One follows Joanna Aronson as she cares for her father, Clyde, during his latest struggle with cancer while butting heads with her stepmother, Brenda, a cold woman whom Joanna suspects of neglecting him and even trying to kill him. Interspersed are Joanna’s memories of growing up in suburban Baltimore with her sister and parents in the ’60s, a life that seems idyllic yet seethes with subterranean discontents. Clyde, an English teacher, dominates the family with his charisma but undermines it with his affairs, including a liaison with one of Joanna’s teenage acquaintances. Joanna’s mother, Evie, feels trapped in housewifery and longs for the fulfillment she felt as a Communist Party activist. Joanna, though drawn like Clyde to the life of the mind, feels slighted because of his wish that she had been a boy. A colleague of her father’s seduces her at age 14. Threading through the story is Clyde’s memoir of growing up with his brother, Harry, in New York’s National Hebrew Orphan Home after his father abandoned the family and his mother placed the two boys there in 1924. It’s a Dickensian story of cold, hunger, loneliness, frequent beatings, and sexual abuse, but it’s lit with friendships and intellectual ambitions. Cherubin’s bittersweet tale is an epic and indelible character study of Clyde from frightened cub to kvetching lion in winter, with overtones of King Lear and an occasional queasily incestuous vibe. She writes in evocative prose that mixes astringent reality with glowing reverie. (“I sized up the three agents,” recalls Evie of a visit from the FBI during the Joseph McCarthy era. “Cold, smug, and bored. They could not begin to understand how alive I was during the war, how urgent and meaningful my life was thanks to the CP. How engaged I was with the world… I still miss those days.”) As Joanna grapples with her clan’s vexed legacy, the author shows how both betrayal and forgiveness can propagate across generations.An alternately dark and luminous, wounded and affectionate portrait of a family in crisis.

    This is an autobiography of Chalam in his own words, recorded by Narthaki.He speaks about his inclination towards romance, how his laugh was always a struggle because of his opinions and questions life that lead only to more.

    But Ronit, devastated by his break-up with Tasha, has stopped writing, even as nitasha tries to move on from her past and is on a quest to make sense of her life choices. Funny and heartwarming, this is the captivating story of three very different yet similar people finding their way in life.

    What if you find him—and he doesn’t remember you? In her captivating new novel, Susan Shapiro explores the perils of revisiting past passion. Lila Penn leaves Wisconsin for graduate school in the big city, where she falls for her professor Daniel Wildman. Decades after their tangled link, she arranges a tête-à-tête in downtown Manhattan. But the shocking encounter blindsides Lila, causing her to question her memory—and sanity. Switching between Greenwich Village and Tel Aviv, the saga unravels the sexual secret that’s haunted Daniel and Lila for thirty years.“Frank, darkly funny, entertaining...”—New York Times Book Review“A promiscuously readable guilty pleasure...”—Elle Magazine“Funny and original, with a soulfulness beneath the humor.”—Ian Frazier“Sly, candid, disarming...”—Pam Houston“Shapiro’s voice is so passionate and honest,it’s bewitching.”—Erica Jong“Irresistible energy, winning humor... breathtakingly frank honesty.”—Philip Lopate“Unputdownable.”—Gael GreenePublisher’s Weekly, October 2015:In raw and elegant prose, Shapiro (Five Men Who Broke My Heart) sensitively examines the subject of the one who got away—and what happens when you try to revisit an old romance. When brash, naive graduate student Lila Lerner arrives in New York City from Baraboo, Wisc., she immediately falls for her poetry professor, Daniel Wildman, who is 20 years her senior. As the tale opens, a now-happily married Lila attends the book signing of her former love, and is appalled when he doesn't seem to recognize her. But is his forgetfulness real, or simply a defense mechanism? Shapiro then leads the reader into the past, skillfully illustrating why Daniel's reaction is so upsetting to Lila and even leads her to think that her own memory is faulty. The author deftly toggles through decades, opening in 2010 and often moving to the early '80s, and from New York City to Israel, telling the story from Daniel's point of view as well as Lila's—lending empathy to a character who could have been the stereotypical older man taking advantage of a younger woman. Shapiro's witty, flawed characters leap off the page, showing the before, during, and after of a love affair. Library Journal, October 15, 2015: Lila Penn came to New York City from Wisconsin in 1980 as an idealistic young student in a graduate writing program. She fell in love with the city and with her professor and mentor, Daniel Wildman, but their relationship ended abruptly when he left for Tel Aviv. Professor Wildman turned out to be more indecisive than wild, and Lila was very young. Now, 30 years later, both are happily married to other people. But is there still a spark between the former student and her much older professor? Forward to 2010: Wildman has just won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. Lila nervously decides to go to his reading and book signing, but it doesn't go well. Could it be that her former love doesn't even remember her? This wistful story of love and poetry is told from the viewpoints of both characters, then and now. Shapiro (Overexposed) is especially clever in her portrayal of the petty dramas and rivalries of creative writing programs. VERDICT This wry look back at a complicated and doomed romance is a sophisticated and witty novel about academia and New York publishing.—Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

