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The Aayakudi Murders
Indra Soundar Rajan - 2019
When he first arrives in Aayakudi to investigate a curious tip about a ghost, the place seems like an ordinary, traditional farming village. Soon, though, Rajendran finds himself entangled in a head-spinning mystery involving ancient treasure, spirit possession, and a series of grisly killings. There's also the beautiful, troubled daughter of the village panchayat president... and the notorious evil sorcerer who wants her dead. Indra Soundar Rajan, one of the stalwarts of the Tamil pulp fiction scene, has been writing his unique brand of supernatural mystery thrillers for over 30 years. He's also known for his television screenplays, such as the long-running superhit serial Marmadesam (Land of Mystery). He lives in Madurai.
Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children-The Satanic Verses
David Smale - 2002
As a novelist and icon, Rushdie has embraced both 'popular' and 'high' culture; reflecting this, the Guide brings together both academic criticism and journalism to investigate the passions and preoccupations of Rushdie's many critics, steering the reader through the inflamed debates and rhetoric surrounding this much admired but controversial author.
Operation 'Fox-Hunt'
Siddhartha Thorat - 2014
The Pakistani army, mauled by the Abbottabad raid, decides to create andexecute an operation that will get the Pakistani public opinion firmly behindthem. Major Shezad Khan, a much decorated officer from the Pakistani army’selite Special Service Group (SSG) embarks on a mission to attack a strategictarget in India. His comrades-in-arms are five ferocious Lashakar-e-Taiba militants.Though he crosses into India through Kashmir, there is one man who has beentasked with the job of ensuring that they don't reach their target. RAW’s SeniorField Agent Sanjay Khanna teams up with Military Intelligence and NSG tothwart the attack.The narrative sweeps across the vast expanses of Tajikistan, the malarial jungles ofBengal, through conflict zones in Baluchistan, and the Vale of Kashmir as the twomen and their teams race against time. A thrilling finale awaits in the maximum city – Mumbai.Will the ‘Fox-Hunt’ succeed?
Chimera
Vivek Ahuja - 2012
A violent uprising has been instigated all across Tibet as Beijing moves to establish control while the Dalai Lama’s health deteriorates further and questions on the future of the Tibetan leadership are raised. As Beijing pursues the rebels and their benefactors within India, both nations are plunged into a spiraling descent to war. Now each side must navigate their widely different paths to victory as vast armies on both sides wage all-out war in their bid to become the dominant power in Asia… Book Edition: II
लूज़र कहीं का! / Loser Kahin Ka!
Pankaj Dubey - 2013
In Delhi, he meets three guys who join his dramatic journey—they all want to change the country. They all aspire to become IAS officers. They all want to take the ‘never-seen-before-types dowry’! As expected, they mess up with a very proper college professor. There begins a chase, funnier than Tom and Jerry… Will the professor find them? Will their dreams ever come true? Find out in this laughathon full of clichés straight from the cow belt of India!Note: This book is in the Hindi language and has been made available for the Kindle, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite, iPhone and iPad, and for iOS, Windows Phone and Android devices.
Kathputli
Ushasi Sen Basu - 2016
Two lives. Three generations. Four places. Chitrangda Chatterjee, 32, has been moving from one dead-end offshore job to another. Kathputli’s story begins after Chitrangda has quit her latest job and sets out in search of the perfect story for her Great Indian Novel. This takes her to a family reunion of her grandmother’s clan, where a story of the long-lost daughter of a once-powerful Zamindar family begins to take shape. Unravelling the mystery of Mala’s disappearance a few years after the brutal murder of the boy she loved becomes an obsession for Chitrangda. One which draws Chitrangda out of her shell; and introduces her to the unaccustomed joys of getting to know new people and places. What emerges, however, undermines the very foundation of Chitrangda’s understanding of her own family. The novel goes back and forth between Chitrangda’s present-day search for all the missing pieces of Mala’s story and the story itself, set in 1940s Kolkata.
