This is a place where teenage love and friendships are tested by the violence that threatens to erupt at the slightest provocation. A town that always pulls you back into its ways, no matter how cosmopolitan the city has made you.In 'Diwali in Muzaffarnagar' - Tanuj Solanki's new book of short stories after 'Neon Noon' - young men and women straddle the past and the present, the metropolis and the small town, and also the parallel needs of life: solitude and family.

    A party girl’s addiction gives birth to a monster within. Man’s best friend must fend off a woman’s greatest nightmare…Scare Street is proud to present eleven chilling tales of the supernatural, in one monstrous volume. Horror authors Ron Ripley, David Longhorn, Sara Clancy, and many more unite to bring you a terrifying collection of short stories, each one guaranteed to haunt your dreams. And each one more chilling than the last.Once you start reading you won’t be able to stop. Because when these authors sink their teeth into you, it’s already too late.The only way to escape from these nightmares… is to wake up screaming.

    Set in and around Shillong, Cherrapunjee and pockets of Assam, these tales are shaped against a larger historical canvas of the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to Christianity, and the missionaries.Spanning a sweep of centuries, from the mid-1800s to the present day, the stories work as a historical, sociological documentation of a place and its people, interweaving the quotidian and the mythic, the mundane and the extraordinary.This is a world in which the everyday is infused with folklore and a deep belief in the supernatural. Here, a girl dreams of being a firebird. An artist watches souls turn into trees. A man shape-shifts into a tiger. Another is bewitched by water fairies. Political struggles and social unrest interweave with fireside tales and age-old superstitions.

    It also displays the saga of continuous failures and lesson learns going forward.The Story takes us way back to 2006. Four college students in the final year had a big dream. Despite the average academic marks and knowledge, they dared to envisage big. Although everybody laughed at them for their big fantasies, they were firm in getting their dreams to come true. In the process of getting their dream fulfilled and opening a startup, they had to face a lot of hiccups. There was a lot of confusion among themselves. The troubles and disasters transpired in the way of getting their startups.The dreams, the vision, the ideas, the blunders, the lesson learned, some quick luck is Story's main gist.After each loss, the intensity from which they come back to start another project is the Story's highlight. The Story also revolves around the personal preferences, the ego, the emotional moments of their life.The Story also conveys the cautions that most of the youngster has forgotten nowadays in the rush of opening a startup.

    After a night out with his girlfriend in one of the country's remote provinces, he wakes to find himself in a pitch-black coffin—and quickly running out of oxygen. With only his cell phone and his own wits to rely on, it's a race against time to escape the claustrophobic death trap. SIX BULLETS The end of civilization arrived in the form of a giant asteroid thirteen months ago. For Burt James, a survivalist, it was not a complete surprise. He'd spent much of his adult life prepping for such a catastrophe. Consequently, while the majority of the population scoured the post-apocalyptic landscape for water and food, regressing into primitive killers, he bunkered down in his fortified hilltop home in a small town in the middle of the Australian Outback. But now he's out of food and down to his last six bullets, and he will have to make the most difficult choice of his life. THE MAILMAN Los Angeles, 1985. Never was the motto sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll more apt than the scene on the legendary Sunset Strip with the arrival of the underground Hollywood glam bands. While Mick Freeman, a record executive with a major label, works tirelessly to sign five toxic rockers whom he believes might flip the entire music world on its head, his wife, Jade, spends her days bored and alone at home, struggling with a midlife crisis that threatens to topple their twenty-year marriage. And then she meets the new mailman. Young and handsome, he sweeps her off her feet—straight into a nightmare the likes of which she could never have imagined. RE-ROLL In the near future, breathtakingly humanoid robots called Mechs are for sale, and they're designed to fulfill whatever role you want: husband, wife, best friend, slave. Manufacturers allow new owners one free "roll" to randomly determine their Mech's three leading characteristics. But as everybody knows, scoring your ideal traits is a crapshoot, though you can always re-roll—at a price.

    You will find yourself in the middle of a torrid liaison in The Affair , revel in the euphoria of budding romance in Just One Glance and discover what it means to let go of your loved one in The Impasse .Love can also be brutal and unconventional as The Unseen Boundaries of Love and Something about Karen will show you. But most of all, as Death of a Widower and Siddharth show, you will see that love is all about hope and taking the leap of faith.Selected from a nationwide Romance Contest conducted by Rupa Publications, this heart-warming collection of stories urges you to believe that love is eternal...and forever.

