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Granta 130 India..
A powerful curiosity is the hallmark of new kind of Indian writing: important questions about the country's past and present have found their expression in different forms of non-fiction story-telling that twenty years ago tended to be the preserve of writers from the west. Biography, memoir, narrative history, reportage, the travel account: all these forms now have their interesting and original practitioners in India. In this Granta issue they tackle questions ranging from rape in village India to scandal in Mumbai clubs. And there is room, as always, for the best of India's fiction.
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The Affair..
In this riveting novel set in Paris, the world’s favourite storyteller, Danielle Steel, explores a high-profile affair that reverberates throughout an entire family reminding us that mothers and sisters come together when things fall apart. A year they would never forget . . . Rose McCarthy is the legendary editor-in-chief at one of New York’s top magazines. Following the death of her husband, she and her four daughters have become even closer. All have successful careers: Athena is a TV chef, Venetia a fashion designer and Olivia a court judge, while Nadia, the youngest, is a talented interior designer living in Paris. Nadia considers her life perfect – married to bestselling novelist Nicolas Bateau, who adores her and their two daughters – until the tabloids leak a story of Nicolas’s affair with a dazzling young actress. Heartbroken and publicly humiliated, Nadia looks to her family for comfort and support as she attempts to put her life back on course. As mother and daughters spend more time together, they come to realize the things that matter most in life.
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50 Greatest Detective Stories
IT IS THE HOUR WHEN CRIME, VICE AND WICKEDNESS REIGN… The speck of dust on the carpet Half-smoked cigar Blood stains and a corpse Welcome to the crime scene and feel free to cross 50 Greatest Detective Stories is an unparalleled treasury of detective fiction that every fan will cherish. Offering the finest examples from writers across varied generations, this collection charts the detective stories, making the reader’s adrenaline rise and fall as the episodes unfold. Each story takes one into the labyrinth of the unfamiliar within the familiar. Now it is your turn to be the detective as you read on and decode the mystery. Do enter the labyrinth!
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Decoding Business Minds
This is a manifesto to change a country where a Master of Business Administration (MBA) is primarily to get a job, and not to start a business! Serial entrepreneur Ajay Gupta is the quintessential Indian businessman. He has spent more than three decades in businesses creating companies that have grown despite numerous obstacles and challenges that came from within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but more so from a societal mindset that has origins in the British Raj. Thinking of a business as a lifelong career does not come naturally to most Indians. In fact, in Indian middle-class families, business is not seen as a secure source of income. Many of the myths surrounding business and businessmen are the reason why even those who have an innate talent for enterprise eventually suppress their dreams. This book debunks many of these myths and looks at how India can become truly aatmanirbhar and create limitless wealth for all. Decoding Business Mindsis a break from a stereotypical business book and is a practical guide to overcoming fears, creating the right attitude and working consistently towards an actionable vision. Ajay takes on the role of business coach, mentor and storyteller to look at everyday examples and real-life stories that will inspire everyone to emerge out of the herd mentality that sees business as risky, unstable and stressful. He deciphers the unique DNA of Indians that can make them world-beaters in the future. He also reveals some of the innovations, strategies and formulae that can help create wealth and scale up businesses.
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Birdwatching
When American ornithologist Guy Fletcher stumbles upon a dead body near Chanakyapuri, New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave, he does not realize that his life is about to change drastically. Soon, he is recruited into the CIA and sent straight into the heart of a secret war raging in the Himalaya. Alongside him are his two unlikely partners—the enigmatic Captain Imtiaz Afridi of the Indian Military Intelligence, whom he meets on a hunting trip in Kashmir, and the mysterious but alluring Kesang Sherpa, who saunters into his world in Kalimpong. Their missions and emotions inextricably entwined, the three must learn to trust their own instincts, and one another, to uncover what lies beneath the dazzling Himalayan snow. Set against the backdrop of the Sino–Indian war of 1962, Birdwatching is a gripping tale of high intrigue and mystery.
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The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told
The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told spans almost a century of work by some of the finest writers of short fiction in the language. The storytellers included here range from the earliest practitioners of the craft of short story writing—Dinanath Nadim, Somnath Zutshi, Ali Mohammad Lone—to more contemporary writers like Dheeba Nazir. Some stories in this collection are realistic dramas that hold up a startlingly clear mirror to society, such as Sofi Ghulam Mohammad’s ‘Paper Tigers’, or lay bare the pain of losing one’s homeland, as Rattan Lal Shant does in ‘Moss Floating on Water’. Then there are others like Ghulam Nabi Shakir’s ‘Unquenched Thirst’ and Umesh Kaul’s ‘The Heart’s Bondage’, that look beyond the exterior and focus on the complex inner lives of the women of Kashmir. Selected and translated by Neerja Mattoo, the twenty-five stories in this volume, all born out of the Kashmiri experience, will resonate with readers everywhere.
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Wrist Assured An Autobiography
Wrist Assured traces the cricketing journey of wristy genius G.R. Vishwanath from the dusty by-lanes of erstwhile Bangalore to the most iconic venues in the world. It gives deep insights into the mind of a champion, and of the trials and tribulations of an international career that saw both despair and delight in his very first Test. Vishwanath followed up a first-innings duck with 137 in the second against Australia in Kanpur in 1969. The same crowd that had hurled matkas on his way back in the first innings rose as one to celebrate his century, providing him his first important lesson—nothing succeeds like success. His solid middle-class upbringing instilled in Vishwanath a clear sense of right and wrong which he harnessed throughout his 91-Test career.Wrist Assured provides a ringside view of what made Vishwanath tick and why he is one of the most adored and respected cricketers to have graced the cricketing stage.
