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Two Novellas and a Story by Ambai
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A Hasty Hookup
Varsha Dixit - 2018
It will soon only get murkier as she is determined to divorce one and marry another. Five years ago, a mistake committed in name of love cost Gina her family, friends and everything she held dear. She even had to move countries. But now she is back in India, determined to divorce her cad of a husband. However, she is forgetting that a true cad never fights decent nor fair. Work and women have kept the reclusive and retired Colonel Ojas Purohit busy. Fate left him scarred, crippled and robbed him of a career that was his passion and his life. For him, fate has a name—Gina Bansal, his estranged wife of five years. And now she is back, wanting a divorce. Ojas is determined to put her through hell before he even gives her a minute of his time, forget a divorce. And this time luck is on his side for his enemy needs him more than he needs her. Or so he thinks. Will Gina and Ojas survive each other? Will memories of their past complicate their present? Is desire forgotten same as desire dead? And who are these Gina’s BFFs, the Wallflowers? What roles do they play in this Hasty Hookup? All these answers and more in ‘A Hasty Hookup,’ first book in the Wallflower Series by Varsha Dixit. It is a story full of unexpected twists, wit, sizzling chemistry, cliffhanger ending, mature language and content.
The English Teacher
Durjoy Datta - 2012
What starts as innocuous leching degenerates to compulsive obsession threatening to completely alter Kunal Roy's perception towards his nubile, newly married English teacher. And other women. He grows up to head one of the most advanced R&D centers in the telecom industry. But what secrets does he hide?"The English Teacher" is a short story with an evil, inconceivable twist. About The Author :Durjoy Datta is the author of six bestsellers, Of Course I Love You! (2008), Now That You’re Rich! (2009), She Broke Up, I Didn’t! (2010), Ohh Yes, I Am Single! (2011), You Were My Crush! (2011) and If It’s Not Forever (2012). He has sold of over one million copies of the six books. Durjoy Datta is one of top five highest selling authors in India (Source: AC Nielson Bookscan). He had been referred to by the Outlook India as the one of the few Indian authors who are responsible for re-shaping the Indian Publishing Industry.
The Quilt & Other Stories
Ismat Chughtai - 1994
The narrator of this story, a precocious nine-year old child, is sent to visit an aunt. This aunt, ignored by a husband whose only interest seems to lie in entertaining slim-waisted young boys, suffers from a relentless bodily itch, an itch, her niece discovers, no doctor can cure and only her maidservant can relieve. Frank and often wickedly comic, Chughtai's stories were the imaginative core of her life's work, drawn from memories of the sprawling Muslim household of her childhood. With her mastery of the spoken language, economy of form, and her fine eye for the details of the intricate and hidden world of women's experience, Chughtai captured the evolving conflicts of Muslim India. Her exploration of the myriad and subtle tyrannies of middle-class gentility, and, equally, of those unexpected moments of sexual liberation and spirit, is unrivalled in contemporary Urdu literature.
The Immortal Soul Salvage Yard
Beth May - 2021
The topics may vary widely, from love to mental illness to the most recent "Florida Man" headline, but it's all in the same handwriting. Welcome to The Immortal Soul Salvage Yard.
A Terrible Matriarchy
Easterine Kire - 2007
According to Grandmother, girls didn't need an education, they didn't need love and affection or time to play or even a good piece of meat with their gravy! Naturally Dielieno hates her with a vengeance. This is the evocative tale of a young girl growing up in a traditional society in India's Northeast, which is in the midst of tremendous change. Easterine Iralu writes about a place and a people that she knows well and is a part of and brings to the storytelling a lyrical beauty which can on occasion chill the reader with its realistic portrayals of the spirits of the dead that inhabit the quiet hills and valleys of Nagaland.
The Woman Destroyed
Simone de Beauvoir - 1967
Three long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises.
Happy Birthday!
