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The Phantom Of Manhattan
It was 1882 when Antoinette Giry, Maitresse du Corps de Ballet at the Paris Opera House, took her small daughter to the funfair at Neuilly. And there, in a cage, she saw a filthy manacled creature whose tormented eyes shone from a grotesquely deformed face. It was Antoinette Giry who saved him, freed him, cured his wounds and finally let him find a dwelling place in the labyrinthine depths of the Opera House. The creature - Erik - whose hideous face hid a brilliant brain of near-genius, was to become the Phantom of the Opera - magician, artists, musician, and lover. When he tried to lure the object of his adoration to his underground domain - it was to end in tragedy. It was Madame Giry who saved him once more, set him on a ship to the New World - and there Erik Muhlheim began a new and secret life, a life that began in misery and poverty but in which his incredible skills finally carved out an unexpected kingdom of power. And there it was he learned again of Christine, whose life had changed dramatically since that night in the Paris Opera House. Inevitably, their paths must cross again in the old sequence of tragedy and triumph. The Phantom, one of the most mysterious and romantic figures ever created, soars again in a world of his own making. Frederick Forsyth's magnificent and evocative story adds a new dimension to the legend of the Phantom.
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The Great Indian Novel
In Shashi Tharoor's satirical masterpiece, the story of the Mahabharata is retold as recent Indian history, and renowned political personalities begin to resemble characters from the Mahabharata-all of whom have a curious and ambiguous relationship with Draupadi Mokrasi (D. Mokrasi for short) . . . Brimming with incisive wit and as enjoyable a read as it is cerebrally stimulating, The Great Indian Novel brilliantly retells reality as myth.
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The Altman Code
When word reaches the President of the United States that a Chinese cargo ship is transporting chemicals to a rogue nation intent on creating new biological weapons, the president knows he must act quick to obtain the proof he needs. Covert-One agent Jon Smith is sent to rendezvous in Taiwan with another agent who has acquired the ship's true manifest. But before Smith can get the document, he is ambushed, the second agent is murdered, and the evidence is destroyed. Smith escapes with only his life and a verbal message-the president's biological father is still alive, held prisoner by the Chinese for fifty years. As the mysterious ship draws closer to its end port, Smith is losing time in uncovering the truth about the vessel and its cargo-a truth that probes the secrets of the Chinese ruling party, the faction in Washington working to undermine the elected government, and the international cabal who is thrusting the world to the brink of war...
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Tales of Horror
Prepare to immerse yourself into the heart of darkness as Nikesh Murali, Commonwealth Short Story Prize-winning author and creator of India’s most critically acclaimed horror podcast Indian Noir weaves an unforgettable tapestry of bone-chilling scares and unrelenting terror. Whether you're a seasoned horror enthusiast or a newcomer to the genre, this anthology is sure to satisfy your cravings for all things terrifying. By the host of the no. 1 podcast ‘Indian Noir’ A collection of unique and original horror stories Features immersive world-building, creating a sense of place and atmosphere that can transport readers to a different time, place, or even dimension Explores deeper themes, such as trauma, fear, and mortality Generates a powerful emotional response in readers
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Dakhma
A new city. A new home. A new life. Things seem perfect ... for a while. A pregnant Anahita moves in to an apartment in Malabar Hill with her husband, eager to begin a new phase in her life. Unfortunately, nothing goes as expected and Anahita begins to witness things she cannot explain. It's not long before a presence makes itself known in their new home. Appearing after dark the strange apparition leaves Anahita terrified - but determined to find answers. Her search leads to Parizaad: a woman who was haunted by phenomena she believed to be linked to a tower of silence, or dakhma, that is deeply affected by environmental changes. As Anahita wades further into the mystery around the life and death of Parizaad, she uncovers a devastating secret - one that goes beyond nightmares and corpses. A spine-chilling psychological thriller, Dakhma brings horror to the heart of the big city.
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Ego Is The Enemy
As in the Obstacle is the way, Ryan holiday delivers practical and inspiring philosophy, this time exploring a powerful concept that runs back centuries, across borders and schools of thought: Ego. Ego is our biggest enemy. Early in our careers, it can prevent us from learning and developing our talents. When we taste success, ego can blind us to our own faults, alienate us from others and lead to our downfall. In failure, ego is devastating and makes recovery all the more difficult. It is only by identifying our ego, speaking to its desires and systematically disarming it that we can create our best work. Organised into bite-sized observations featuring characters and narratives that illustrate themes and life lessons designed to resonate, uplift and inspire, Ego is the Enemy shows how you can be humble in your aspirations, gracious in your success and resilient in your failures. It is an inspiring and timely reminder that humility and confidence are still our greatest friends when confronting the challenges of a culture which tends to fan the flames of ego and encourage the cult of personality at all costs.