A Tiger At Twilight And Cyclones
Manoj Das - 1991
. . [will] take a place on my shelves beside the stories of Narayan — Graham GreeneThis volume presents two celebrated novels by Manoj Das, one of India’s most illustrious authors, who has been writing in English and Oriya (Odia)for over six decades.In A Tiger at Twilight the erstwhile raja of Samargarh returns to his abandoned palace in Nijanpur, after years of self-exile, with his sick daughter and his supposed half-sister, and immediately assumes the responsibility of killing a man-eating tiger. Assisting him are a few noted men of the valley including Dev the owner and manager of a resort. But as the hunt intensifies Dev realizes that things aren’t as they seem: Heera, the raja’s sister, has an inexplicable power over the men in the hunting party and a strange connection with the tiger. As the men get closer to killing the beast, bizarre things begin to happen, hinting at the influence of the supernatural.Cyclones is set in Kusumpur, a small coastal village, during the struggle for Independence. The village is devastated by a cyclone and Sandip, the scion of the zamindar (land-lord) family, helps restore it. The war-time colonial government, though, wants to turn the sleepy hamlet into a busy port town. They plan to fill up the river that flows by it, in the process angering all the villagers, including Sandip. But when the contractor for the project is found murdered, Sandip is accused of the crime, forcing him to flee from the authorities. This is the start of a series of adventures that take him from a remote ashram in a forest to the city where communal violence is rife. Cyclones is a powerful novel about the metaphorical storms that gripped the nation during the most turbulent period of its modern history.
Vikram Betal. The 24 Riddles and the Origin of the Betal: All stories of Vikram and Betal from the Tamil Original Vikramaadityan Kadaigal
Sooriyakumar Sivakumaran - 2017
Based on the Tamil Original Vikramaadityan Kadaigal. All the 24 riddles/stories that the Betal narrated to King Vikramaadityan. Also included is the story of the origin of the Betal - Who is the Betal? How did he/she become a Betal? What is its redemption?
Scar Tissue
David Skivington - 2013
Transported to a dingy basement in Kolkata to identify the body of her murdered husband she has no explanation for his presence in India. As she searches for answers about who the man she married really was she finds his death surrounded by allegations of drug smuggling, child trafficking and murder. Unsure of what is true and who she can trust, Rachel has no idea of the danger her husband's hidden life has put her in.
The Kept Woman and Other Stories
Kamala Suraiyya Das - 2010
She is incomplete without a man,” averred Kamala Das shortly before her death in May, 2009. One of the most controversial and celebrated Indian authors, she combined in her writings rare honesty and sensitivity, provocation and poignancy. The Kept Woman and Other Stories explores the man-woman relationship in all its dimensions. Deprived, depraved, mysterious, mystical and exalted, each character, culled from experience and observation, is an incisive study of love, lust and longing.
Wedding Album
Girish Karnad - 2008
The central characters of this play portray the modern, middle-class, Indian family: a daughter who lives inAustralia with her husband and children, a son who is a media professional, a younger daughter who is willing to marry a 'suitable' boy from the US whom she has never met, a doting mother, an ageing father rapidly losing his authority, and a loyal cook. Wedding Album operates at two levels: it explores the traditional Indian wedding in a globalized, technologically-advanced India even as it juxtaposes the very different life experiences and expectations of the family and the loyal cook. By doing this, Karnad reveals how particular notions ofwealth, well-being, sexual propriety, tradition, and modernity form the basis of middle-class society in contemporary India. This play has already been staged at numerous venues and was translated by Karnad himself from Kannada into English. An outstanding addition to OUP's corpus of plays by Girish Karnad, this volume will be of value not only to students and teachers of modern Indian drama, but also to general readers.
