The story is split into parts which first explore the world from the point of view of each of these protagonists. A carefree Kalyanikutty is brought home in the middle of her exams by her widowed mother following the rumours that had been running around the town on her affair with a boy with a bad character, Prabhu. She surprises everyone with her cold attitude towards what they think is taboo in this society, she attain maturity and becomes strong enough to shock the society once again. Subha, her best friend is forced to marry the man whom she despised the most, Prabhu. She finds self-destruction as the only way to take revenge against the people who are trying to subjugate her and as a bad omen to the family it works. Prabhu, the spoilt , charming, womanizing rascal of the town completes the equation. His failure starts with Kalyanikutty, but gets the fatal blow from Subha that turns him around. His reprisal and how he finally realizes the mistakes prompts him to attempt the final act of redemption. In the depths of a canvas of very calm individuals and a modern town life this story runs as a strong undercurrent of tragedies. To all these drama only stars are the witness.

    Coetzee ("dazzling"), Guy Davenport ("a very special kind of whimsical-serious-deep writer"), and Hermann Hesse ("If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place"). Charged with compassion, and an utterly unique radiance of vision, Walser is as Susan Sontag exclaimed "a truly wonderful, heart-breaking writer."The Assistant is his breathtaking 1908 novel, translated by award-winning translator Susan Bernofsky. Joseph, hired to become an inventor's new assistant, arrives one rainy Monday morning at Technical Engineer Karl Tobler's splendid hilltop villa: he is at once pleased and terribly worried, a state soon followed by even stickier psychological complexities. He enjoys the beautiful view over Lake Zurich, in the company of the proud wife, Frau Tobler, and the delicious savory meals. But does he deserve any of these pleasures? The Assistant chronicles Joseph's inner life of cascading emotions as he attempts, both frantically and light-heartedly, to help the Tobler household, even as it slides toward financial ruin. Tobler demands of Joseph, "Do you have your wits about you?!" And Joseph's wits are in fact all around him, trembling like leaves in the breeze—he is full of exuberance and despair, all the raptures and panics of a person "drowning in obedience."

    Pushed from one nasty foster home to another, I’ve been powerless trying to escape the abuse of my past only to find myself trapped working in a sleezy bar for my abusive boyfriend. No matter what I do, my horrifying past  keeps finding its way back to me, dogging me to no end. It is inescapable. The only part of me that I’ve kept safe and hidden is my virginity.I find myself kidnapped by a snarling alpha who surprisingly doesn’t want to hurt me. Instead, he craves every ounce of me inside out and claims me as his mate. But so do his two best friends...who all seem incredibly hot. It seems women are scarce in this town and everybody and everything want to get their hands on me...including my abusive partner lurking in the shadows.They all growl like wolves, and swear to protect me from anything that comes near and struggle over me like I’m a prize to be won. That is until real danger presents itself and there inner wolves come howling out….something I can't believe I am seeing.  Will they learn to share and keep me safe and will I be able to trust them after I discover there shocking true nature?Note: Adults Only!

    In one story, a man obsessed with his much younger lover endlessly videotapes her every move, and then confides his surprising plans for her; in another a ghost can’t stop resigning from his job. Masterfully, Marías manages in a small space to perplex and delight. “The short story fits Marías like a glove,” as Le Point noted.His stories have been hailed as “formidably intelligent” (The London Review of Books), “a bracing tonic” (Chicago Tribune), and “startling” (The New York Times Book Review), "the most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature" (The Boston Globe).

    Thorne Blackburn and his followers settled at Shadow's Gate, a magnificent old house in upstate New York, and sought the Truth about life through ritual and magic. One night, something went badly wrong during Thorne’s most powerful ceremony. When the chaos had passed, Thorne had vanished, and Katherine, mother of Thorne’s young daughter Truth, was dead. Thirty years later, Truth Blackburn searches for smaller truths: what really happened that night at Shadow's Gate? Did Thorne truly have magical powers? And what happened to her half-siblings, a boy and girl Truth last saw that horrible night when her mother died?

    But if the people are to be freed, the mismatched trio of steadfast rebels must look into the face of terror and choose between love and life.

    Before long he began to see things differently from the other bats who from dawn to sunset never opened their eyes. The Bat-Poet is the story of how he tried to make the other bats see the world his way.With illustrations by Maurice Sendak, The Bat-Poet—a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book selection—is a collection of the bat's own poems and the bat's own world: the owl who almost eats him; the mockingbird whose irritable genius almost overpowers him; the chipmunk who loves his poems, and the bats who can't make heads or tails of them; the cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and sparrows who fly in and out of Randall Jarrell's funny, lovable, truthful fable.