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Jackdaws
D-Day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but the Germans know it’ll be soon, and for Felicity “Flick” Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one of Britain’s most effective operatives in Northern France. She knows that the Germans’ ability to thwart the Allied attack depends upon their lines of communications, and in the days before the invasion no target is of greater strategic importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe. But when Flick and her Resistance-leader husband try a direct, head-on assault that goes horribly wrong, her world turns upside down. Her group destroyed, her husband missing, her superiors unsure of her, her own confidence badly shaken, she has one last chance at the target, but the challenge, once daunting, is now near impossible. The new plan requires an all-woman team, none of them professionals, to be assembled and trained within days. Code-named the Jackdaws, they will attempt to infiltrate the exchange under the noses of the Germans—but the Germans are waiting for them now and have plans of their own. There are secrets Flick does not know—secrets within the German ranks, secrets among her hastily recruited team, secrets among those she trusts the most. And as the hours tick down to the point of no return, most daunting of all, there are secrets within herself. . . .
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The Woman who Upped and Left
Forget about having it all. Sometimes you just want to leave it all behind. Audrey is often seized by the urge to walk out of her house without looking back – but she can’t possibly do that. She is a single parent. She is needed. She has a job, a home, responsibilities…and a slothful teenage son’s pants to pick up. But no one likes being taken for granted – Audrey least of all – so the time has come for drastic action. And no one’s going to stand in her way…
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A Simple Life
Dinah Steward has a secret. Hidden beneath the comfortable family life she shares with her successful husband Matthew and their two sons lies a shameful secret that has haunted Dinah for fifteen years. She and Matt never speak of it or the impossible choice he forced her to make all those years ago: they think the cracks have been papered over. But when a chance encounter brings the past into sharp focus once more, Dinah realises she can no longer deny the truth. She decides to risk everything - her husband, her sons, her perfect lifestyle, in order to claim what was always hers.
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One Day
'ONE DAY is destined to be a modern classic' - Daily Mirror Twenty years, two people, ONE DAY. The multi-million copy bestseller that captures the experiences of a generation. 'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, a hint of malice in her voice. 'I can picture it right now.' He smiled without opening his eyes. 'Go on then.' 15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows?
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Zero
Trained in the Japanese arts from boyhood, Michael Doss has grown to love peace more than violence, but his father's sudden bloody death drags him into a world of vengeance in which he is torn between East and West. The author has also written "Shan", "Jian", "The Miko", and "The Ninja".
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Triple Your Reading Speed
This fourth edition of Triple Your Reading Speed does just that -- with self-quizzes and tests that make it fun and simple to acquire the skills that will give you an edge in school and on the job. The renowned Acceleread Method helps you to break old habits that may be slowing you down, and develop strategies for increased comprehension in less time, with eye exercises to control and expand vision drills for practicing pacing and block reading strategies for mastering the "two-stop" reading method...and more! Boost your reading power today with Triple Your Reading Speed.
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I did a Bad thing
Sarah Roberts used to be good. Then she did something bad. Very bad. Now, years later, she's living a good life. She works as a local newspaper reporter and lives with her saintly boyfriend Jonathan. She has no reason to think her guilty past will ever catch up with her. Until Nick walks back into her life. And suddenly, what's good and bad aren't so clear to Sarah any more.
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Blindsight
When a series of unrelated "yuppie" deaths by cocaine overdose are reported to the Medical Examiner's office, Dr Engler's curiosity is aroused. As the deceased's friends swear that their loved ones weren't involved with drugs, Dr Engler's curiosity intensifies. By the author of "Coma".
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Her Every Fear
'I loved it! A brilliantly original premise, delivered with panache.' CLARE MACKINTOSH, Sunday Times bestselling author of I See You Following a brutal attack, Kate Priddy makes the uncharacteristically bold decision of moving from London to Boston - in an apartment swap with her cousin, Corbin Dell. But soon after her arrival Kate makes a shocking discovery: Corbin's next-door neighbour, Audrey Marshall, may have been murdered. Far from home and emotionally unstable, her imagination playing out her every fear, who can Kate trust? As tantalizing as Rear Window, Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and The Talented Mr Ripley
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The Gathering
The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. The Gathering is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and limitless desire, and how our fate is written in the body, not in the stars. 'It is clearly the product of a remarkable intelligence, combined with a gift for observation and deduction' A.L. Kennedy, Guardian
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Eagle in the Sky
'With a dull but awful roar, the Mirage bloomed with dark crimson flame and sooty black smoke, the wind ripped flames outwards in great streamers and pennants that engulfed all around them, and David staggered onwards in the midst of the roaring furnace that seemed to consume the very air.' Drawn to the sky as though to his natural element, young David Morgan spurns the boardroom future mapped out for him by his family for the life of a jet pilot. Then he meets Debra, the beautiful Israeli writer for whom he will fight, in another country's war, at the controls of his Mirage. Yet the breathless action which brings them together is also the very tragedy that will threaten to tear them apart ...
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Scaredy Cat
It was a vicious, calculated murder. The killer selected his victim at Euston station, followed her home on the tube, strangled her to death in front of her child. At the same time, killed in the same way, a second body is discovered at the back of King's Cross station. It is a grisly coincidence that eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death months before on the same day... It is DI Tom Thorne who sees the link and comes to the horrifying conclusion. This is not a serial killer the police are up against. This is two of them. Finding the body used to be the worst part of the job. Not any more. Now each time a body is found, Thorne must live with the knowledge that somewhere out there is a second victim, waiting to be discovered. But whilst the methods might be the same Thorne comes to realise that he is hunting two very different killers. One is ruthless and in control, while his partner in crime is submissive, compliant, terrified. Thorne must catch a man whose need to manipulate is as great as his need to kill; a man, who will show him that the ability to inspire terror is the deadliest weapon of all...