A SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S ITEM WITH THE BEST OF THE TWO MOST-LOVED STORYTELLERS
This box set brings together for the first time two masters of storytelling, to offer readers the best variety of fiction in a single package! From humour to horror, romance to thriller, humour to sadness, and an entire spectrum of human emotions, these two books have it all. A perfect collection to adorn your shelf and to gift to loved ones.
The Best of Roald Dahl
A great selection of Dahl’s most-read stories from his bestsellers: Over to You, Someone Like You, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch. Hypnotized from the first sentence, you will remain spellbound as Roald Dahl unravels his fiendish fictions with their satisfying twist-in-the-tale finales, as he leads you through the dangers of gambling for high stakes over wine, the perils of being a vegetarian and the macabre consequences of a night-time seduction . . . This book is, quite simply, Roald Dahl at his sinister best.
The Best of Ruskin Bond
Experience the best of four decades of Ruskin Bond’s writing in one book. This consolidated anthology has selections from all of Ruskin’s major books and includes his classic novel, Delhi Is Not Far. Accompanied by an endearing collection of essays, beautiful excerpts from different stories, serene poems and short stories, this book finds a way to create a unique literary landscape.
Yogesh Moolchandani, a disreputable builder, is dead. All the signs say suicide but there was nothing wrong with his life. He had just cracked a deal and things were looking hale and hearty for him. He had recently even purchased an imported Volkswagen Jetta. CCTV footage from the night of his death shows him crashing into a toll booth at a speed of 180 km per hour on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. The dealer he had purchased his car from had received five missed calls from him just five minutes prior to the time of the alleged crash.
On the same night, in another part of town, Pranav Paleja, a criminal lawyer who works at the law chamber-
Mangesh & Mangharam, tries his best to extricate his client-a troublesome drunk-from the clutches of the police. Although an upholder of the law himself, Paleja is pathologically incapable of following it in his day-to-day personal life. Since Pranav Paleja was settling a dispute with the man concerned only moments before the crash, the police land up at his doorstep.
As the authorities try to find out why Yogesh was calling his car dealer frantically, the plot begins to thicken.
Who, or rather what, killed Yogesh Moolchandani?
STORIES THAT TOUCH YOUR HEART BY ONE OF THE BEST MODERN TAMIL WRITERS
Special Birth Centenary Edition
Thi. Janakiraman (ThiJa) was one of the best Tamil prose writers of the twentieth century. The stories in this specially curated collection offer a view of the modernizing Tamil countryside as well as the changing landscape of human relationships. A man builds his reputation based on lies to meet the expectations of his father, a woman desiring tenderness from her abusive husband finds release in an unexpected way, a music teacher is mocked for taking on a lower-caste student, and a drowning cat becomes the centre of attention during funerary rituals. In these and other tales, Janakiraman reaches inside the depths of the human heart and lays bare its contradictory pulls.
Through their brilliant translation, Professor David Shulman and the late S. Ramakrishnan reveal the ‘perfect pitch’ of Janakiraman’s precise, exquisite Tamil. They deftly capture his fluid, sensitive style in idiomatic English, seamlessly rendering the subtle inflections of the original. Prof. Shulman’s insightful and affecting introduction places Janakiraman within the long continuum of Tamil literature. There is also a short, beautiful memoir on him, written by his daughter Uma.
Selected Satire: Fifty Years of Ignorance brings together about 20 satire pieces of eminent Hindi writer, Shrilal Shukla. Most noted for his novel Raag Darbari, for which he received the Sahitya Akademi Award, Shukla also wrote several collections of satirical essays and short stories.
The pieces in this volume include his socio-political and cultural satires, where he caricaturizes politicians, mocks the bureaucracy (many of whom were his friends), and picks on the so-called developmental schemes of the government. A couple of pieces are also about small town attitudes and pretentions of intellectuals. The overall flavour is of an irreverence to authority and humour drawn from everyday occurrences.
The vision he saw in his dream, a world in ruins and bereft of women-was that going to come true soon? If he could get married, he would live the way people lived in the old days. He wanted to have at least ten children, and he wanted them all to be girls. The world should never again witness the sorrow of a man like him.
It might be a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, or at least a piece of land, must be in want of a wife, but Marimuthu’s path to marriage is strewn with obstacles big and small. Inward-looking, painfully awkward, desperately lonely and deeply earnest, Marimuthu is fuelled by constant rejection into an unforgettable and transformative matrimonial quest. Enter a series of marriage brokers, horoscopes, infatuations, refusals and ‘bride-seeing’ expeditions gone awry, which lead Marimuthu to a constant re-evaluation of his marital prospects.
But this is no comedy of manners, and before long we find ourselves reckoning with questions of agricultural change, hierarchies of caste, the values of older generations and the grim antecedents of Marimuthu’s poor prospects, as decades of sex-selective abortion have destroyed the fabric of his community and its demographics.
Perumal Murugan’s Resolve is both a cultural critique and a personal journey: in his hands, the question of marriage turns into a social contract, deeply impacted by the ripple effects of patriarchy, inequality and changing relationships to land and community. In this deceptively comic tale that savagely pierces the very heart of the matter, translated with deft moments of lightness and pathos by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, Perumal Murugan has given us a novel for the ages.
