In a Southern Indian village, Asha doesn’t have much—raising two children in a tiny hut, she and her husband can barely keep a tin roof over their heads—but she wants a better education for her gifted son. Pressured by her family, Asha reluctantly checks into the Happy Mothers House: a baby farm where she can rent her only asset—her womb—to a childless couple overseas. To the dismay of friends and family, Priya places her faith in a woman she’s never met to make her dreams of motherhood come true.Together, the two women discover the best and the worst that India’s rising surrogacy industry has to offer, bridging continents and cultures to bring a new life into the world—and renewed hope to each other.

    It is is a story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side.Seven years in the making, Sacred Games is an epic of exceptional richness and power. Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh—and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India. Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs on the Mumbai police force, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But "the silky Sikh" is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip-off as to the secret hide-out of the legendary boss of G-Company, he's determined that he'll be the one to collect the prize. Vikram Chandra's keenly anticipated new novel is a magnificent story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side. Drawing inspiration from the classics of nineteenth-century fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra's own life and research on the streets of Mumbai, Sacred Games evokes with devastating realism the way we live now but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.

    . . a gripping mystery'Apostolos DoxiadisMulti-Award Winning Author of the New York Times Bestseller LogicomixAN ANCIENT CITYAN AGELESS TRADITIONA MODERN MURDERThey don’t come better than Divya. ‘Uber-smart’ does not even begin to describe it. And even a single-digit All-India rank in everything is nothing more than a left-handed demonstration of the kind of stuff she is made of. But the limits of her prowess are suddenly tested when her professor, Lakshman, springs a bizarre new assignment on her—helping out Joshua Ezekiel.A world-renowned computer scientist at MIT, Joshua is now in India and in deep, deep trouble. A criminal genius who happens to be his former student is brutally murdered, leaving Joshua trapped in the mess and mayhem that follow.With Lakshman and Divya firmly on his side, Joshua begins digging up his crooked protégé’s sinister trail of secrets—secrets which spiral out of an ancient Indian city and unleash shockwaves much, much, beyond . . .A mind-blowing cocktail of science and religion, mythology and technology, history and human greed, The Steradian Trail fires the starting shot of an explosive new series in style.'A gripping novel . . . a pacey thriller . . . An enjoyable read . . . An impressive debut!'Guillermo MartínezMulti-Award Winning Author of the International Bestseller The Oxford Murders

    K. Narayan’s centennialIntroducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story.” Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan’s imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human experience. This edition includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize- winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

    Through the grueling course of circumstances, he is subjected to the bitter tests of life, where he fails to justify his one decision of parting ways with Mahek. But, when Mahek flashes out of his life, leaving him all alone, the guilt of not been forgiven by her, ruins his soul; and that frustration leads him into seclusion, devoid of even his best buddies Rohan and Rahul. Failed love, broken friendship, a hurt ego and lost soul Raj is doomed to darkness. With no ray of hope ahead, just when Raj is about to give up on life, he come across a note, written to him by his favorite professor, "Never give up Raj… Because… Every Raindrop is a Hope" which brings Raj face to face with his own self. Why Love that makes Life beautiful, turns into Satan? Why friendship one fine day loses all its meaning? Why on the crowded roads of Mumbai city, Raj finds himself walking all alone? Will Raj challenge Life and fight back with the sword of Hope or will he take the easy way out by succumbing to the arduous tests of time. ****************************************** About the Authors: Mansi Sharma Having a zeal to sail the vessel, till the river runs dry in the chase of her dreams; Mansi is a person who takes the challenges and surprises that life and destiny throws at her, with courage. Nesting big dreams from her childhood in the Beautiful City of Chandigarh, post her Graduation in Physics (Hons.) from PU, she moved to Pune for her Masters. An MBA Graduate from SCIT, Pune, Mansi is presently working in one of the top Indian Telcos. With a slice of painter, dash of an avid reader, a writer and an unexplored poet, she is an emotional and sensitive person. Sankalp Kohli Born and brought up in Kanpur, Sankalp is an MBA Graduate from NMIMS, Mumbai. An entrepreneurial soul with an imprint of a perfectionist, he is a workaholic, who believes in turning every single moment of life into something constructive and fruitful. Being an avid reader since the beginning, he eventually began giving his thoughts and ideas, the wings of words in the form of blogs. He is a person who holds his parents above all, especially his mother. All his dreams and aspirations are driven by his wish to make his parents feel proud. Other bestsellers from General Press: A Lot Like Love, Love Happens only Once, The Girl I Last Loved.

    In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

    and Mrs. Jha’s lives have been defined by cramped spaces, cut corners, gossipy neighbors, and the small dramas of stolen yoga pants and stale marriages. They thought they’d settled comfortably into their golden years, pleased with their son’s acceptance into an American business school. But then Mr. Jha comes into an enormous and unexpected sum of money, and moves his wife from their housing complex in East Delhi to the super-rich side of town, where he becomes eager to fit in as a man of status: skinny ties, hired guards, shoe-polishing machines, and all. The move sets off a chain of events that rock their neighbors, their marriage, and their son, who is struggling to keep a lid on his romantic dilemmas and slipping grades, and brings unintended consequences, ultimately forcing the Jha family to reckon with what really matters..

    In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single and be happy, or does she need a man to feel complete?This wonderfully atmospheric, deliciously warm novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India, revealing how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with hunsbands, mothers, friends, employers and children are the same world over.

    Chronicling the Indian struggle for freedom and independence from Great Britain, Tharoor directs his hilarious satire as much against Indian foibles as the bumbling of the British rulers.

    As the action spirals up through the floors of the building, the dramas of the residents' lives unfold: Mr. Jalal's obsessive search for higher meaning; Vinod Taneja's longing for the wife he has lost; the comic elopement of Kavita Asrani, who fancies herself the heroine of a Hindi movie.Suffused with Hindu mythology, this story of one apartment building becomes a metaphor for the social and religious division of contemporary India, and Vishnu's ascent of the staircase parallels the sours progress through the various stages of existence. As Vishnu closes in on the riddle of his own mortality, he begins to wonder whether he might not be the god Vishnu, guardian not only of the fate of the building and its occupants, but of the entire universe.

    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?

    As he sets about reducing her to his idealised version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back - a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce and courageous When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India.

    In both it is ultimately the women who suffer, whether, paradoxically, from a surfeit of feasting and family life in India, or from self-denial and starvation in the US. or both. Uma, the plain, older daughter still lives at home, frustrated in her attempts to escape and make a life for herself. Her Indian family is difficult , demanding but mostly, good hearted. Despite her disappointments, Uma comes through as the survivor, avoiding an unfulfilling marriage, liek her sister's or a suicidal one, like that arranged for her pretty cousin. And in America, where young Arun goes as a student, men in the suburbs char hunks of bleeding meat while the women don't appear to cook or eat at all - seems bewildering and terriying to the young Indian adolescent far from home.

    The novel was Cobalt Blue, the story of a brother and sister who fall in love with the same man, and how a traditional Marathi family is shattered by the ensuing events – a work that both shocked and spoke to Marathi readers.

    Ruskin Bond's stories are predominantly set in the beautiful hill country of Garhwal where he has made his home for the last twenty-five years. Some of these stories present people who, consciously or otherwise, need each other: people in love or in need of love, the awkward adolescent and the timid lover. Some are gently satirical studies about village and small-town braggarts and petty officials. Several others mourn the gradual erosion of the beauty of the hills (and the gentle people who live in them) with the coming of the steel and dust and worries of modern civilization. All the stories are rewarding for their compassionate portrayal of love, loss, accomplishment, pain and struggle.