. . Cambridge on the morning of a day in April, the year of Our Lord 1569.And Christopher Radcliff, Doctor of Civil Laws at Pembroke Hall and recruiter of clever young men to the service of the Earl of Leicester, is amongst a crowd of excited townsfolk and university scholars gathered on a field to watch a game of foot ball. It is to be played between the apprentices of the town and pupils of the colleges and it is hoped it will reconcile differences between town and gown. Bets are placed, wagers made. On the field long-standing animosities surface and violence breaks out but not before the college team is victorious, thanks to the skill of a Pembroke Hall man, John Groom.Later that day, Radcliff is summoned to the senior tutor’s rooms. It transpires that John Groom has been locked up on a serious charge of assault – he’d nearly caused a cobbler’s apprentice to drown. If found guilty, Groom would be expelled from college and face imprisonment. But Christopher smells a rat. He believes the charge to be the fabrication of someone with a serious grudge against the young man, and yet it does seem as if Groom is hiding something. Enlisting the help of his friend Edward Allington and his wife Katherine, Dr Radcliff knows the truth lies somewhere within the infamous den that is Slegge’s gaming house…

    This selection features twenty-one of the very best stories from the region.Here, the reader will find one of Rabindranath Tagore’s most revered stories ‘The Kabuliwallah’ in a glinting new translation, memorable studies of ordinary people from Tarashankar and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the iconic Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s wrenching study of Bengali society, ‘Mahesh’, as well as over a dozen other astounding stories by some of the greatest practitioners of the form—Buddhadeva Bose, Ashapurna Debi, Premendra Mitra, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mahasweta Devi, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Nabarun Bhattacharya, among others. These are stories of anger, loss, grief, disillusionment, magic, politics, trickery, humour and the darkness of mind and heart. They reimagine life in ways that make them unforgettable.

    Even though I do not know you…The correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer reveals, piece by piece, the painful details of a devastating affair between their spouses. With each commiserating scratch of the pen, they confess their fears and bare their souls. They share the bewilderment over how things went so wrong and come to wonder where to go from here.Told entirely through the letters of two comforting strangers and those of two illicit lovers, Evidence of the Affair explores the complex nature of the heart. And ultimately, for one woman, how liberating it can be when it’s broken.

    Jordy and Chloe are living above a restaurant in Morro Bay, the first place they landed after their trip down the Big Sur Coast. But Jordy has a boyfriend now, an old flame who's come back into his life in a big way. Chloe stretches herself as far as she can go to give them her blessing, but her issues about living--or even sleeping--alone turn this happy reunion into a potential disaster. Chloe stops eating, stops sleeping, stops paddling her beloved and battered blue kayak in the bay. No one knows how to help her. When her friend Old Ben, the man who runs the fuel dock nearby, gives her some advice, his words could either save the day or send her out to sea forever, depending on her unique mind's understanding of them. A heart-wrenching stand-alone novella, and an answer to the many readers who asked for a sequel to Becoming Chloe, ALWAYS CHLOE is ultimately about the struggle to balance others' needs with our own--and exactly how expansive and forgiving the human heart can be. This collection also includes four previously published short stories, including Breakage, which won honors in the Tobias Wolff award, and The Lion Lottery, which was cited in Best American Short Stories.

    Having lost her parents at a very tender age, she is in search of a place which she can call home. Her passion for Art lands her a job as an art curator to the famous artifacts of the Ranaut Dynasty. When she meets the scion, Aryan Ranaut, she feels that her dream might come true until…All He wanted was to trust…Living the life of a modern day Prince is no easy task for the young and dashing Aryan Ranaut. Having lost his father to a rapacious woman, Aryan has severe trust issues. But upon meeting Shefali, he feels he could let down his guard. Until…All They need is to find The Angel…Just as Aryan realizes his love for Shefali, one of the most precious artifacts, The Angel, goes missing from the Ranaut collection. All fingers point towards Shefali—more so because she leaves the palace without telling anyone on the very night of the theft. Finding the Angel is a story where duty clashes with love and lack of trust overrides passion. Under these circumstances, can The Angel bring the star-crossed lovers together?

    The pages of this book contain stories of every bachelor who fell in love, did stupid things and discussed India's foreign policy at the neighbourhood tea stall.'Bakar Puran' is the past, present and the future of those bachelors which will always be the same. The language and style has the realism of a bachelor pad. Here, there is no garb of elitism in expression. Whatever it is, it just is.

    After being a hard-as-nails reporter who covered crime stories of the goriest kind, Mythili is now just a ‘dependent’. On top of that, unemployment, encounters with expat-wives and culture shock leave her feeling like she has fallen down a rabbit hole. Will their love survive, or will she become just another unhappily married expatriate wife?Will this real life Alice ever embrace her Wonderland?

