Chosen by the author himself, from a body of work built over fifty years (starting with his award-winning first novel, The Room on the Roof, and ending with Tales of Fosterganj) this collection includes well-known masterpieces like ‘The Night Train at Deoli’, ‘The Woman on Platform No 8’, ‘Rusty Plays Holi’ (from The Room on the Roof), ‘Angry River’, ‘The Blue Umbrella’, ‘The Eyes Have It’, ‘Most Beautiful’, ‘Panther’s Moon’, as well as newer stories like ‘An Evening at the Savoy with H.H.’ (from Maharani) and ‘Dinner with Foster’ (from Tales of Fosterganj). Taken together, the stories in A Gathering of Friends show why Ruskin Bond has long been regarded as one of the pillars of Indian literature. This is a book that will delight his legions of fans as well as those lucky few who are new to his fiction.

    I knew not that the most horrific battles are fought off the battlefield. Arjun: The idealist in a non-ideal world; the warrior whose deadliest opponent was his conscience. History forgot his voice, but misquoted his silence. My self-esteem originates from me and ends in me. Why does your honor depend on me? Find your own.Draupadi: The untamed tigress, the fragrant flame, the unbridled spirit. Power does not justify sin. Power is not virtue. Virtue is that which lasts in spite of power. Krishn : The enigma whose unique ideology churned the battlefield into a quest for Truth. The Missile …The Trajectory … The Vision. The trio that makes for the core of The Mahabharata. This is their saga. Insightful, visceral and candid . Find ‘other’ famous Arjuns; compare Arjun vis-a-vis Achilles and Alexander; Explore Myths of Mahabharata.All this and much more in ‘Arjun: Without A Doubt’.

    R. K. Narayan provides a superb rendition in an abbreviated and elegant retelling of this great epic.

    PAID IN BLOOD.The deadly Halahala, the all-devouring poison churned from the depths of the White Lake by the devas and asuras, was swallowed by Shiva to save the universe from extinction.But was the Halahala truly destroyed?A small portion still remains – a weapon powerful enough to guarantee victory to whoever possesses it. And both asuras and devas, locked in battle for supremacy, will stop at nothing to claim it.As the forces of Devaloka and Patala, led by Indra and Shukracharya, plot to possess the Halahala, Shiva turns to mankind to guard it from their murderous clutches. It is now up to Samrat Vikramaditya and his Council of Nine to quell the supernatural hordes – and prevent the universe from tumbling into chaos!A sweeping tale of honour and courage in the face of infinite danger, greed and deceit, The Guardians of the Halahala is a fantastical journey into a time of myth and legend.

    Set in Aligarh in the early 1960s, after the dust of Partition had ostensibly settled, Topi Shukla is an intriguing story about two friends--one Hindu and one Muslim.

    enthralling’ BIBEK DEBROY‘A magical and thought-provoking adventure, Ahalya will intrigue and mesmerize readers’ CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI‘An enigmatic tale about purity, chastity, seduction and redemption’ NAMITA GOKHALE‘Brilliant and intriguing’ ANAND NEELAKANTANIt is known that Ahalya was cursed by her husband, Gautam, for indulging in a physical relationship with Indra. But is there another story to Ahalya's truth? Who was Indra anyway? A king? A lover? A philanderer? The first book of the Sati series, Ahalya hinges on these core questions, narrating the course of her life, from innocence to infidelity.In the Sati series, Koral Dasgupta explores the lives of the Pancha Kanyas from Indian mythology, all of whom had partners other than their husbands and yet are revered as the most enlightened women, whose purity of mind precedes over the purity of body. The five books of the Sati series reinvent these women and their men, in the modern context with a feminist consciousness.

    The novel depicts the rivalry between Munj, the ruler of Dharanagari and Tailap as well as the romance between Munj and Mrinal. Munj had defeated Tailap several times but Tailap captures Munj with help of his feudatory Yadava king Bhillamraj. In captivity, Munj falls in love with Mrinal, Tailap's widow sister. Celibate Mrinal too falls in love with too. The love story of Bhoj, a poet; and Vilas, daughter of Bhillamraj engaged with Satyashraya, son of Tailap; runs in parallel.

    Its ceilings need plastering and some of the toilets leak appallingly, but its residents are far from desperate, though sometimes contentious and unforgiving. In these witty, poignant stories, Mistry charts the intersecting lives of Firozsha Baag, yielding a delightful collective portrait of a middle-class Indian community poised between the old ways and the new.

    An intricately researched and elegantly written epic history peopled with larger-than-life characters, it is the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities...

    Bhishma, the venerable patriarch of the families, lies fatally wounded on the plains of Kurukshetra. On his deathbed he offers Radheya, his nemesis, a chance to rule the Kuru kingdom by capturing Yudhishthira.In the Pandava camp, Yudhishthira, a reluctant warrior, tries desperately to hold his allies together and escape capture without appearing to be a coward. Meanwhile, his young and impulsive nephew, Abhimanyu, a warrior prince, dreams of glory and yearns for a chance to save the Pandava cause. The lives of these three warriors, Yudhisthira, Radheya and Abhimanyu, collide brutally on the thirteenth day. A story of how stories are created, how fact becomes fiction, how history becomes mythology and how men become legends, The Thirteenth Day re-imagines India's greatest epic like never before.

    Economic and social conflict in a north Indian village are brilliantly captured in the story of Hori, a poor farmer and his family’s struggle for survival and self-respect. Hori does everything he can to fulfill his life’s desire: to own a cow, the peasant’s measure of wealth and well-being. Like many Hindus of his time, he believes that making the gift of a cow to a Brahman before he dies will help him achieve salvation. An engaging introduction to India before Independence, Godaan is at once village ethnography, moving human document and insightful colonial history.

    A text that makes use—and deliberate misuse—of both British and Indian literary conventions, Six Acres and a Third provides a unique "view from below" of Indian village life under colonial rule. Set in Orissa in the 1830s, the novel focuses on a small plot of land, tracing the lives and fortunes of people who are affected by the way this property is sold and resold, as new legal arrangements emerge and new types of people come to populate and transform the social landscape. This graceful translation faithfully conveys the rare and compelling account of how the more unsavory aspects of colonialism affected life in rural India.

    It was followed in 1932 by a sequel Aparajito, which was later also adapted into a film of the same name by Satyajit Ray.

    Since the book is written in pre-independence period, in the guise of love story it serves other purpose of nation building. It subtly pays homage to martyrs of 1857 revolution. It explains strategic importance of Andaman and describes nomadic tribes residing over there. The book also criticizes blind faith prevalent during that time. Savarkar also tells us about the hardships faced by prisoners in Andaman and how these criminal and political convicts helped turn this once inhabitable land into human society.

    Prabhat Prakashan has a glorious history of fifty years of publishing quality books on almost all streams of literature, viz. children books, fiction, science, quiz, humanities, personality development, health, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. For the last fifteen years, Prabhat Prakashan has been continuously winning accolades for excellence in book publication.