    But even Simon doesn't know that a far deadlier creature is about to come out of the deep and threaten everything he cares for. A creature whose malevolence is unthinkable. Whose need to feed is insatiable. And whose relentless hunt for prey is unstoppable.Twenty years after his huge bestseller Jaws, the master of the deep has done it again, letting loose a chilling new predator that only he could create. Drawing on his singular knowledge of the sea, science, and history, Peter Benchley masterfully spins a suspense-filled novel that hits you on a primal level, makes your heart pound, and leaves your blood running cold.White Shark is Peter Benchley at his best. Read it at your own risk.

    She herself acknowledged, 'you know I can tell stories better than any other way of expressing myself'. Her work shows her compulsion to express herself on the many subjects relevant to her experience as a Victorian, and Mancunian, a Unitarian, a social observer, and a woman. Above all, however, she writes about love.Love is the common thread which runs through the stories collected here. Gaskell recognizes that it can give rise to selfishness as well as self-sacrifice, unhappiness as well as joy. Writing with passion and shrewdness, irony and sympathy, she explores these paradoxes through humour, pathos, tragedy, the extraordinary, and the everyday.This selection of one short novel and eight stories shows Mrs. Gaskell working in different genres and with a wide range of material. As in her novels she explores different kinds of love, and her observations about human nature are as acute here as in her longer works.In addition to the title tale, this edition includes The Sexton's Hero, Christmas Storms and Sunshine, The Well of Pen-Morfa, The Heart of John Middleton, Morton Hall, My French Master, The Manchester Marriage, and Crowley Castle.

    Gopal uses smell to protect the memory of his sister. Journalist Kathy uses her blindness to get a clear picture of human characters. Daniel has a tongue that earns him a living but could also be his downfall. And Jamie learns to balance the benefits of t'ai chi in his search for health and happiness.

    Prostitute. Addict. Terrorist? Who is K?Ultraluminous, the daring new novel from Katherine Faw, the brilliant author of Young God, follows one year in the life of a high-end, girlfriend-experience prostitute. She has just returned to her native New York City after more than a decade abroad—in the capitals of Asia and the Middle East, her last stop Dubai, with a man she recalls only as the Sheikh—but it’s unclear why exactly she’s come back. Did things go badly for her? Does she have scores to settle?Regardless, she has quickly made herself at home. She’s set up a rotation of clients—all of them in finance, and each of whom has different delusions of how he is important to her. And she’s also met a man whom she doesn’t charge—a damaged former Army Ranger, back from Afghanistan, and a fellow long-time heroin addict.Her days are strangely orderly: a repetition of dinners, personal grooming, museum exhibitions, sex, Duane Reades (she likes the sushi), cosmology, sex, gallery shows, heroin, sex, and art films (which she finds soothing). The pattern is comforting, but does she really believe it’s sustainable? Or do the barely discernible rifts in her routine suggest that something else is percolating under the surface? Could she have fallen for one of her bankers? Or do those supposed rifts suggest a pattern within the pattern, a larger scheme she’s not showing us, a truth that won’t be revealed until we can see everything?

    "With his pumped-up prose and steroidal satire... You could call him the Quentin Tarantino of cult fiction." -Newsweek.

    Yet he lived an unremarkable existence, remaining to his death in the house in which he'd been born; managing a paint and varnish factory for thirty years; and tending his invalid mother to the end. Now, in a matchless account, Ian Thomson unravels the strands of an influential life.

    A-list actor and grade-A alpha-hole. Too bad I need him, almost as much as he needs me. His reputation is... well let’s just say scandalous doesn’t quite cover it. Rebel needs someone to clean up his reckless bad boy image. But needing someone and wanting them are two very different things. And as his unsolicited publicist I’m about to learn this the hard way. Falling headfirst into a nude portrait of him isn’t exactly the best first impression. Good thing I’m not the one in the spotlight. But if I’m going to succeed, I need to keep my mouth shut and both left feet on the ground. Too bad I’ve never been very good at either. I’ll do anything to save my job. Well, almost anything. Like Meatloaf said... I won’t do that. Or would I?

    In the process he emerges as a hilariously complex everyman. And as Gray narrates his hero's free fall, he confirms his own stature as one of our funniest, most eccentric, and most engaging storytellers.