In this brilliant retelling, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita’s version. The Forest of Enchantments is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, Mandodari. A powerful comment on duty, betrayal, infidelity and honour, it is also about women’s struggle to retain autonomy in a world that privileges men, as Chitra transforms an ancient story into a gripping, contemporary battle of wills. While the Ramayana resonates even today, she makes it more relevant than ever, in the underlying questions in the novel: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’

    

    

    Ghias Beg isn’t traveling light; he has with him a pregnant wife and three small children. When his family stops at Qandahar—which is today in modern-day Afghanistan, at that time was on the outer fringe of the Mughal Empire—his wife gives birth to a baby girl named Mehrunnisa. Thirty-four years later, this winter child will become an Emperor’s wife and the most powerful woman in that Mughal dynasty. Mehrunnisa is The Twentieth Wife of Emperor Jahangir, Akbar’s son, a woman so beloved of her husband that he grants her most of the powers of sovereignty. She signs on imperial documents called farmans and mints coins in her name and truly comes into power during the sixteen years of her marriage to Jahangir in The Feast of Roses . Mehrunnisa’s niece (her brother’s daughter and Ghias’ granddaughter) marries one of Jahangir’s sons, Prince Khurram who becomes Emperor Shah Jahan after his father’s death. When this niece dies in childbirth in June of 1631, Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal in her memory. But it is Mehrunnisa’s grand-niece (and Ghias’ great-granddaughter) Princess Jahanara who takes center stage in the third novel of the trilogy, Shadow Princess . She’s seventeen years old when her mother dies and her father, in his grief, leans upon her to the extent that she’s never allowed to marry. Throughout her life, Jahanara has to pacify warring brothers who each want the throne after their father, and engages in a rivalry with a sister, Roshanara—in supporting differing brothers politically, and in falling in love with the same noble at court, Najabat Khan. Powerful in her father’s harem, immensely rich with half her mother’s estate bestowed upon her and all of her mother’s yearly income, Jahanara still fails to turn the course of India’s history and has to find love with Najabat Khan in unconventional ways.

    He is an extremely wealthy man, although no one knows where he or his money have come from. But Gatsby has a purpose: he is following a dream of love. Will his dream come true?

    Bharatvarsh’s political landscape is in turmoil. The Northern Sultanate has moved its capital back to Delhi from Daulatabad and is bleeding from economic losses. The southern states, coming together as the Sujaynagar Empire, have pushed back the Northern Sultanate. Amidst this chaos, Jazeera, a fort island on Bharatvasrh’s west coast and a vassal state under the Sultanate, is tormented by a mysterious Shadow, who is kidnapping Jazeera’s children. Whispers suggest that there’s black magic at play to invoke the mighty Timingila. Jazeera’s ambitious Sultan and the pragmatic Wazir summon an Officer from the Sultanate to solve this mystery. Meanwhile, tribes in the dense forest near the fort island are feeling the ripple effects of Jazeera’s troubles, and are seeking alliances and formulating secret plans. The island has a haunting past, a turbulent present, and a prophetic future. Jazeera: Legend of the Fort Island unravels it all in a thrilling manner.

    Women have been fighting for equality and seeking justice in various aspects like equal wages, reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternal leave, sexual harassment, domestic violence, the right to education, etc. Not all rebellions spillover on the streets. Every woman who acts according to her free will for the greater good in her daily routine is a rebel, leading her own revolution. She may be a little girl. She could be a woman in love, a wife, a mom or an expectant mother, a career woman or a loving grandmother. Here are fourteen powerful stories where these rebels take various challenges head-on and live their life on their own terms. The women in the stories make their mark in their own way, symbolizing a revolution against a cause, no matter how big or small.This book is dedicated to every woman who stands up for herself.She refuses to fit in and blend with the crowd.She dares to be different and break the rules. She is courageous, wise, kind and compassionate.She is a fighter and doesn't give up on herself easily.She leads a rebellion against ignorance. She has a burning desire to live an extraordinary life.

    I drifted very slowly to the eastward, approaching the island slantingly; and presently I saw, with hysterical relief, the launch come round and return towards me.

    The popular tellings of the Mahabharata are about Duryodhana'sdeviousness, obstinacy and greed for power that would bring about thebattle of Kurukshetra between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, and hisown downfall. But was there more to him? Was he all black, or was it a matter ofshades of grey? What was he? True heir or pretender to the throne?Arch villain or brave prince defending his rajadharma?Ace strategist or wicked schemer? History, they say, is written by the victors. So we have never heard theside that Duryodhana presents. The epic's enigmatic villain finally hashis say -- on people, their motives and their machinations. For the firsttime we read a different meaning into episodes we may be familiar with --be it the attempted killing of Bhima, the burning of the wax house, thefamous game of dice or even Draupadi's vastraharan -- and get insightsinto the story we may not have come across before. Here is the crownprince of Hastinapura as we have never known him, adding yet anotherdimension to the labyrinth that is the Mahabharata.

