But MT Vasudevan Nair (popularly known as “MT”) turned him into a three-dimensional figure, more sensitive and thoughtful than he is usually given credit for. “He took familiar building blocks and created an entirely new, incredibly compelling construct from them,” says Prem Panicker, senior journalist, Rediff.com co-founder and a long-time admirer of MT’s work.

    Coming from the all-mod-cons society of Britain at the beginning of the 1980’s, the author is literally transplanted to a farm in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in what is now Kwazulu Natal.Once there, she finds her feet in the ways of Africawith the help of a charming, elderly Dutch couple, an appealing but wily African farm hand, his practical and motherly daughter and a wise and fascinating neighbour who has a fund of local knowledge.These are tales of a different kind of life, whichinclude living without electricity, hand-milking cows, drought, veld fires and mad-cap adventures into the unknown.They are stories told with deep affection and respect, and above all a liberal dose of tongue-in-cheek humour.

    With The Phony Marine, Lehrer dives into a highly controversial topicâ��and delivers his most compelling character portrait to date.Hugo Marder is about as unremarkable as they come. On the floor of the Washington, D.C., branch of Nash Brothers, one of the countryâ��s most respected menâ��s stores, Hugo is a wise, reserved salesman. At home, he is a solitary, divorced fifty-year-old with few friends and an eBay addiction. But he has always wanted to make more of his life, dreaming of becoming an artist or a cartoonist. When he was younger, heâ��d always wanted to be a marine.Late one night, Hugo stumbles upon an online auction for a Silver Star, the medal awarded for bravery in battle. He bids and wins. But it is only after he places the lapel pin on his jacket that he realizes the enormity of his actions. Suddenly, ordinary people begin to treat him differently, with dignity and respect. Is he really going to pretend the honor is his own?As Hugo wrestles with his conscience, a transformation begins to take place. He studies the life of a marine, learns the military terminology, body-builds at the gym, even gets a crew cut. When he is reborn as a former marine, his life immediately changes. Is it possible that his deception has unlocked the man he always wanted to be? Through numerous challenges and more than one terrifying ordeal, Hugo Marder must prove his worth. And in the end, he must ask himself: What is a hero?Alive with detail, emotional depth, and unexpected twists of plot, The Phony Marine is a tense, revelatory work of fiction that will cause every reader to consider his or her own stance on what truly makes someone great.

    When her boss, the repulsive Coddles, heaps another new project on her department -- with no additional remuneration naturally -- she decides she's had enough. She spends her days battling with her roommate, Val Wayne Newton, about whether Black Sabbath or Neil Diamond will occupy the turntable and her nights beating her overeager suitor, Martin Lemming, away from the door of her boudoir. When she discovers a piece of vile pornography in Coddles's dry cleaning, she has the means to retaliate. Meanwhile, Fat Bald Jeff, the tech-support guy who has to cope with her mechanical self-sabotage, turns out to be even more disaffected than she, and they hatch the ultimate plan to give the pigs some of their own medicine. With a surreal wit and a keen eye that bring to mind Lily Tomlin set loose in Dilbert-world, Fat Bald Jeff is a sharp satire and a paean to the petty humiliations of workers everywhere.

    As everyone knows, he is a specialist in the macabre and bizarre. Askes to explain his approach to fictional crime, he wrote:"The blunt instrument, the gang murder, the paid assassin have always seemed to me positively indelicate. Murder is a fine art and needs the embellishment of a sophisticated imagination. The true aficionado prefers to have his nerves ruffled by the implied thread--the Borgias rather than the Syndicate. What is more delightful than a domestic crime, when it is executed with subtlety and imagination? I leave to other more pedestrian talents materials based on newspaper accounts. True crimes, ugh! Alas, most of them are dull and give no evidence of the careful planning and loving thought that should go into any human activity as rewarding as murder."

    The fifty-two stories and critical introductions are organized chronologically as well as thematically for classroom use. Filled with luminous ideas, otherworldly adventures, and startling futuristic speculations, these stories will appeal to all readers as they chart the emergence and evolution of science fiction as a modern literary genre. They also provide a fascinating look at how our Western technoculture has imaginatively expressed its hopes and fears from the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century to the digital age of today. A free online teacher's guide accompanies the anthology and offers access to a host of pedagogical aids for using this book in an academic setting.The stories in this anthology have been selected and introduced by the editors of Science Fiction Studies, the world's most respected journal for the critical study of science fiction.

