Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss


Book Description

'I loved this beautiful book. It's tender and compassionate, written with exquisite care and verve, and so so SO funny' MARIAN KEYES Professor Chandra is about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. In the moments after the bicycle accident, Professor Chandra begins to reassess his life, his career and his relationship with his three children. He’s just missed out on the Nobel Prize (again). All this work. All this stress. It's killing him. Professor Chandra needs to take a break, and reluctantly agrees to visit a Californian retreat, to follow his bliss. And so he must try to crack the most complex problem of all: the secret to his own happiness




Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss


Book Description

'I loved this beautiful book. It's tender and compassionate, written with exquisite care and verve, and so so SO funny' MARIAN KEYES Professor Chandra is about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. In the moments after the bicycle accident, Professor Chandra begins to reassess his life, his career and his relationship with his three children. He’s just missed out on the Nobel Prize (again). All this work. All this stress. It's killing him. Professor Chandra needs to take a break, and reluctantly agrees to visit a Californian retreat, to follow his bliss. And so he must try to crack the most complex problem of all: the secret to his own happiness




In Beautiful Disguises


Book Description

To escape an arranged marriage, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a middle class South Indian family runs away to Delhi and takes a job as a maid in a household where the other servants are as strange as her employers.




Last Train to Hilversum


Book Description

Despite the all-pervading influence of television ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. It's a background to all our lives: we wake up to our clock radios, we have the radio on in the kitchen as we make the tea, it's on at our workplaces and in our cars. From Listen With Mother to the illicit thrill of tuning into pirate stations like Radio Caroline; from receiving a musical education from John Peel or having our imagination unlocked by Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; from school-free summers played out against a soundtrack of Radio One and Test Match Special to more grown-up soundtracks of the Today programme on Radio 4 and the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast – in many ways, our lives can be measured in kilohertz. Yet radio is changing because the way we listen to the radio is changing. Last year the number of digital listeners at home exceeded the number of analogue listeners for the first time, meaning the pop and crackle and the age of stumbling upon something by chance is coming to an end. There will soon be no dial to turn, no in-between spaces on the waveband for washes of static, mysterious beeps and faint, distant voices. The mystery will be gone: we'll always know exactly what it is we're listening to, whether it's via scrolling LCD on our digital radios, the box at the bottom of our TV screen or because we've gone in search of a particular streaming station. And so, as the world of analogue listening fades, Charlie Connelly takes stock of the history of radio and its place in our lives as one of the very few genuinely shared national experiences. He explores its geniuses, crackpots and charlatans who got us to where we are today, and remembers its voices, personalities and programmes that helped to form who we are as individuals and as a nation. He visits the key radio locations from history, and looks at its vital role over the past century on both national and local levels. Part nostalgic eulogy, part social history, part travelogue, Last Train To Hilversum is Connelly's love letter to radio, exploring our relationship with the medium from its earliest days to the present in an attempt to recreate and revisit the world he entered on his childhood evenings on the dial as he set out on the radio journey of a lifetime.




The Blind Man's Garden


Book Description

‘Love is not consolation, it is light’ From the author of Maps for Lost Lovers and The Wasted Vigil comes a novel set in the months after 9/11, when Western armies invaded Afghanistan—a story of love, hope and grief, of uncorrupted faith and of what it means to be alive. Jeo and his foster-brother Mikal leave their home in Pakistan to help care for wounded Afghans. Within hours of entering the wide-horizoned Afghan landscape, Mikal and Jeo are separated and, emerging from the carnage, Mikal begins his search for Jeo. But his deepest wish is to return home—to the young woman he loves and who loves him, Jeo’s wife. The Blind Man’s Garden maps a place both phantasmally beautiful and chilling. Taking us on a journey from Al Qaeda’s hideouts in Waziristan and American-built military prisons to a family left behind—Mikal’s and Jeo’s blind, regretful father, Jeo’s resolute wife and her superstitious mother—it unflinchingly examines war and brotherhood, devastation, separation and remorse, while celebrating the redemptive power of nature, art and literature.




Johannes Cabal the Detective


Book Description

Johannes Cabal returns in this fearfully funny and terrifically twisted tale of murder and international intrigue . . . five thousand feet off the ground. When an attempt to steal a rare book turns sour, Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, finds himself in a foreign prison awaiting execution. A crafty plan -- as horrific as it is cunning -- allows him to steal the identity of a government official and make his escape aboard a luxurious aeroship heading out of the country. But what should be a perfect getaway rapidly becomes complicated by the bizarre disappearance of a passenger, an attempt on Cabal's life, and an unwelcome face from the past. Trapped aboard with a killer, can even Cabal's open-razor of a mind save him? Full of twists, turns, sword fights, archenemies, newfangled flying machines, narrow escapes, and, of course, resurrected dead, Johannes Cabal’s latest eldritch escapade is a Ruritanian romp from first to last.




