that await them. They are to be welcomed by blood, riots, violent bosses and cut limbs. Will Saumya survive her job in the middle of nowhere? Will Malappa s superiority help him survive or become the cause of his downfall? Will Shubhro prove that a heart of gold can survive through marijuana smoke and beer rich blood?

    Babo grew up here, but he and Sian, his cream-skinned Welsh love, met in London. Babo's parents disapproved. And then they disapproved unless the couple moved back to Madras. So here they are. And as the twentieth century creaks and croaks its way along, Babo, Sian, and the children navigate their way through the uncharted territory of a "hybrid" family: the hustle and bustle of Babo's relatives; the faraway phone-line crackle of Sian's; the eternal wisdom and soft bosom of Great-Grandmother Ba; the perils of first love, lost innocence, and old age; and the big question: What do you do with the space your loved ones leave behind?Tishani Doshi, a prizewinning poet, plunges into fiction for the first time with this tender and uplifting debut. With rich feeling and dazzling language, Doshi evokes both Zadie Smith and Rohinton Mistry as she captures the quirks and calamities of one unusual clan in a story of identity, family, belonging, and all-transcending love.

    As the action spirals up through the floors of the building, the dramas of the residents' lives unfold: Mr. Jalal's obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja's longing for the wife he has lost; the comic elopement of Kavita Asrani, who fancies herself the heroine of a Hindi movie.Suffused with Hindu mythology, this story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious division of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the sours progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, he begins to wonder whether he might not be the god Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants, but of the entire universe.

    . . he is the son of a billionaire, she is the daughter of a socialist.. . . he is quiet and unassuming, she is a firebrand and spirited.However, the unexplained phenomena ties them forever – whenever they are in peril, they are each other’s only saviors.Over the following two decades Adi and Radha live through hope and despair, joy and sadness, and try to decipher their relationship. As the truth of their bond is revealed, they must confront the true nature of love, and ultimately, their destinies.

    But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.Ram takes us on an amazing review of his own history - from the day he was found as a baby in the clothes donation box of a Delhi church to his employment by a faded Bollywood star to his adventure with a security-crazed Australian army colonel to his career as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal.Vikas Swarup's Q & A is a beguiling blend of high comedy, drama, and romance that reveals how we know what we know - not just about trivia, but about life itself. Cutting across humanity in all its squalor and glory, Vikas Swarup presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle between good and evil - and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive.

    Mukherjee follows the diverging paths taken by three extraordinary Calcutta-born sisters as they come of age in a changing world. Moving effortlessly between generations, she weaves together fascinating stories of the sisters' ancestors, childhood memories, and dramatic scenes from India's history.

    Love is poison that kills you. Unreciprocated love keeps you alive but kills every day.Heartbroken Sunny lives a reclusive life, trapped in the past, living in his memories. He has no complaints about his life but refuses to embrace the present.Saloni is a prostitute who is desperate to earn money by any means. She does not care about exploiting others to fulfill her purpose.Fate unites the loner and the prostitute to embark on a life changing journey of retribution and self discovery.Lovelorn Sunny turns misogynistic after Sandy, the only girl he loved walks away from his life, unannounced. He suffers painful solitude for almost two decades with the relentless haunting of her thoughts. A distressed friend Imran, vows to change his life forever. A surprise planned for his birthday turns into a tragedy that claims the life of his dear friend, triggering a series of unbelievable events. As Imran gets killed by a stranger, Sunny's calm life suddenly turns into a turbulent storm. With nothing left to live for, vengeance becomes his ultimate mission. His reluctant alliance with a prostitute to trace the killer sets him onto a nerve racking adventure of life and death.Both are bound to a common goal with different motives but destiny has its own motive. A walk in the rain is an intricate tale of intense emotions, driven by hair raising twists and turns.

    The only hitch in this perfect romance is her prospective sister-in-law who thinks Misha is everything a Bahu shouldn’t be: garrulous, geeky, gawky, gainfully employed (especially the last bit). The questions is will Misha win Didi (and the Kha-Pee Panchayat) over with her Stepford Wife Act? Will she continue to be the poster child for the inherent evils of the Bahu Brigade? Or will she learn to ‘lau’ herself before the whole world and its wife can do the same?