    That the Church uses artificial intelligences to power its never-ending prayer machines doesn't interest her at all: they're paying, and she needs enough money to survive in an increasingly crumbling world. Until a demonstration outside the Church's headquarters, and the appearance of Stéphane, an enigmatic man Lisa finds herself powerfully drawn to. What lies beneath his headscarf, why is he so interested in the Church--and how far will she be willing to go in order to earn his trust? Aliette de Bodard, winner of the Nebula, Locus and BSFA Awards, teams up with BSFA Award-winner Gareth L. Powell to present an uplifting short story of machines and humans, of intense emotions and cutting-age technology culled from tomorrow’s headlines. “Full of character and wit” - Zone SF "Wonderful and full of promise.” - SF Revu

    Having parted on bad terms two years previously, Darcie and Jake now find themselves flung back together. Tensions reach new heights when they’re forced to work in the same place and the pair struggle to put the past behind them.And, all the while, Ross is becoming increasingly involved with a dangerous influence, which looks set to make Darcie’s problems with Jake pale into insignificance …

    Written with Sanjeev's trademark flair, the stories crackle with irreverence and wit. In 'The Troll', a presumptuous blogger faces his undoing when he sets out to expose an Internet phenomenon. In the title story, a young man loses his job in the financial crisis and tries to reset his life over two beers. In 'The Intellectuals', a foreign researcher spends some memorable hours with Kolkata's ageing intellectuals. From the vicious politics of a Mumbai housing society to the snobberies of Delhi's cocktail circuit, the stories in Life over Two Beers get under the skin of a rapidly changing India-and leave you chuckling.

    The protagonists are helpless victims of psychological maladies. Their suppressed libido and Oedipus complex are areas Tamil writers generally dared not enter - at any rate in the 1960s, when they were written.The brilliant introvert Rajaraman is the quintessential good boy. The play of circumstances kindles oedipal fancies in him. The incandescent consummation with Sarada Mami is a catharsis. A rishi is born looking at the world with a disdain at once benignly distant and compellingly personal.Well-educated and well-employed Janaki lives under the protective cover of her paranoid, possessive, puritanical mother. Her healthy friendship with a collegemate of yesteryear promises liberation. Her short-lived taste of freedom is stamped out and she is sucked back into her mother's bizarre, overwhelming orbit. The success of Jayakanthan lies in evoking in the reader a profound empathy with the tragically deviant characters of the two stories.

     Rose Mistletoe runs her family's flower shop on Christmas Parade, and loves every minute of her job. So when the Parade comes under acquisition by a redevelopment company, Rose forms a protest group against the bid. But business tycoon Nick Grimsby is determined to make her sell up. His company is planning to knock down the parade of traditional shops and build a block of exclusive apartments instead. And it seems the sexy billionaire will go to any lengths to get her shop. As Christmas approaches and Nick dangles the proverbial mistletoe, can Rose resist his powerful allure? Given how gorgeous he looks in a tuxedo, the answer is probably no. But she's not going to make it easy for him! Because Rose has secret plans of her own ... Warning! This romcom novella contains jokes, oodles of romance, festive wreaths, mistletoe, holly, and a sprinkling of paper hats. Another quirky romcom in the popular 'Oddest Little Shop' series from Beth Good. Titles can be read in any order.

    They headed for the city's iconic landmarks and the mayhem they unleashed lasted nearly 60 hours. The audacious terror attacks jolted Mumbai like never before. Even as they mourned, the residents of Maximum City demanded answers. But the information they got in return???accounts of the investigation, government rhetoric, newspaper reports, television features, books and even a film???was sketchy at best. Meanwhile, the courts continued with their prosecution of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving 26/11 gunman. The broad picture available to the public is of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ringleaders such as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi training, arming and dispatching ten young men in a boat to attack India???s commercial capital. All we have been told about Kasab is that he was just another recruit brainwashed into carrying out the plot against Mumbai. Kasab: The Face of 26/11 breaks new ground by painstakingly piecing together Kasab???s terror trail. The narrative follows Kasab through the bylanes of Pakistani villages and cities as he made his way towards PoK; the dense forests where the terrorist-training camps are situated; the trains, buses and jeeps he boarded; the Indian vessel he and the others hijacked en route to Mumbai???s shores; Kasab???s capture and incarceration. Rommel Rodrigues??? path-breaking investigative journalism fleshes out for the first time the well thought-out planning and organization that lay behind the attacks of 26/11.

    This book puts together the information that shows:• How and why Max Muller started the theory,• The damage it has done,• Objections to it and lack of evidence for it,• The misleading dates for it,• The Sarasvati River described in the Rig Veda and geographical proof of its existence,• The date of its demise,• The false argument of no horse in Harappa,• The Urban or rural argument,• Deciphering the Indus seals,• How genetics show an east to west movement rather than a migration into India, and more.All of this proves there never was any Aryan Invasion, and that the advanced Vedic Aryan civilization was indigenous to India. (Taken from a chapter in “Advancements of Ancient India’s Vedic Culture”)

    Yet there's something missing in his life, a purpose, an anchor. His life is completely set to change when he meets a 13-year-old monk in the mountains. From him, he learns the way of Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese way of living.