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Haunted
An entire town that was abandoned overnight A fort that fell to ruins due to a curse Mines where twenty thousand miners were trapped and perished A village where black magic is a way of life A fair where exorcisms are performed in public Such are the locations dotting the colourful paranormal map of India. Intrepid adventurers and regular tourists alike have often dared to visit these places to experience for themselves their fascinating lure, and to see if ghosts truly haunt these regions. However, those who have ventured there have often returned with more questions than answers-if at all they have returned. Haunted chronicles the real-life adventures of paranormal investigator Jay Alani in ten of the spookiest locations in India. Co-authored by Neil D'Silva, these exploits provide a ringside view of these hair-raising paranormal journeys for everyone who has an interest in exploring the dark side of the normal.
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Beyond Black
Alison Hart is a medium by trade. But her ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift. Behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman. Her days and nights are haunted by the men she knew in her childhood, the thugs and petty criminals who preyed upon her hopeless, addled mother, Emmie. And the more she tries to be rid of them, the stronger and nastier they become.
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The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
The right to: Spend your own money. Go to school. Earn an income. Access contraceptives. Work outside the home. Walk outside the home. Choose whom to marry. Get a loan. Start a business. Own property. Divorce a husband. See a doctor. Drive a car. All of these rights are denied to women in some parts of the world. 'How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings – and especially for women? Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.' In this moving and compelling book, Melinda French Gates shares the stories of the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world and the lessons she’s learned from them. As she writes in the introduction, “That is why I had to write this book – to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.” Melinda’s unforgettable narrative is backed by startling data as she presents the issues that most need our attention – from child marriage to lack of access to contraceptives to gender inequity in the workplace. And, for the first time, she writes about her personal life and the road to equality in her own marriage. Throughout, she shows how there has never been more opportunity to change the world – and ourselves. When we lift others up, they lift us up, too.
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Attached
Revelatory" – The New York Times "Should be essential reading for everyone" – Sunday Telegraph "For its many, many fans, Attached has been life-changing" – Stylist In this bestselling book, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Amir Levine and psychologist Rachel Heller explain how attachment theory can help people better understand themselves and their relationships. The authors explore three primary attachment styles: Secure – comfortable with closeness, trust, and emotional connection Anxious – often concerned about relationships and reassurance Avoidant – values independence and may find intimacy challenging Through psychological insights, real-world examples, and self-assessment tools, readers can identify their own attachment style, better understand their partners, and develop healthier relationship patterns. Whether you are looking for a new relationship or seeking to strengthen an existing one, Attached provides a practical framework for understanding how people connect and communicate. "A groundbreaking book that redefines what it means to be in a relationship" – John Gray, PhD, bestselling author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
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Unheard Voices Stories Of Forgotten Lives
The Bhopal gas tragedy, the communal carnage of 1984 and 1989 in Delhi and Bhagalpur, the Orissa super cyclone, among others, are part of collective memory, But, often forgotten are those who actually were affected by thee happenings, and others like them, street children, sex workers, dalits, HIV and leprosy patients, the homeless and the famine-stricken. These are people who in many ways are pushed to the outermost, most hopeless margins of society in the name of development and progress. In Unheard Voices, civil servant and social activist Harsh Mander draws on his own and his colleagues’ experiences to explore the lives of twenty such people who have survived and coped despite all odds. In Bangalore, for instance, a onetime street child now counsels other such children seeking education and self-employment; in Bhopal, and eleven year-old has brought up two of his siblings after they were orphaned in the gas leak, at great emotional cost. A young sex worker fights for the rights of her HIV positive sister-workers when their ‘home’ in Hyderabad’s red-light area is demolished. A patient combats the stigma of leprosy by helping to establish a leprosy colony in Ashagram. In Tenali, Andhra Pradesh, a blind musician couple struggles to get land from the government to set up a colony for the blind. Going beyond mere survival, these stories are a testimony of how people have overcome their condition with humbling courage, resilience, and humanism, Marked by understatement and rare warmth, they bring out their determination to seek a better life in the face of enormous suffering. Reaffirming people’s creativity and indomitable spirit, this book challenges all those who despair about India.