LONGLISTED FOR THE JCB PRIZE 2022
As a thin ribbon of smoke rose from the edge something stirred in me and I slapped the book against the railing until small specks of fire fell to the floor and died down. It was not just a book of baby names. It was an unusual memoir my father was leaving behind, memories condensed into names; memories of many kisses, lovemaking, panting and feeling spent.
Can a life be like a jigsaw puzzle, pieces waiting to be conjoined? Like a game of hide-and-seek? Like playing statues? Can memories have colour? Can the sins of the father survive his descendants?
In a family – is it a family if they don’t know it? – that does not rely on the weakness of memory runs a strange register of names. The odd book of baby names has been custom-made on palace stationery for the patriarch, an eccentric king, one of the last kings of India, who dutifully records in it the name of his every offspring. As he bitterly draws his final breaths, eight of his one hundred rumoured children trace the savage lies of their father and reckon with the burdens of their lineage.
Layered with multiple perspectives and cadences, each tale recounted in sharp, tantalizing vignettes, this is a rich tapestry of narratives and a kaleidoscopic journey into the dysfunctional heart of the Indian family. Written with the lightness of comedy and the seriousness of tragedy, the playfulness of an inventive riddle and the intellectual heft of a philosophical undertaking, The Odd Book of Baby Names is Salim’s most ambitious novel yet.
Pranav Paleja, a criminal lawyer who works at a legal Chamber-Mangesh & Mangharam. He’s an ordinary man with an ordinary life. And while it his job to uphold the law, he seems pathologically incapable of doing this in real life.
The mystery of this novel concerns an accident. We follow the investigation of a horrific car crash into a toll booth on the Bandra-Worli Sealink, and the ensuing death of the person driving, who turns out to be someone our protagonist Pranav Paleja had butted heads with; a disreputable builder by the name of Yogesh Moolchandani. All the signs say suicide but there was nothing even remotely wrong with his life. He had just cracked a deal and things were looking hale and hearty for him. He had even recently purchased an imported Volkswagen Jetta. The CCTV footage shows him crashing into the toll booth at a speed of 180 km per hour.
The car dealer he had purchased it from had received five missed calls from him just five minutes prior to the alleged time of the crash. The authorities begin to wonder why he was so frantically trying to get in touch with him and what on earth could have possibly transpired to cause this death? Since Pranav Paleja was settling a dispute with the man concerned only moments before the crash, the police land up at his doorstep. Who or more supposedly what killed Yogesh Moolchandani?
Napoleon Hill, America’s most beloved motivational author, devoted 25 years to finding out how the wealthy became the way. After interviewing over 500 of the most affluent men and women of his time, he uncovered the secret to great wealth based on the notion that if we can learn to think like the rich, we can start to behave like them. By understanding and applying the thirteen simple steps that constitute Hill’s formula, you can achieve your goals, change your life and join the ranks of the rich and successful.
In this updated edition, Dr. Arthur R. Pell provides examples of men and women who, in recent times, exemplify the principles that Hill promulgated. With the success stories of top achievers such as Bill Gates and Steven Spielberg, he proves that Hill’s philosophies are as valid today as they ever were.
Since its publication in 1963, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind has inspired millions of readers to unlock the unseen forces and invisible power within them. Dr Murphy’s mind-focusing techniques are based on a simple principle: If you believe in something without reservation and picture it in your mind, you can remove the subconscious outstacles that prevent you from achieving the results you want, and your belief can become a reality.
As practical as it is inspiring, Dr Murphy’s work uses real-life examples to demonstrate how anyone can unleash their extraordinary mental powers to build self-confidence, create harmonious relationships, gain professional success, amass wealth, conquer fears and phobias, banish bad habits, affect physical healing, and promote overall well-being and happiness.
With this book as your guide, there are no limits to the prosperity, happiness, and peace of mind you can achieve. Inside you’ll discover how you can use the power of your subconscious mind to:
*Get the promotion you want, the raise you need, and the recognition you deserve
*improve your health and even cure your body of many common ailments
*Overcome phobias, compulsions, and bad habits
*Develop friendships and enhance existing relationships with co-workers, family and friends
*Strengthen your marriage or primary love relationship
*Discover the secret to eternal youth
With easy-to-understand practical techniques and actual case studies, Dr Joesph Murphy Shows you how you can apply and direct the power of your subconscious mind to achieve all your goal and dreams.
Ekantika Pakrashi has just lost the love of her life. Preliminary reports suggest it was no accident. Her boyfriend was murdered in cold blood and the modus operandi resembles that of India’s most notorious serial killer of the 1990s: the Cellotape Killer. He was never caught, and if this indeed was him, then he had resurfaced after twenty-one years.
Ekantika swears to find the killer and get an emotional closure, but what she doesn’t know is that in the process she may end up wounding herself irreversibly. Follow this exciting chase as the dark alley turns out to be a twisted labyrinth and it seems the killer is actually coming for . . . her.
Whisper To Me Your Lies is a fast-paced, chilling crime thriller and a poignant tale of a girl’s single-minded obsession to find out who altered her life. And why.
