गंधाली


Ranjit Desai
    The name indicates that this is a set of stories having it's own fragrance.

A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West


Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - 2011
    Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes.In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred from a decades-old scandal, rent out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. Isolated and battling blame and guilt, the couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants. With the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from India—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion.The story “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose entire life is her work until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family for better or worse.Remarkable and unwavering, this collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty” —The New York Times.

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?

Tell Her Everything


Mirza Waheed - 2019
    It had to happen to someone, and it was me. Think about it. Of all the men in the world, of all the doctors in the world, of all the fathers in the whole world, I happened to be the one present in that place at that time. Someone or the other had to do it. It just so happens that someone was your dad.’Where does one draw the line between empathy and sacrifice? Between integrity and survival? Between prosperity and love?In an unnamed city, a young Indian doctor arrives to make his home and career. It isn’t long before money and success find him, but the price is steep and often unbearable, especially to a wife and daughter who must watch him walk the perilous path of lifelong ambition.A heartbreaking novel about human ethics, filial love and the corrosive nature of complicity.

The American Wife


Elaine Ford - 2007
    She writes of the human condition with precision, in language that is both grave and conversational. Her characters step out of the real world onto the page, where she develops them quietly, but with compassionate fullness. This writer grips the reader with her keen knowledge of the psyche of individuals-—their motives and secrets—and also with the surprising things that happen to them.”—Laura Kasischke, judge, Michigan Literary Fiction AwardsOf Elaine Ford’s novel, Missed Connections, the Washington Post wrote that it is a work “of small episodes, of precise sentences, of unusual clarity.” That same clarity proves an unsettling force in Ford’s stories, where precision of prose often belies uncertainties hidden beneath. In the title piece, an American woman in England, embroiled in a relationship doomed to fail, discovers how little she understands about her own desires and impulses. In another story, another American wife, abandoned in Greece by her archaeologist husband, struggles to solve a crime no one else believes to have been committed.Throughout her stories Ford touches on the mysteries that make up our lives. Each story in itself is a masterpiece of such detail and power as to transform the way we see the world.

Gigi and The Cat


Colette - 1953
    However, when it comes to the question of Gaston Lachaille, very rich, and very bored, Gigi does not want to obey the rules.In 'The Cat', a story of burgeoning sexuality and blossoming love, an exquisite strong-minded Russian Blue is struggling for mastery of Alain with his seductive fiancée, Camille.

Dear Mrs. Naidu


Mathangi Subramanian - 2014
    Ever since Amir moved out of the basti and started going to a posh private school, it seems like he and Sarojini have nothing in common.Then Sarojini finds out about the Right to Education, a law that might help her get a free seat at Amir’s school – or, better yet, convince him to come back to a new and improved version of the government school they went to together.As she struggles to keep her best friend, Sarojini gets help from some unexpected characters, including Deepti, a feisty classmate who lives at a construction site; Vimala Madam, a human rights lawyer who might also be an evil genius; and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, a long-dead freedom fighter who becomes Sarojini’s secret pen pal. Told through letters to Mrs. Naidu, this is the story of how Sarojini learns to fight – for her friendship, her family, and her future.

Witness the Night


Kishwar Desai - 2010
    The girl is alive, but she has been beaten and abused. She is held in the local prison, awaiting interrogation for the murders she is believed by the local people to have committed.

Soft Maniacs: Stories


Maggie Estep - 1999
    Estep follows her first novel, "Diary of An Emotional Idiot, " with a set of linked stories that glimpses two women through the eyes of the men in their lives.

The King's Justice


Stephen R. Donaldson - 2016
    Now he is back with an all new novella; 40,000 words of richly imagined fantasy with beautiful world building and intense characterisation. The perfect read for existing fans and new readers alike.A man on a horse, confident in his powers but alone, rides a long and lonely road through rain-soaked woods. But he is on a path that he knows and he is bringing much needed justice with him. Four guards stop him. But not for long.Stephen Donaldson has clearly loved the opportunity to write an all new fantasy and this book is a timely reminder of the power of his writing; writing that inspired a generation of readers and authors alike.

What the Body Remembers


Shauna Singh Baldwin - 1999
    So she is elated to learn she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner in a union beneficial to both. For Sardaji’s first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him children. Roop believes that she and Satya, still very much in residence, will be friends. But the relationship between the older and younger woman is far more complex. And, as India lurches toward independence, Sardarji struggles to find his place amidst the drastic changes.Meticulously researched and beautifully written, What the Body Remembers is at once poetic, political, feminist, and sensual.

Jaipur Journals


Namita Gokhale - 2020
    Told from multiple perspectives, set against the backdrop of the vibrant multilingual Jaipur Literature Festival, diverse stories of lost love and regret, self-doubt, and new beginnings come together in a narrative that is as varied as India itself.Partly a love letter to the greatest literary show on earth, partly a satire about the glittery set that throngs this literary venue year on year, and partly an ode to the millions of aspiring writers who wander the earth with unsubmitted manuscripts in their bags, Jaipur Journals is a light-footed romp that showcases in full form Gokhale's unsparing eye for the pretensions and the pathos of that loneliest tribe of them all: the writers.

Dance of the Happy Shades


Alice Munro - 1968
    In these dazzling stories she deals with the self-discovery of adolescence, the joys and pains of love and the despair and guilt of those caught in a narrow existence. And in sensitively exploring the lives of ordinary men and women, she makes us aware of the universal nature of their fears, sorrows and aspirations.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders


Daniyal Mueenuddin - 2009
    An aging feudal landlord's household staff, the villagers who depend on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Mueenuddin bares—at times humorously, at times tragically—the complexities of Pakistani class and culture and presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and transformed.

The Undiscovered Chekhov: Forty-Three New Stories


Anton Chekhov - 1954
    Peter Constantine's historic collection presents 38 new stories and with them a fresh interpretation of the Russian master. In contrast to the brooding representative of a dying century we have seen over and over, here is Chekhov's work from the 1880s, when Chekhov was in his twenties and his writing was sharp, witty and innovative. Many of the stories in The Undiscovered Chekhov reveal Chekhov as a keen modernist. Emphasizing impressions and the juxtaposition of incongruent elements, instead of the straight narrative his readers were used to, these stories upturned many of the assumptions of storytelling of the period. Here is "Sarah Bernhardt Comes to Town," written as a series of telegrams, beginning with "Have been drinking to Sarah's health all week! Enchanting! She actually dies standing up!..." In "Confession...," a thirty-nine year old bachelor recounts some of the fifteen times chance foiled his marriage plans. In "How I Came to be Lawfully Wed," a couple reminisces about the day they vowed to resist their parents' plans that they should marry. And in the more familiarly Chekhovian "Autumn," an alcoholic landowner fallen low and a peasant from his village meet far from home in a sad and haunting reunion in which the action of the story is far less important than the powerful impression it leaves with the reader that each man must live his life and has his reasons.