Meghna Pant - 2013
These finely nuanced stories provide a rare glimpse into the complex and mysterious inner lives of human beings.Happy Birthday was longlisted for the prestigious Frank O'Connor Award 2014. It has also been voted the TOP title on Flipkart’s editors picks for this month: http://www.flipkart.com/books/~editor...A dedicated friend undertakes one last labour of love for a childless woman. Nadia - married into money - finds herself facing uncomfortable truths about her comfortably numb marriage. A Mumbai slum-girl dreams of speaking words valuable enough to be translated into English. An American tourist seeking nirvana sets off a sudden chain of events when his bag is stolen, and destiny plays her hand. A retired civil servant of modest means struggles to support his snooty foreign-returned daughter.Meghna Pant’s knife - sharp stories are compelling, emotionally intelligent and provide a rare glimpse into the strange workings of the human heart. They evade neat categorization andare the perfect read for all curious spirits."These are stories with a large heart and a keen eye, deeply aware of the complex, sometimes uncomfortable realities of India, its many layers. Meghna Pant knows how to create characters that will surprise and move you." – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni "Deft, merciless and expertly-tuned parables for the new Indian century."– Jeet Thayil"Meghna Pant pierces one’s heart with the reality and depth of her stories, wrapping up her tales with unanticipated yet undeniable flourish. Exceptionally thought-provoking narratives that manage to be provocative and inspirational in the very same breath."– Ashwin Sanghi"These intimate stories juxtapose a range and register of aerial and emotional perspectives, with craft, delicacy and an intensely human sensibility."– Namita Gokhale
Christmas in Alaska: Two heartwarming holiday tales
Debbie Macomber - 2021
So her aunts send her to Gold River, Alaska, on what she thinks is a vacation. But her aunts have something different in mind, and Caroline finds herself married to rugged Paul Trevor. It's obviously a misunderstanding, but can Paul make her see that it might also be a wish come true? The Snow Bride Usually practical, Jenna Campbell impulsively heads to Alaska to marry a man she met on the internet. But on the flight to Fairbanks, she meets Reid Jamison, who’s determined to show her she's making a mistake. Reid changes Jenna’s destination, and so she finds herself at his cabin in tiny Snowbound. That leaves her stuck with Reid, a bunch of eccentric old men and a few grizzly bears. But as she gets to know Reid, she realizes she might become a Christmas bride after all. A fast, frothy fantasy for those looking to add some romance to their holidays. —Publishers Weekly
Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri - 2008
But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome. Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.
Love and Longing in Bombay
Vikram Chandra - 1997
Critics around the world have embraced the book as a major work by this exciting young writer.
The Boy Vanishes
Jennifer Haigh - 2012
Taut and powerful, it is a keen reimagining of a whodunit in which everyone is implicated and no one is safe. It’s the summer of 1976 on the South Shore of Massachusetts. The Bicentennial is a season-long celebration, and flags are everywhere, snapping in the seaside winds, ironed onto T-shirts, tattooed into biceps. Tim O’Connor works the Cigarette Game booth at Funland—toss a quarter placed on an eight-sided ball into the right slot and you win two packs of smokes or maybe, if you’re lucky, a carton. If asked his age, he’d say he’s seventeen, but in truth he’s fourteen. Yet the kids in blue-collar Grantham—a town first imagined by Haigh in her devastating bestseller "Faith"—grow up fast, are known for being wild, and more often than not drop out of school to punch the clock at the nearby Raytheon plant. When Tim disappears after the park’s closing one night, no one makes much of it till late morning. It’s not the first time his mother, Kay, has forgotten to pick him up. It’s not the first time he has stayed out all night. By the time local cops begin their investigation, there is little trace of the boy, only witnesses to a complicated set of relationships in a place where surviving isn’t always thriving and where disappointment mixes with the salt in the air. In this superbly crafted story, the search for a missing boy becomes a search for the American dream, laying bare how destructive its promises often are. Recalling Dennis Lehane in setting and subject and masters like Graham Greene and Richard Ford in tone and style, Haigh’s latest work is a testament to all that short fiction can be. It’s a searing portrait of how much a community loses when one of its own is lost.
The Hole
Hiroko Oyamada - 2014
During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time. One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole—a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.
Small Remedies
Shashi Deshpande - 2000
Savitribai Indorekar, born into an orthodox Hindu family, elopes with her Muslim lover and accompanist, Ghulaam Saab, to pursue a career in music. Gentle, strong-willed Leela, on the other hand, gives her life to the Party, and to working with the factory workers of Bombay.Fifty years after these events have been set in motion, Madhu, Leela's niece, travels to Bhavanipur, Savitribai's home in her last years, to write a biography of Bai. Caught in her own despair over the loss of her only son, Aditya, Madhu tries to make sense of the lives of Bai and those around her, and in doing so, seeks to find a way out of her own grief.