    Michael Holme is a violinist, a member of the successful Maggiore Quartet. He has long been haunted, though, by memories of the pianist he loved and left ten years earlier, Julia McNicholl. Now Julia, married and the mother of a small child, unexpectedly reenters his life and the romance flares up once more. Against the magical backdrop of Venice and Vienna, the two lovers confront the truth about themselves and their love, about the music that both unites and divides them, and about a devastating secret that Julia must finally reveal. With poetic, evocative writing and a brilliant portrait of the international music scene, An Equal Music confirms Vikram Seth as one of the world's finest and most enticing writers.

    Two, she's only ever been good at one thing – her job helping business start-ups.So when she’s sacked and put on gardening leave, Jasmine realises that she has nothing else to fill her life. Insomnia keeps her staring out of her bedroom window, and she finds herself watching the antics of her neighbour, shock jock Matt, with more than a casual eye. Matt is also taking a forced leave of absence from work, after one of his controversial chat shows went too far…Jasmine has every reason to dislike Matt, and the feeling appears to be mutual. But not everything is as it seems, and soon Jasmine and Matt are forced to think again…

    When she accidentally comes across a clue that her father is Italian, it opens up a burning curiosity in Anna. Soon she’s cooking Italian food, signing up for an Italian class and even considering dusting off her passport to go and find her dad in person… Sophie is serving gelato to tourists in Italy when she gets the call that her father has had a serious heart attack. In a rush, she grabs her well-worn backpack and heads back to the one place she’s been avoiding for so long – home. Living with her mum again while her dad recuperates, and taking a job teaching Italian to make ends meet, Sophie has to face up to the secrets she’s kept buried in the past. Catherine has no idea what the future holds. Her children have left for university, her husband has left her for another woman and her bank account is left empty after dedicating her life to raising her family. She needs a job and an identity all of a sudden. At an Italian evening class she makes a start in finding new friends Anna and Sophie. And she’s going to need good friends when she discovers her husband’s lies run even deeper than his infidelity… As Anna embarks on the trip to Italy that could answer all of her questions, will the truth live up to her dreams?

    Tony’s dealing with divorce and a weight problem.  Novelist Sean is up against a serious case of writer’s block and a shock announcement from his “perfect” new girlfriend. Their parents have a new lodger, Gervase—why is Bernie, their mother, so keen to give this unsavory waif a home?  And what is the real reason for kid brother Ned’s surprise return from his travels in Australia?A Friend of the Family is a hilarious, dead-on-target story from the bestselling author of Thirtynothing and Ralph’s Party.

    They are a loving anddoting young married couple, living a life of comfort in posh suburbanGurgaon. Neil's fitness consultant Srinya seems to be stirring sometrouble in their lives, though.Drishti is a TV news anchor and journalist and her husband Somesh, atop cop. They are bored of their mundane busy lives, until a chancemeeting with Neil and his friends in Cuba that changes everything.To add sanity and madness to their lives are the funny and mysteriousset of friends - Tom, Jerry, James, Mehr and Antriksha.The havoc ensues when Drishti gets abducted and Neil is framed for it.Gauri finds out some bitter truths and leaves Neil. But what really is thetruth?When facts finally surface, we will know how much these lives areMessed Up! But All for Love.

    No matter how young or old we are, we are all looking for ways to make our relationships better. The best way to do that is to understand what makes us behave the way we do.Why We Love the Way We Do is a collection of essays on relationships based on Preeti Shenoy’s hugely popular columns in a national daily, in which the bestselling novelist discusses some of those issues and questions that people in relationships, or those hoping to be in one, face. The topics range from those particular to our modern, technology-filled world: how to move from an online relationship to a real-life one, how to find and keep love online, whether casual sex is worth the effort; to those immortal issues such as how men and women communicate differently, how to deal with a broken heart and how jealousy ruins a relationship.Filled with wonderful insights, sharp observations, humour and real-life examples, and written in her trademark lucid style, Preeti Shenoy brings to this book a perceptiveness about love and friendship that has made her the country’s highest-selling woman writer.