પાટણની પ્રભુતા


K.M. Munshi - 1916
    King Karnadev lies on his deathbed. His son, Jaydev, is too young to ascend the throne. Rumours abound of scheming warlords intent on establishing their own independence and powerful merchants plotting to wrest control from Patan Fort. There is also the shadowy monk Anandsuri and his vision to unite Patan under one religion: Jainism. In the eye of this gathering storm are Queen Minaldevi and the shrewd chief minister Munjal Mehta. Both have striven to maintain order in Patan and ensure that Jaydev's succession is secure. But the attraction between them is threatened by betrayal and intrigue, with dramatic consequences for the future of Patan.A sprawling, fast-paced saga in the oeuvre of Alexandre Dumas, The Glory of Patan is the first book in an epic trilogy about the exploits of the magnificent Chalukya dynasty at a crucial period in the history of Gujarat.

Padma Nadir Majhi


Lambert M. Surhone - 2010
    Padma Nadir Majhi ( Bengali:,English title: Boatman of the River Padma or The Padma Boatman ) (1993) is an award-winning Indian Bengali feature film directed by Goutom Ghosh from novel,the same name Manik Banerjees Padma Nadir Majhi.Hossian Miya (Utpal Dutta),Bengali Muslim, a trader who offers to take this community to with an idealistic vision: he wants to establish a little utopia on an island (Moynadeep) in the Padma delta . and offer them a better life there. It is apparent that Hossian Miya has a flourishing business there, because he has recently purchased a huge boat because of expanding business.

The Dry Heart


Natalia Ginzburg - 1947
    Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg’s writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don’t more wives kill their husbands?

Wrong Means Right End


Varsha Dixit - 2012
    Her focus solely lies on making their ends meet and she has lost interest in love or dating. Sneha's best friend Nandini is now happily married to Aditya, an industrialist. Nandini's concern for Sneha makes her act as a matchmaker, who wants to fill her life with love and happiness. Sneha's regular pace of life is disturbed when Nikhil, a man with whom she shares an unpleasant past, enters in her life. He is haughty and Sneha will go to any extent to keep her distance from him. If these problems weren't enough, another troublemaker, Gayathri, enters the picture to create havoc. Gayathri is Aditya's ex girlfriend who still likes him and is trying her best to jeopardize Nandini and Aditya's relationship. The only person that could help Sneha in stopping Gayatri is Nikhil. Considering their hatred for each other, will Sneha approach Nikhil for saving Nandini and Aditya's marriage?

The Reader on the 6.27


Jean-Paul Didierlaurent - 2014
    It is sure to capture the hearts of book lovers everywhere. Guylain Vignolles lives on the edge of existence. Working at a job he hates, he has but one pleasure in life ...Sitting on the 6.27 train each day, Guylain reads aloud. And it's this release of words into the world that starts our hero on a journey that will finally bring meaning into his life. For one morning, Guylain discovers the diary of a lonely young woman: Julie. A woman who feels as lost in the world as he does. As he reads from these pages to a rapt audience, Guylain finds himself falling hopelessly in love with their enchanting author ...The Reader on the 6.27 is a tale bursting with larger-than-life characters, each of whom touches Guylain's life for the better. This captivating novel is a warm, funny fable about literature's power to uplift even the most downtrodden of lives. 'The humanity of the characters ...the re-enchantment of everyday life, the power of words and literature, tenderness and humour ...

The Hour of the Star


Clarice Lispector - 1977
    Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator--edge of despair to edge of despair--and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last novel she takes readers close to the true mystery of life, and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed.

The Black Hill


Mamang Dai - 2014
    The East India Company is seeking to make inroads into the region and the local people—in particular the Abor and Mishmee tribes—fear their coming and are doing all they can to keep them out of their territories. The author takes a recorded historical event—the mysterious disappearance of a French priest, Father Nicolas Krick in the 1850s and the execution of Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe for his murder—and woven a gripping, densely imagined work of fiction around it. And, even as the novel tells the story of an impossible journey and an elopement, it explores the themes of the lure of unknown worlds, the love people have for each other and their land and the forces of history. Gimur, a girl from the Abor tribe, runs away with Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe, and they settle down on his land near the Tibetan border. Father Krick’s attempts to reach Tibet to set up a Jesuit mission are foiled repeatedly by the local people not because of any personal animus towards the priests or their work, but because they feel—rightly—that once the priests come, the British, with their guns and their garrisons will follow. The story revolves around events in Gimur’s and Kajinsha’s villages and is also seen from the point of view of Father Krick, a gentle, intelligent man, devout but no bigot, whose determination to reach Tibet no matter what the cost, impacts tragically on all those who encounter him.

Cracking India


Bapsi Sidhwa - 1988
    Young Lenny Sethi is kept out of school because she suffers from polio. She spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws. It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, religious intolerance, and the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her. Lenny enjoys a happy, privileged life in Lahore, but the kidnapping of her beloved Ayah signals a dramatic change. Soon Lenny’s world erupts in religious, ethnic, and racial violence. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the domestic drama serves as a microcosm for a profound political upheaval.