The Summer Before the War


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A novel to cure your Downton Abbey withdrawal . . . a delightful story about nontraditional romantic relationships, class snobbery and the everybody-knows-everybody complications of living in a small community.”—The Washington Post The bestselling author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand returns with a breathtaking novel of love on the eve of World War I that reaches far beyond the small English town in which it is set. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND NPR East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha’s husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won’t come to anything. And Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking—and attractive—than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war. Praise for The Summer Before the War “What begins as a study of a small-town society becomes a compelling account of war and its aftermath.”—Woman’s Day “This witty character study of how a small English town reacts to the 1914 arrival of its first female teacher offers gentle humor wrapped in a hauntingly detailed story.”—Good Housekeeping “Perfect for readers in a post–Downton Abbey slump . . . The gently teasing banter between two kindred spirits edging slowly into love is as delicately crafted as a bone-china teacup. . . . More than a high-toned romantic reverie for Anglophiles—though it serves the latter purpose, too.”—The Seattle Times




All That You Leave Behind


Book Description

“A documentary filmmaker and daughter of the late, great New York Times columnist David Carr celebrates and wrestles with her father’s legacy in a raw, redemptive memoir.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “A breathtaking read . . . a testimony equal parts love and candor. David would have had it no other way.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, bestselling author of Between the World and Me NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GLAMOUR AND MARIE CLAIRE Dad: What will set you apart is not talent but will and a certain kind of humility. A willingness to let the world show you things that you play back as you grow as an artist. Talent is cheap. Me: OK I will ponder these things. I am a Carr. Dad: That should matter quite a bit, actually not the name but the guts of what that name means. A celebrated journalist, bestselling author (The Night of the Gun), and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, at age twenty-seven an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence—1,936 items in total—in search of comfort and support. What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father’s writings contain the answers to the question of how to move forward in life and work without her biggest champion by her side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor, and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her but to the many who served alongside him? All That You Leave Behind is a poignant coming-of-age story that offers a raw and honest glimpse into the multilayered relationship between a daughter and a father. Through this lens, Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, and relationship fails. While daughter and father bond over their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, it is their powerful sense of work and family that comes to ultimately define them. This unique combination of Erin Lee Carr’s earnest prose and her father’s meaningful words offers a compelling read that shows us what it means to be vulnerable and lost, supported and found. It is a window into love, with all of its fierceness and frustrations. “Thank you, Erin, for this beautiful book. Now I am going to steal all of your father’s remarkable advice and tell my kids I thought of it.”—Judd Apatow




Lord of the Senses


Book Description

From the forest-fringed suburbs of Oslo to the bustling heart of Bombay; from the timeless banks of the Ganges to the never-closing nightclubs of Berlin, this collection of short stories by gay Indian-Norwegian author Vikram Kolmannskog captures a headily contemporary sense of what it is to be queer, cosmopolitan, spiritual and sexual. "[C]aptures the essence of the gay Indian experience - funny, sensual, heartbreaking, and exhilarating, all at the same time." - Udayan Dhar (founding editor, Pink Pages India) "[A] spine-tingling exploration of what it means to be a young, gay, defiantly sexual and spiritual man navigating complex identities with a sense of fluidity. A sexy, gorgeously crafted collection." - Diriye Osman (Fairytales For Lost Children) "A joyous read. Many queer folks and people of Indian origin are going to connect with these stories." - Sukdeev Singh (founding editor, Gaylaxy magazine) "The characters... negotiate prejudices, disappointments, and multiple identities of nationality, religion, caste, and sexual orientation, making this personal, poignant, and entertaining collection... a commentary on life itself." - Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (The Adivasi Will Not Dance; My Father's Garden & more) "Indian contemporary issues and nuances like casteism, politics, sexuality, poverty, devotion and renunciation blossom in these tales... that speak unabashedly of same-sex love and lust." - Vasudhendra (Mohanaswamy) "[A] distinctive, original voice. Written with love and precision and honesty, these sincere, sensitive, intimate stories quickly become addictive." - Rajeev Balasubramanyan (Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss)




The Glass Palace


Book Description

The Glass Palace Begins With The Shattering Of The Kingdom Of Burma, And Tells The Story Of A People, A Fortune, And A Family And Its Fate. It Traces The Life Of Rajkumar, A Poor Indian Boy, Who Is Lifted On The Tides Of Political And Social Turmoil To Build An Empire In The Burmese Teak Forest. When British Soldiers Force The Royal Family Out Of The Glass Palace, During The Invasion Of 1885, He Falls In Love With Dolly, An Attendant At The Palace. Years Later, Unable To Forget Her, Rajkumar Goes In Search Of His Love. Through This Brilliant And Impassioned Story Of Love And War, Amitav Ghosh Presents A Ruthless Appraisal Of The Horrors Of Colonialism And Capitalist Exploitation. Click Here To Visit The Amitav Ghosh Website