A young boy Ashtavakra goes to king janaka’s Court to debate the kingdom most learned sages but is ridiculed by the courtiers for his deformed body. After the boy triumphs in the debate, Janaka realizes that the boy has an extraordinary intellect and becomes his disciple. While Janaka is obsessed with his quest for spiritual liberation, a treacherous plan unfolds inside the secretive world of the royal palace. Very soon war clouds gather on the horizon of Mithila, but all Janaka does is devote more and more time to the young sage. Even though the whole world believes a calamity is imminent, Janaka stays on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Ultimately, with Ashtavakra’s guidance, the king enters the realm of a new world which alters the reality for him and his kingdom. This novel is rooted in ancient Indian spiritual wisdom and philosophy, but with new interpretations of the concepts of liberation, enlightenment, consciousness and the realities of life. Among others, It seeks to answer the question: is everything we see indeed an illusion? This compelling story sheds light on the modern readers’ existential questions, leading them to relate to the king and his struggles.

    Sitting through hundreds of hours of interviews and private conversations -- not only with Jayne but also with her husbands, her lovers, and her children -- gave Ray the opportunity to present a revealing portrait of the woman. He records her drive for fame and success and her overpowering need to be loved and to love, needs that led her into numerous affairs with rich and powerful men -- including President John F Kennedy -- and with younger men from all walks of life. And he discusses frankly Jayne's ultimately successful plan to become pregnant by Nelson Sardelli because she wanted to have an Italian child.Know to millions as the consummate sex symbol who rivaled Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield received more press coverage than anyone else in Hollywood. The headlines were often sensational, causing society matrons and Baptist ministers to shake their heads and point their fingers. But under those sensational headlines there was a woman of greater complexity that any reporter could hope to understand. Strait goes below the surface to examine Jayne's emotions and motivations, revealing the truth about her many lovers, her three unsuccessful marriages, her love affair with Mickey Hargitay that lasted to the end and her battle against and her surrender to alcohol and drugs.

    BEST BEHAVIOR, the new novel by Noah Cicero, is his boldest work yet. As the subject matter becomes increasingly autobiographical, the landscape more bleak, its impact is blunt, brutal, but somehow still hilarious. This is the literature of pain: of living in a world where nothing is right a temple to capitalism with no room for any kind of human spirit and, despite everything, trying to find some way to deal with it; then eventually failing. BEST BEHAVIOR might be the truest story ever told. BEST BEHAVIOR is slice-of-life, and that's as it should be. Where the classics have beginnings, middles, and ends that are relevant to the mainstream consciousness of the times, BEST BEHAVIOR is a couple of days in the life, making it a more honest and useful cultural artifact Rebecca Haze."

    She worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of “happy couples”, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg. Is there some trick to surviving survivalists? School shootings? Medical debts? Franks ’n’ beans?A scorching indictment of America’s barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster, Ducks, Newburyport is a heresy, a wonder—and a revolution in the novel.It’s also very, very funny.

    Boyle makes his Ecco debut with a powerful, gripping novel that explores the roots of violence and anti-authoritarianism inherent in the American character.Set in contemporary Northern California, The Harder They Come explores the volatile connections between three damaged people—an aging ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran, his psychologically unstable son, and the son's paranoid, much older lover—as they careen towards an explosive confrontation.On a vacation cruise to Central America with his wife, seventy-year-old Sten Stensen unflinchingly kills a gun-wielding robber menacing a busload of senior tourists. The reluctant hero is relieved to return home to Fort Bragg, California, after the ordeal—only to find that his delusional son, Adam, has spiraled out of control.Adam has become involved with Sara Hovarty Jennings, a hardened member of the Sovereign Citizens’ Movement, right-wing anarchists who refuse to acknowledge the laws and regulations of the state, considering them to be false and non-applicable. Adam’s senior by some fifteen years, Sara becomes his protector and inamorata. As Adam's mental state fractures, he becomes increasingly schizophrenic—a breakdown that leads him to shoot two people in separate instances. On the run, he takes to the woods, spurring the biggest manhunt in California history.As he explores a father’s legacy of violence and his powerlessness in relating to his equally violent son, T. C. Boyle offers unparalleled psychological insights into the American psyche. Inspired by a true story, The Harder They Come is a devastating and indelible novel from a modern master.