Ramayana


Vālmīki - 1929
    The popularity of the book is so great that it has run into forty two impressions ever since it was originally published in the year 1951

Paper Moon


Rehana Munir - 2020
    BOMBAY. ROMANCE. When her estranged father passes away, Fiza, fresh out of college, discovers that he has left her a tidy sum in the hope that she will open a bookshop... Overnight, Fiza's placid life is thrown into a whirl of decor decisions and book-buying sprees, unconventional staff and colourful patrons, small pleasures and little heartbreaks, as the store - Paper Moon - begins to take shape in a charming, old Bandra mansion. To top it all, she is being wooed by Iqbal, a mysterious customer who frequents the shop, and Dhruv, her ex-boyfriend, her feelings for whom are still confused. Can Fiza take charge of her life, reconcile with the past, and reach for everything that is hers?

Fraudster


R.V. Raman - 2014
    – A DOYEN OF CORPORATE INDIA falls to his death from his south Bombay flat... – A HIGH-SECURITY SERVER ROOM of a multinational accounting firm is hacked and the hackers aren't looking for just company secrets... Illicit finance, high-stakes crime and vicious manipulation come together in this story of corruption, greed and treachery among corporate India's black sheep. Arresting, fast-paced and written by an insider from the corporate world, Fraudster will keep you on your toes till the very end.While comparisons to veteran thriller writer John Grisham are inevitable, Raman's writing is more inspired by the older canon of crime writing - The New Indian Express Raman goes the Christie way in this excellent closed-room mystery that keeps us guessing till the very end even when the clues are out in the open - The Statesman RV Raman picks a crime fiction to make a debut and weaves a tight plot and a clear narrative to keep you engrossed.- The Hindustan Times Fraudster is an amusing work by first-time author, RV Raman, challenging some of the stereotypes in the genre of thrillers. The way the book is pieced together is remarkable, in that it looks nicely webbed. - The New Indian Express If art imitates life, then we all need to be very worried. RV Raman's novel, Fraudster, is an insider's account of the less than salubrious side of the corporate world. - Deccan Chronicle

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas


Arun Joshi - 1971
    A thought provoking novel, in which the normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, illusion and reality, resignation and desire rub shoulders.

The Golden Son


Shilpi Somaya Gowda - 2015
    When his father dies, Anil becomes the de facto head of the Patel household and inherits the mantle of arbiter for all of the village’s disputes. But he is uneasy with the custom, uncertain that he has the wisdom and courage demonstrated by his father and grandfather. His doubts are compounded by the difficulties he discovers in adjusting to a new culture and a new job, challenges that will shake his confidence in himself and his abilities.Back home in India, Anil’s closest childhood friend, Leena, struggles to adapt to her demanding new husband and relatives. Arranged by her parents, the marriage shatters Leena’s romantic hopes and eventually forces her to make a desperate choice that will hold drastic repercussions for herself and her family. Though Anil and Leena struggle to come to terms with their identities thousands of miles apart, their lives eventually intersect once more—changing them both and the people they love forever.

HARAPPA: Curse of the Blood River


Vineet Bajpai - 2017
    It knits 3,700 years, powerful ancient and modern-day characters and a nail-biting conspiracy - all in one literary thriller. Harappa is the first among a series of four books. 2017, Delhi – Vidyut’s dying ancestor summons him to Banaras. The old Brahmin chieftain of the Dev-Raakshasa Matth, or the God-Demon Clan, bears a chilling secret. Their bloodline carries an ancient curse that will plague mankind - towards its own violent extinction.1700 BCE, Harappa – Harappa is a magnificent city on the banks of the mighty Saraswati river. The darkness of treachery, taantric exorcism and bloodshed unleashes itself on the last devta, paving the way for his devastating revenge…and the horrifying truth behind the fall of the glorious civilisation.2017, Paris – The world’s most powerful religious institution is rattled. Europe’s dreaded crime lord meets a mysterious man in Paris. A lethal assassin boards a train, as Rome fears the worst. The prophesied devta has returned.What connects Banaras, Harappa and Rome? What was the ancient curse and who was the last devta? What is the terrible secret behind the fall of the colossal Indus Valley? Read on as you travel through a saga of violence and deceit, gods and demons, love and ambition.

কালো বরফ


Mahmudul Haque - 1992
    His life is mostly on an even keel until he sits down to chronicle his childhood - an endeavour that draws him inexorably into his memories and into an enchanting world somewhere in suburban Calcutta. He remembers the girl who spoke to fish and birds, the girl he first loved. He recalls the stream of visitors to his parents' door those days, some bearing want, some malice and others, generosity and wisdom. As those memories return him to a time when communal tension was gathering force in undivided Bengal and the trauma it brought to his younger self, Khaleq's remembrance stops being a pleasant retreat. He becomes desperately despondent. Khaleq's relentless nostalgia enrages his wife Rekha, who resents his lack of ambition and aloofness. Prodded by the village physician, Doctor Narhari, the couple embark on a boat ride that forces them to confront their discord and desires, and plumb the roots of Abdul Khaleq's alienation.First published in 1977 in Bengali, Black Ice draws on Mahmudul Haque's own experience of Partition to intimately probe the invisible scars bequeathed to the inheritors of Partition.