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Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today
Jack and Suzy Welch interpret, extend and illustrate the ideas outlined in their best-selling book WINNING by answering directly the questions asked of them by the public in their international column The Welch Way. Jack Welch’s greatest asset is his currency with business people everywhere. He has the singular knack for talking straight and remaining positive and upbeat no matter how difficult the circumstances seem. Few of us will ever get the chance to see Jack answer questions in person. But Winning: The Answers offers the next best thing, the opportunity to take the lessons of Jack’s bible of business success one step further. Here in Winning: The Answers, Jack and Suzy Welch draw from the thousands of reader responses they get from the book and their BusinessWeek column, The Welch Way. They comment on the same range of issues from dealing with office politics to understanding the importance of Wal-Mart in the world economy. No business leader in the world today has the range or rapport of Jack Welch. Winning: The Answers is the ideal companion to Winning and will introduce new readers to the book as well as delighting Jack’s fans with more hard-won wisdom.
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The Five Dollar Smile
The Five-Dollar Smile is a collection of stories of young love and disaffection, adolescent high spirits and youthful traumas; there are also stories, written with the energy and passion of youth, which deal with very adult subjects: death, deceit, loss, hypocrisy, honour. Sensitive, compelling and persuasive, these stories, written for the most part in Shashi Tharoor's late teens and early twenties, reveal an already formidable talent. Rounding off the collection is a marvellously inventive play set in the time of the Emergency. Report an i
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The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding
Everyone knows that building your product or service into a bona fide brand is the only way to stand out in today;s insanely crowded marketplace. The only question is how do you do it? This is the definitive text on branding, distilling complex theories and principles behind this key marketing term into in twenty-two easy-to-read vignettes including: The Law of Contraction A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus The Law of the Word A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer The Law of Fellowship In order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands World-renowned marketing guru Al Ries and his daughter and business partner Laura Ries examine brand-blazing strategies from the world;s best, including Coca-Cola, Xerox, BMW, Federal Express and Starbucks, to provide you with the expert insight you need to build a world-class brand.
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Year of the Golden Ape
The extremists have taken over. Masterminding the plan to destroy Israel, Sheik Gamal Tafak has hired professional terrorists. The action races from Cairo to Hamburg, Paris, London and California - where a super-tanker bound for San Francisco is hi-jacked, armed with a nuclear bomb.
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Young Blood Ten Terrifying College Tales
ored roommates use a planchette to contact a legendary ghost that haunts Pune University. Will she answer? Is the abandoned Khairatabad Science College in Hyderabad really haunted? A gang of students break inside to investigate. Nirav and Pavi love each other . . . most of the time. Will exploring a forbidden place inside IIT Kharagpur bring them closer? From strange sightings to urban legends, from haunted buildings to not-so-friendly ghosts, colleges in India have their fair share of spine-tingling tales, be it Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, St. Bede's College in Shimla or Delhi University. Young Blood is a collection of ten tales that reimagine college urban legends and true first-person accounts, that promises to terrify even die-hard fans of horror.
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The Trusted Advisor
The 20th anniversary edition of the “brilliant and practical” (Tom Peters, author of The Professional Service 50) business classic—now updated to reflect the digital world—provides essential tools and wisdom for all consultants, negotiators, and advisors.In today’s fast-paced networked economy, professionals must work harder than ever to maintain and improve their business skills and knowledge. But technical mastery of one’s discipline is not enough, assert professional advisors David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The key to professional success, they argue, is the ability to earn the trust and confidence of clients. In this 20th anniversary edition, Maister, Green, and Galford enrich our understanding of today’s society and illustrate how to be effective communicators in a digital world. Using their model of “the trust equation” they dissect the rational and emotional components of trustworthiness. With precision and clarity, they detail five distinct steps you must take to create a trust-based relationship. Each step—engage, listen, frame, envision, and commit—is richly described in distinct chapters. This immensely accessible book offers “an invaluable road map to all those who seek to develop truly special relationships with their clients” (Carl Stern, CEO, Boston Consulting Group). The authors weave together anecdotes, experience, and examples of both their own and others’ successes and mistakes to great effect. The Trusted Advisor is essential reading for anyone who must advise, negotiate, or manage complex relationships with others.