    Gives some great insights into Gayatri mantra and how it can transform the life of a mortal.

    Now its contents have been updated and its cultural framework enlarged by the orginal editors. Many of the 44 stories come from a new writing generation with a contemporary consciousness, and this brilliant blending of masters of the past and the brightest talents of the present achieves the goal of making a great collection even greater.

    Accompanied by evocative illustrations, these compelling retellings of 30 popular folktales feature supernatural occurrences and ghosts of all sorts, from fiddling ghosts to the story of the Jack o'Lantern. Whether read around the fire on a dark and stormy night or in the backseat of the family van on the way to Grandma's, each expertly told tale is guaranteed to make readers look at the South--and over their shoulders--again and again.

    Set against the backdrop of post-colonial South Africa, Zulu Shaman relays the first-person accounts of an African healer and reveals the cosmology of the Zulu. Mutwa begins with the compelling story of his personal journey as an English-trained Christian schoolteacher who receives a calling to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps as a shaman and keeper of folklore. He then tells the stories of his ancestors, including creation myths; how evil came to the world; the adventures of the trickster god Kintu; and Zulu relations with the “fiery visitors,” whom he likens to extraterrestrials. In an attempt to preserve the knowledge of his ancestors and encourage his vision of a world united in peace and harmony, Mutwa also shares previously guarded secrets of Zulu healing and spiritual practices: including the curing power of the sangoma and the psychic powers of his people.

     The Hidden Oracle: After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. The Burning Maze: My way out? A series of scary and dangerous trials, of course.For my third mission, I must:Journey through the Labyrinth to free an Oracle who only speaks in puzzles. Magnus Chase: The Hammer of Thor: Thor's hammer is missing again. The thunder god has a disturbing habit of misplacing his weapon - the mightiest force in the Nine Worlds. But this time the hammer isn't just lost, it has fallen into enemy hands. The Sword of Summer: My day started out normally enough. I was sleeping under a bridge when some guy kicked me awake and said, 'They're after you.' Next thing I know, I'm reunited with my obnoxious uncle, who casually informs me that my long-lost father is a Norse god. The Ship of the Dead: Loki the trickster god is free from his chains. Now he's readying Naglfar, the Ship of the Dead, armed with a host of giants and zombies.

    The Butterfly That Stamped, and How the Alphabet Was Made..

    When her shell is destroyed and her squad killed, Rook is imprisoned, left stranded, scarred and broken. Hollow and helpless without her steel frame, she's ready to call it quits. When her cohort of prisoners are sold into indenture to NorCol, a vast frontier corporation, Rook's given another shell – a near-decrepit Juno, as broken as she is and decades older – and sent to a rusting bucket of a ship on the end of known space to patrol something called "the Eye," a strange, unnerving permanent storm in space. But they're not alone.

    Robb, is the perfect entry point into the compelling In Death police procedural series featuring Lieutenant Eve Dallas.As NY Lt. Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke are driving home, a young woman—dazed, naked, and bloody—suddenly stumbles out in front of their car. Roarke slams on the brakes and Eve springs into action.Daphne Strazza is rushed to the ER, but it’s too late for her husband Dr. Anthony Strazza. A brilliant orthopedic surgeon, he now lies dead amid the wreckage of his obsessively organized town house, his three safes opened and emptied. Daphne would be a valuable witness, but in her terror and shock the only description of the perp she can offer is repeatedly calling him “the devil”...While it emerges that Dr. Strazza was cold, controlling, and widely disliked, this is one case where the evidence doesn’t point to the spouse. So Eve and her team must get started on the legwork, interviewing everyone from dinner-party guests to professional colleagues to caterers, in a desperate race to answer some crucial questions: What does the devil look like? And where will he show up next?

    Cassiopeia. A sister. A Marco Polo. A somnambulist. A documentary on the voyages of Columbus. A cartographer. Star charts. Young intellectuals in black robes. Jean-Michel Basquiat. More birds and still more birds. A mathematician. All these things appear in The To Sound’s beautifully warped cosmology. This is a stunning book that builds its own world, a world of ambiguous relations and loaded words; a lyrical world that explores the unstated connections between things. . . ."