Drums Along the Khyber
Philip McCutchan - 1969
James Ogilvie is the third generation.Pitchforked with mixed feelings into imperial Britain’s elite military academy, Sandhurst, and then into the family regiment, he finds himself in 1894 a subaltern en route to India – a torrid journey out that teaches him the first lessons of military life and the command of men.His initiation is made more difficult by the vindictive attentions of the adjutant, Captain Black, and by the high expectations placed on him by his own irascible father, his Divisional Commander on the North West Frontier of India.Ogilvie gets his first taste of action when the Royal Strathspeys are sent through the Khyber Pass to contain the rebel Ahmed Khan outside Jalalabad. Fighting the border tribesmen brings brushes with death, but also many opportunities for the kind of glory that can forge a distinguished military career. But as the campaign goes on, Ogilvie also starts to doubt the entire Imperial project.‘Drums Along the Khyber’ is a thrilling historical adventure story, rich in period detail. It is the first in the Ogilvie series of novels by Philip McCutchan. ‘The adventure-writer succeeds who makes you read faster than you really can…Drums Along the Khyber has something of this quality’ – The Sunday Times Philip McCutchan (1920-1996) grew up in the naval atmosphere of Portsmouth Dockyard and developed a lifetime's interest in the sea. Military history was an early interest resulting in several fiction books, from amongst his large output, about the British Army and its campaigns, especially in the last 150 years.Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.
The Stupid Somebody
Rohit Dawesar - 2017
That one day, I will be standing outside an auditorium, a packed house a-a-a-auditorium. People there would be waiting to hear me speak. They would be chanting my name. We love R-R-R-Rohit, We love Rohit," he said, looking into her mesmerizing eyes.After seventeen years, Sherly was standing in his house, holding a copy of his first novel in one hand, and her wedding invitation card in the other. She was getting married in four days. Join Rohit in his journey as he sets off to conquer the greatest obstacle of his life, and how on the way he finds out that his childhood dream was the thread connecting everything happening to him in his life. Will he lose her on this journey of his lifetime?
Hindustaan: An Epic Adventure of the Mughal Empire
Mainak Dhar - 2011
That superpower was what we know today as India under the Mughal Empire. Years of internal strife, attacks by Afghan raiders and finally conquest by the British led to the decline and destruction of this mighty empire.But what if India had never been conquered by the British? What if it remained a mighty and prosperous nation under the rule of the Mughal Empire?A nation known as Hindustaan.Dilli, 1857. The Mughal Empire is at the peak of its power and is gearing up to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of its victory over the British, an occasion where the popular Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar is widely expected to announce his successor. The Empire is thrown into sudden chaos when the Emperor is assassinated and a new regime seizes power in a bloody coup. In this maelstrom, three unlikely companions find themselves thrown together by fate. Ranveer, a young officer in the elite Mughal cavalry, who is now hunted by the very Empire he served; Theo, a rakish English traveller with a mysterious past and Maya, a beautiful and spirited Princess they rescue. Together, they embark on a series of dramatic adventures across Hindustaan. A journey that takes them from bloody skirmishes with Afghan raiders, rescue missions in remote forts, joining a coalition of rulers who band together against the new despotic regime to protect their independence, and finally back into the heart of Dilli for a dramatic mission.The stage is set for a monumental struggle that will decide not just their fate, but that of the whole of Hindustaan.
Spit Against the Wind
Anna Smith - 2003
Born to poverty and limited opportunities, they're able nonetheless to enjoy the largely innocent pleasures of childhood, but the adult world around them inevitably impinges. The narrator's elder sister falls pregnant and is sent to Ireland to have and give up the child; newcomer Tony and his mum are in danger of real violence at the hands of Tony's violent Polish stepfather; and no child who plays the part of altar boy at the chapel wants to be left alone with the local priest. Observant, clear-sighted in its portrayal of the darker side of life yet utterly warm-hearted, Spit Against the Wind reminds us of the wonders of childhood without sentimentality but with gentle humor and great charm.