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The Spirit Talk To Me
'It's something in your line of work,' he said hurriedly. 'It's something...otherworldly. Please come. There is no time to lose.'A forest lures men to their doom, invisible hands smash crockery in a time-worn house, machines turn malevolent in an old factory, phantom laughter, whispers from nowhere, shadows that trail people - these are just some of the experiences that Sarbajeet Mohanty, paranormal investigator and founder of the Parapsychology and Investigations Research Society, confronts daily on the job. Tracking Sarbajeet and his team as they probe harrowing supernatural happenings across the country, these ten suspenseful tales move from a courthouse occupied by an insidious presence to a hellish riverbank where battles from the ancient Kalinga War continue to play out, to a film studio in Mumbai where a sordid past waits to be unearthed. Along the way, readers get a rare peek into the distinctive investigative methods used by the team to detect mysterious forces that exist in parallel realms. Narrated by veteran horror writer Neil D'Silva in atmospheric prose, the chilling accounts in The Spirits Talk to Me are spine-tingling and guaranteed to make you lose sleep.
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151 Quick Ideas To Get New Customers
Outlines dozens of strategies for attracting and fostering loyalty in customers, sharing low-cost ideas in a series of bite-sized entries that can be readily implemented for immediate effect.
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The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly
The Korean Charlotte's WebMore than 2 million copies sold This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command, only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild—and to hatch an egg of her own. An anthem for freedom, individuality and motherhood featuring a plucky, spirited heroine who rebels against the tradition-bound world of the barnyard, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is a novel of universal resonance that also opens a window on Korea, where it has captivated millions of readers. And with its array of animal characters—the hen, the duck, the rooster, the dog, the weasel—it calls to mind such classics in English as Animal Farm and Charlotte’s Web. Featuring specially-commissioned illustrations, this first English-language edition of Sun-mi Hwang’s fable for our times beautifully captures the journey of an unforgettable character in world literature.
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The Talent Masters
The Talent Masters itself stems from a unique marriage of talents. Bill Conaty, in the course of a 40-year career at General Electric, worked closely with CEOs Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt to build the company's internationally renowned talent machine. Ram Charan is the legendary advisor to companies around the world. Here they combine their unparalleled experience and insight to create a blueprint for talent development, and to show how critical it is to the continuing and future success of every business. The essential skill that lasts. Why talent management guarantees future results in a way that short-term financial success and market share cannot. Secrets of the masters. How world-class companies achieve their stellar performance decade after decade by finding and nurturing leadership talent. The importance of knowledge. Why knowing and understanding your talent and reviewing it systematically is the foundation for creating a steady, self-renewing stream of leaders for all levels of your organization - from first-line supervisors to the CEO. The Talent Masters tool kit. Specific guidelines that will help you assess and improve your company's talent mastery capabilities.
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Critical Mass
Jocelyn "Joss" Cole, a burned-out public defender from L.A., has opted for a quieter life in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Joss has no significant clients other than a group of commercial fisherman suffering from a strange and serious illness, a condition that doctors cannot diagnose, and which Joss believes has an industrial cause. Then into her office comes Dean Belden, a well-heeled client in search of a lawyer to help him set up a business in the islands. Within days Belden is subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Less than an hour after testifying, and before Joss can discover what happened in the secrecy of the grand jury room, Belden dies in a fiery explosion of his float plane on Seattle's Lake Union. Gideon Van Ry is a nuclear fission expert and a scholar in residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. One of his duties is to update the Center's database, an extensive catalog listing fissionable materials and weapons of mass destruction. Gideon is troubled by the apparent failure to account for two small tactical nuclear devices missing from a storage facility in the former Soviet Union.The two weapons were last seen in packing crates, to be shipped to an American company called Belden Electronics. Gideon has been unable to locate this firm, and now he is left with only one possible lead, the lawyer who incorporated the company-Jocelyn Cole. Fraught with tension and suspense, Critical Mass is Steve Martini at his electrifying best. It is the story of what can happen in a world where private hate and public apathy combine to uncork the sleeping but deadly genie of nuclear terror.
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The First 90 Days
Since its original release, The First 90 Days has become the bestselling globally acknowledged bible of leadership and career transitions. In this updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition, internationally known leadership transition expert Michael D. Watkins gives you the keys to successfully negotiating your next move, whether you're onboarding into a new company, being promoted internally or embarking on an international assignment.