Most of the stories feature men who have been disappointed, somehow, by their inability to go on and fulfill the promise of their youth.Contents "Doctor Jack-o'-lantern" "The Best of Everything" "Jody Rolled The Bones" "No Pain Whatsoever" "A Glutton for Punishment" "A Wrestler with Sharks" "Fun with a Stranger" "The B.A.R. Man" "A Really Good Jazz Piano" "Out with the Old" "Builders"

    This novel focuses on the trauma of a mother who awakens one morning to the shattering news that her son is lying dead in the police morgue, reduced to a mere numeral: Corpse No. 1084. Through her struggle to understand his revolutionary commitment as a Naxalite, she recognizes her own alienation—as a woman and a wife—from the complacent, hypocritical, and corrupt feudal society her son had so fiercely rebelled against.

    The thirty nine short stories in this book will blow you away. Starting with a ghoststory by Rabindranath Tagore, India's most famous writer and ending with a fable by Kanishk Tharoor, a writer who has come of age in the twenty first century, these literary masterpieces showcase the extraordinary range and diversity of our story telling tradition. The first recognizably modern Indian short stories were written in Bengal (by Tagore andothers) in the second half of the nineteenth century and writers from other regions werequick to follow suit, often using the form to protest colonial oppression and the various illsafflicting rural and urban India. Over the next century and a half, some of the finest writers the world has seen produced outstanding fiction in every conceivable genre. Many of these stories find a place in this volume, as does work by emerging talent that has never been published in book form before. Here you will find stories of classical realism, ones rootedin folklore and myth, tales of fantasy, humour, horror, crime and romance, stories set invillages, small towns, cities and the moon. They will entertain you and shock you, they will lighten your mood and cast you down, they will move you and they will make you reflect onlife's big and little questions. Most of all, they will make you see the world differently as the greatest stories always do.

    Encountering ‘Life’ itself in a dream, he’s convinced into playing a game with it. A game that ends when Life's travails get so hard that Sam is pushed to tears.A girl enters Sam’s life. The moment he sets eyes on her he knows she’s going to play hard to get, but sparks do indeed fly between them, taken into a world of romance. When everything looked like its going according to the plan, it just wasn't. This is when Life starts pressing down on Sam. Though Sam’s attitude about living life is to be happy and cool, he finds himself being tested.Circumstances pushes him into a world of discomfort and guilt. Amidst such emotional turmoil, he manages to grip on to hope. Sam is expected to worry, complain, and give up. One event after another sets him on edge to make him shed that tear which veritably ends Life's game. Does he win the game with Life, or will he spiral into what so many people who've given up the fight have fallen into? You simply need to be part of his life to find out.

    While some of them form part of the main story and are well known, there are some hidden gems scattered throughout the epic that make for insightful reading. This book contains fifty-one of these hidden gems, including the tales of: - Barbarik- Uttanka- Kartikeya- The Battle between Krishna and Arjuna- The Blinding of ShukracharyaAnd many more. Whether you're a casual reader or a die-hard fan of the Mahabharata, you will find in here tales that will delight and amaze you.

    In a nameless remote tribe, the chief’s second son is born, creating a scramble for succession as their jungles are being destroyed by loggers. In one of the world’s sprawling metropolises, a homeless one-armed woman sets out to take revenge upon the men who trafficked her. And, in a small village of shanty shacks connected only by a mud-and- concrete road, a milkmaid watches the girls she calls friends destroy her reputation.In we of the forsaken world… Kiran Bhat tells the stories of four worlds falling apart, through the structure of four linguistic chains, comprised of the accounts of four people witnessing the decline of these worlds, in four acts. Like modern communication networks, these sixteen stories connect along subtle lines, dispersing at the moments where another story is about to take place. they flow together and disconnect. Each story is a parable of its own, into the mind of a distinct human being. These are the tales of not just sixteen strangers, but many different lives, who live on this planet, at every second, everywhere.