    The hostage-takers threaten to shoot pilgrims every day, unless the incumbent Government accedes to their demands. With the popular Hindu festival of Diwali just around the corner and elections less than six months away, the Government at the center is under immense pressure to act. What will the Government do? The army? The intelligence agencies? The common man? No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Who are these men? Is there a larger plot? Faced with such unprecedented events, will the country descend into unimaginable anarchy or will it rise above the issues of collective apathy and greed that have plagued it since Independence?

    Until one December dawn, when the ducks and the little duck girl, not so little any more, return to the village after several years of absence and light up Maash's life again.The year is 2019, the Indian Parliament has passed the Citizenship Amendment Act and the question of identity-- especially religious identity--is at the forefront of everything. Suddenly, everyone wants to know: who is this duck girl, where does she come from, who does she pray to? In a matter of days, Maash finds himself in the middle of a conflict he couldn't have foreseen.Set in Kaikurussi - the near idyllic village which Anita Nair introduced to readers worldwide in her first novel The Better Man, The Little Duck Girl is a state-of-the-nation story that sensitively but unflinchingly explores the idea of who we are as a people.

    According to Grandmother, girls didn't need an education, they didn't need love and affection or time to play or even a good piece of meat with their gravy! Naturally Dielieno hates her with a vengeance. This is the evocative tale of a young girl growing up in a traditional society in India's Northeast, which is in the midst of tremendous change. Easterine Iralu writes about a place and a people that she knows well and is a part of and brings to the storytelling a lyrical beauty which can on occasion chill the reader with its realistic portrayals of the spirits of the dead that inhabit the quiet hills and valleys of Nagaland.

    The Frogs is an unforgettable read by one of India’s most-loved authors.

    For the special edition slipcase please go here.You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America. This year's slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.

    Besides, Debu has only recently escaped a bunch of local ruffians who wanted him to ‘go back home to Bangladesh’.But Debu is unable to resist being friends with Clint. For, in return for doing his maths homework, Clint introduces him to a completely new life: the heady charms of Kalsang, the Chinese restaurant forbidden by Debu’s mother; the revolutionary sounds of Pink Floyd; and most importantly, the coolest, prettiest girl in town—Audrey Pariat. Audrey loves maths and detective stories, just like Debu, and does not make him feel awkward or exotic. Together, the three of them look set to embark on many adventures. But when tensions between the Khasi and Bengali communities boil over, Shillong becomes a battlefield—old neighbours become outsiders and the limits of friendship are challenged.With crackling energy, Nilanjan P. Choudhury immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Debu, his friends and his family, and their attempts to find love and belonging. Written with uncommon warmth, humour and a delightful evocation of place, Shillong Times is an exhilarating coming-of-age story—showing us how friendship can eclipse the hardened enmities of adulthood.

     Whether we are following WB through a grim future where human meat is on the market, or trailing slowly behind while she introduces us to Marie Laveua's daughter, you can be certain of one thing: you will be surprised. The best and the most brutal of WB's works has been brought together in this all-too-believable collection. Includes a total of eighteen tales. Stories include: - Her - Undo - Slipping - Siren - Alone in the House - Antics - House Arrest - Mall Food - Meat Aisle - The Water Stain - Heart Problems - Laveau - The Birth - The Look - Love/Death - Beneath the Surface - Nighttime Terror - Girl in the Pink Coat

    Fourteen well-crafted stories give us a sense of the daily life of a wide cast of characters. Hasan's protagonists are, as always, inward-looking, and whimsical and vulnerable outliers. Where is their place in the new order, where have they come from and where are they going?Quietly devastating, subtly subversive and wonderfully wry, Hasan is a home-grown talent whose stories are increasingly the good address for authentic Indian fiction.

    He was an employee of Hindustan Shipyard limited which is building India’s nuclear submarine fleet. This is the fourth submarine engineer in the last twelve months who perished under mysterious circumstances. Navy leadership gets suspicious about a covert sabotage operation being carried out by an unknown enemy, to slow down India's attempt at acquiring a potent nuclear deterrent platform. After deliberations at different levels, an Intelligence Bureau agent is sent to Vizag to work as an undercover operative. What secrets will she uncover? Will she become the next target of an enemy spy ring? Would the Indian Navy exact revenge from a belligerent enemy?