    In Volga’s retelling, it is Sita who, after being abandoned by Purushottam Rama, embarks on an arduous journey to self-realization. Along the way, she meets extraordinary women who have broken free from all that held them back: Husbands, sons and their notions of desire, beauty and chastity. The minor women characters of the epic as we know it – Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila and Ahalya – steer Sita towards an unexpected resolution. Meanwhile, Rama too must reconsider and weigh out his roles as the king of Ayodhya and as a man deeply in love with his wife. A powerful subversion of India’s most popular tale of morality, choice and sacrifice, The Liberation of Sita opens up new spaces within the old discourse, enabling women to review their lives and experiences afresh. This is Volga at her feminist best.

    As a religious novel about a decaying brahmin colony in the south Indian village ofKarnataka, Samskara serves as an allegory rich in realistic detail, a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths, and a serious, poetic study of a religious man living in a community of priests gone to seed. A death which stands as the central event in the plot brings in its wake aplague, many more deaths, live questions with only dead answers, moral chaos, and the rebirth of one man. The volume provides a useful glossary of Hindu myths, customs, Indian names, flora, and other terms. Notes and an afterword enhance the self-contained, faithful, and yet readabletranslation.

    Three teenage girls planning a flight from the Soviet Union to the West end up being sold in Mumbai's red-light area instead. The murders start a quarter of a century later. The victims are all men. All of them tricks, waiting for trysts with high-class escorts. DCP Rita Ferreira is quick to recognize the serial-killer strain; the media isn't far behind. The news sends shockwaves through the city. The first serial killer in living memory of Mumbai is out on the streets. As Rita grapples to establish the killer's pattern through Bhendi Bazaar, the killer gives her 24 hours to stop the next murder. Can she do that before she becomes the next victim?

    Shivaji Sawant's Mrityunjaya is an outstanding instance of such a literary masterpiece in which a contemporary Marathi novelist investigates the meaning of the bewildering skein that is life through the personae of the Mahabharata protagonists. For over two decades since its first publication the vast non- Marathi and non-Hindi readership remained deprived of this remarkable exploration of the human psyche till the publication of this English translation by the Writers workshop – a contribution for which there is much to be grateful for. Mrityunjaya is the autobiography of Karna, and yet it is not just that. With deceptive case, Sawant brings into play an exceptional stylistic innovation by combining six "dramatic soliloquies" to form the nine books of this novel of epic dimensions. Four books are spoken by Karna. These are interspersed with a book each from the lips of his unwed mother Kunti, Duryodhana (who considers Karna his mainstay), Shon (Shatruntapa, his foster-brother, who here-worships him), his wife Vrishali to whom he is like a god and, last of all, Krishna. Sawant depicts an uncanny similarity between Krishna and Karna and hints at a mystic link between them, investing his protagonist with a more-than-human aura to offset the un-heroic and even unmanly acts which mar this tremendously complex and utterly fascinating creating of Vyasa.