    The name indicates that this is a set of stories having it's own fragrance.

    When Satish offers a bribe to Jitesh, the latter abuses the industrialist and threatens to call the police. Undeterred by all this, Satish approaches Arora who is Jitesh’s senior officer and offers him a share in his business. Arora puts pressure on Jitesh to ignore certain norms and stipulations and approve the loan, but Jitesh succumbs neither to greed nor pressure. Arora and Satish turn hostile towards Jitesh. A few days later at the bank, Jitesh helps an unknown customer, who claims to be illiterate, to fill his withdrawal form. The customer is later identified as a conman who fraudulently withdraws money from someone else’s account. His arch rival Arora manipulates facts and Jitesh is named in the chargesheet. Jitesh is suspended from his job and faces a judicial inquiry that lasts for 14 long and painful years. During the long ordeal, Jitesh is flooded with offers to bribe his way out of the matter and this includes vigilance officers, bank officials, CID officers, court clerks and even the judge. Arora connives with businessmen and amasses huge wealth through underhand means. Arora ignores his family and takes to the wrong path in personal life also. What has destiny in store for him? Is he able to escape from the clutches of justice? ********************************** ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gireesh Sharma, soldier-turned-author, writes straight from his heart. Born in 1973 in a small hamlet near Aligarh, he was brought up by his grandfather-in-law, an active political leader. It was under his tutelage that he developed patriotic fervour and on turning 17 years of age, chose to join the Indian Air Force to serve the nation. After his retirement, he worked with several youth organisations and today actively participates in socio-political activities to bring a positive change in the country. He is working as a marketing manager in a software company and enjoys writing books during his spare time. I Refused to Bribe is his first fiction, though he has written three popular non-fictions: 'Office Politics', 'How to Win the Heart of Your Wife' and 'Stay Free, Stay Happy'.http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=s...

    In this book, Nikhil continues taking his readers along for a journey which try to solve the riddles of basic human existence - riddles of love, of childhood's lost and found, of relationships and of our day to day trials.His characters vary from a gangster who chooses love over looting, a couple trying to steal their first kiss in a right-wing nightmare, children playing one-tip one-hand cricket to an early jobber trying to rise above his mundane job to an old man contemplating the purpose of life after getting replaced by technology.Nikhil's characters are immensely relatable and his stories are his voice speaking out your own stories. This book reminds you of the smell of summer sunshine hitting garden leaves and takes you to back to a kinder gentler and simpler time.

     Rather than abandoning his parish in search of the truth, Father Paul’s quest is a simple one: to find the true essence of Christianity. A Modern Day Apostle to the Downtrodden Set against the backdrop of a harsh and cold Russian countryside along the River Volga, with its unyielding poverty and hardships, The Archbishop follows Father Paul as he searches to understand God and the parlous state of the world around him. It is not until he meets the eponymous Archbishop that he finds revelations that do more than just answer his soul-searching questions. More than this, he finds a true shepherd determined to spread a more authentic message of Christ to the people who follow him. But even the divine truth that Father Paul finally finds in this dreary, cold hamlet where religion seems to be fading from relevance is not free from earthly machinations. Although he discovers something that will change his life forever, the realities of the world around him remain unyielding and unchanging. The Archbishop is a book that does not shy away from asking big questions – nor from answering them. Author Hieromonk Tihon’s identity has long since been lost to history and his fate unknown, but the vivid characters and intricately drawn world created in this book have indicated that The Archbishop may be an autobiographical work. Condemned, burned, and banned by iconoclastic Bolsheviks during the earliest years of Soviet Russia as it pushed an agenda of militant atheism, The Archbishop's spiritual guidance was almost lost among countless other Eastern Orthodox works. The Archbishop provides deep spiritual insight and guidance into a world distant from ours, despite the chasms of difference in culture, time, and space. Sometimes funny, often tragic, and other times angering, this hidden Orthodox gem does not shy away from asking big questions – nor from answering them. It remains a work full of spiritual lessons that will resonate profoundly with the modern-day American Orthodox clergy and their laity.

    "Tyau writes graceful and nuanced prose, and she proves to be a perceptive observer of her character's shifting emotions. This novel does indeed resound sweetly." --Julie Gray, The New York Times Book Review

    Kesavadev, one of the prolific writers of 20th century Kerala. In the “introduction” to this book, the author contemplates on the social progress to which Kerala was slowly waking up in the beginning of twentieth century. His analyses of these developments often give birth to his literary works, as what happened in this book too, the author says. Dev, as the writer has been popularly known in Kerala, recalls that there were three main aspects for the social progress witnessed by Kerala in the first half of twentieth century (the introduction written in 1963 takes into account half a century preceding it to make this inference). The destruction of matrilineal system (marumakkathayam), which had a tint of feudal character in it, the social mobility of Ezahvas, who had witnessed backwardness in a caste-ridden society, and the progress of Christian community in the economic and education front were the three aspects.