    . . Thirteen year old Ephraim Wright suffers the depredations of war along with the white family who reared him. Raised with the family since he was two years old, he is never once required to call Jonathan Wright, his benevolent owner, "master." His speech, manners and outlook on life are more akin to his white "siblings than the other slaves in the community who chide him for being a "pet" and "talkin' like white folk." He is stranded between two worlds; that of free whites, and of enslaved blacks. His life is irreversibly changed when Confederate conscript officers take the family's oldest son at gun point and a bushwhacker gang guns down Jonathan Wright. The law forbids a slave to touch a firearm, because a “negro with a gun is a nervous thing to white folks.” But where his family is concerned, Ep is never one to care about what the slave laws say. By seeking to send men to hell, will Ephraim send himself there as well?Advance Praise for The Secret of Wattensaw BayouWhile reading the book my feelings of anger and resentment toward the institution of slavery and those who fought to protect such rights were sometimes overwhelming and required me to take a deep breath. Nevertheless, the story from a historical perspective, although it was a work of fiction, was masterly woven and I found myself with the urge to continue reading. . . The book is well written and the author provides a fascinating glimpse into the everyday existence of many Southern families during the Civil War. Commander Harold Barnes (US Navy, retired)

    

     Charles lives in the testosterone-driven, high-powered, brutal world of investment banking. It is a world dominated by deals, bonuses, bravado and savagery. Charles is a master of this world. Each day he shrugs on a metaphorical suit of armour and goes out into a dog-eat-dog world to accumulate power and make money. He's a man who is familiar with casual brutality - his childhood saw to that.But there is a price to pay. Now, at the peak of his career, his armour is rusted and bloodstained and no longer protecting him the way it once did. He finds himself empty. Always cold. No friends. A family that is falling apart.Over the course of two days, everything in Charles' life comes into question. His carefully constructed world is starting to splinter - and he's splintering too.Shocking and at times immensely moving, Man in Armour is a compelling story of a man at the end of his tether, written with a sharp-eyed, incisive focus that also carries real emotional - and moral - resonance. Written by an ultimate business insider - a woman who knows intimately and at first hand this world of power, money and deal-making - this novel carries an undeniable authenticity and force.'The detailed setting of the finance world - the highs and lows, cutthroat practices and relentless pace -is vividly rendered ... Man in Armour is very readable' Bookseller+Publisher'There's no doubt McKenna can write a page-turner' Sydney Morning Herald

    and qualifies to fly the Vulcan bomber. Piloting a Vulcan is an unforgettable experience: no other aircraft comes close to matching its all-round performance. And as bombers go, it's drop-dead gorgeous.But there's a catch. The Vulcan has only one role: to make a second strike. To act in retaliation for a Russian nuclear attack. Silk knows that knows that if he ever flies his Vulcan in anger, he'll be flying from a smoking wasteland, a Britain obliterated. But in the mad world of Mutually Assured Destruction, the Vulcan is the last--the only--deterrent.Derek Robinson returns with another rip-roaring, gung-ho R.A.F. adventure, one that exposes and confronts the brinkmanship and saber-rattling of the Cold War Era.

    It's big money and a major career move, but Alex just can't seem to forget a first love he's left behind in Texas. When Alex is outed by a national tabloid, chaotic complications ensue as his career in daytime drama and his relationship with an acerbic International Male pretty boy/sitcom starlet are jolted by comic aftershocks. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and he's being bombarded by betrayed fans, stalked by a self-professed warlock, and attacked by homophobes who want him off the show. Torrid, dishy, outrageously romantic, this hilarious first novel is both a deliciously satiric skewering of the glitziest Hollywood has to offer, and a sweetly wicked boy-meets-boy tale of unrequited love.

    After the tragic death of his young wife, Reverend Tyler Caskey, a New England minister, struggles to hold together his own life, his family, and his town, while dealing with his personal anger, grief, and loss of faith.

    Jessica Treadway flawlessly portrays the complexity of human experience in the face of incomprehensible loss, revealing yet again why the New York Times Book Review has called her "a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth."