Maharaja Hari Singh rules Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Princely State expected to accede to Pakistan during the partition in 1947. But Hari Singh dreams of a Switzerland-like status for his Himalayan kingdom. Meanwhile, popular leader Sheikh Abdullah rallies for freedom and the Poonchis in western Jammu revolt, telegramming Jinnah for help; soon, fearsome kabailis are carving a swath of savagery and destruction through the kingdom towards Srinagar. In the Valley, tourists flee in the face of the tribal invasion. When Durga Mehra’s husband is murdered by the kabailis, she seeks refuge in a camp where another desperate inmate, Zooni, is also awaiting passage to Srinagar. As rations become scarce, newly widowed Kashmira worries how she’ll feed her children, but her houseboat guest, intrepid American journalist Margot Parr, is unfazed. She realizes she has the scoop of a lifetime on her hands … The rattled Maharaja signs the accession to India, pleading for immediate help. Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel dispatch the Indian Army to defend the Valley, and Akbar Khan of the Pakistan Army races to aid the kabailis. Barely two months into independence, the two new nations are pitched into battle. The first Indo-Pak war begins, upending the subcontinent forever. Kashmir is the thrilling conclusion to The Partition Trilogy that began with Lahore and continued with Hyderabad.

Tamil Nadu, 1968. Landlords rule over a feudal system that forces peasants to break their backs in the fields or be punished. As a small spark of defiance begins to spread among communities, the landlords vow to break them; party organizers suffer grisly deaths and the flow of food into the marketplaces dries up. But it only strengthens the villagers' resistance. Finally, the landlords descend on one village to set an example for the others. An exciting new release from this Chennai-based poet, writer and activist.

Raghav Marathe, cynical millennial turned reluctant policy analyst, arrives in Delhi with his boss, Prabhu Srikar of the RJM party, and a first-time MP with a tendency to throw up. As they navigate their way around Parliament, handling backroom deals, nepotistic party heads, and laws that seem to be tailor-made to benefit the ruling party, they learn that politics and idealism don't always go together. While Srikar tries to adapt to his new avatar and lie low, Raghav uses his Twitter alter ego, @Arnavinator, to vent his frustration and spread chaos. But when a new bill that threatens freedom of expression is bulldozed through with impunity, Srikar and Raghav must make a choice—to compromise on their values or to stand up for what is right. But at what cost? And can they and their unlikely allies—a jaded lawyer, an ambitious journalist and a rising YouTube star—really make a difference? A heady mix of politics, satire and current events, Parliamental is a roller-coaster ride through the corridors of power.

“I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.” So begins Kaikeyi’s story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on tales about the might and benevolence of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the worthy. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to the marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear. Desperate for independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With it, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most favored queen. But as the evil from her childhood stories threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family. And Kaikeyi must decide if resistance is worth the destruction it will wreak—and what legacy she intends to leave behind. The unforgettable tale of a woman determined to leave her mark in a world gods and men dictate the shape of things to come. "Patel's mesmerizing debut shines a brilliant light on the vilified queen from the Ramayana" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper transports readers through the 400-million-year history of insects and the remarkable entomologists who have studied them. This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that displays their stories and humanity’s connection to them throughout the ages. Kuper’s thrilling visual feast layers history and science, color and design, to tell the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies hunting prey, and mosquitoes changing the course of human history. He also illuminates pioneering naturalists, from well-known figures like E. O. Wilson and Rachel Carson to unheralded luminaries like Charles Henry Turner, the Black American scholar who documented arthropod intelligence, and Maria Sybilla Merian, the seventeenth-century German regarded as the mother of entomology. Galvanized by the sixth extinction and the ongoing insect crisis, Kuper takes readers on an unforgettable journey.

An energetic work of popular science about various scientists who have had to fight for their revolutionary ideas to be accepted—from Darwin to Pasteur to modern day Nobel Prize winners. The Contrarians is a critical history of the scientific community, past and present, as Matt Kaplan shows how scientific breakthroughs often occur in spite of, rather than because of, the scientific community. Alternating between the past and the present, the book is anchored by the story of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who helped discover germ theory by realizing Puerperal fever—a devastating infection that most often strikes women who have recently given birth—was spread by doctors not washing their hands. Semmelweis was met with overwhelming hostility by those offended at the notion that doctors were at fault. Semmelweis as a prime example of the inefficiency of scientific progress—how hard the scientific community fights new ideas and new research, even when the facts are staring them in the face. In snappy, accessible prose, Kaplan presents the cases of Galileo being threatened with torture, Charles Darwin facing social ostracism, and more recently, Katalin Karikó losing her job and her funding on the brink of discovering uses of mRNA – a discovery that would directly lead to the fast creation of a vaccine for Covid-19, and to a Nobel Prize for Karikó. With decades of first-hand reporting under his belt as the lead science reporter for the Economist, Kaplan makes the argument that science is hampered by the community’s resistance to younger scientists and new ideas—making it exceptionally difficult or outright impossible for critically important findings to gain recognition. Employing persuasive examples spanning history, The Contrarians makes a compelling argument that the scientific community can work faster and better, if only it is open to change.

लेखक संपूर्ण जीवन को अपनी रचना का विषय बनाता है, रचता है। ऐसे लेखक को फिर अपनी रचना का विषय बनाना एक विषेष प्रकार के अनुभव और संवेदनशीलता की अपेक्षा रखता है। श्रीमती कान्ता भारती ने अपने इस उपन्यास 'रेत की मछली' में' लेखकीय जीवन और उसके निकट परिवेश को मानवीय संदर्भो में रचने का प्रयास किया है। विदेशी साहित्यों मे इस प्रकार की कई औपन्यासिक कृतियाँ प्रसिद्ध हुई है; हिन्दी में यह अनुभव-क्षेत्र अभी नया है, और विशेष संभावनाओ से युक्त है। कान्ता की यह कथा-कृति अपने ब्यौरों में कही निर्मम है तो कहीं सहानुभूतिपूर्ण भी, और इस माने में जीवन के सही अनुपात, को साधती है। पाठक यहाँ रचना की पृष्ठभूमि को रचना के रूप में पाकर एक नये अनुभव-संसार में प्रवेश करता है, जहाँ उसके लिए बहुत-सी उपलब्धियाँ संभव हैं।

The creative partnership of acclaimed writer and academic Mary M. Talbot and graphic-novel pioneer Bryan Talbot has produced some of the most challenging and entertaining graphic novels in recent memory, including 2012's Costa Award medalist Dotter of Her Father's Eyes. The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia explores the life of revolutionary French feminist Louise Michel, a visionary teacher, poet, and radical who took up arms against a reactionary regime that executed thousands. Even deportation to a distant penal colony could not stop Michel from taking up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial oppression.

Sri Annapurani Amma left the safety of home and family to follow the summons of a long-dead saint. Like Akka Mahadevi and Lal Ded before her, she chooses to live naked, and sometimes delivers prophecies, but what shines through is her humour and crazily one-pointed devotion to her path. Soon after her tenth birthday, Balarishi Vishwashirasini was predicting futures—in no time she was transformed into a guru. Now in her thirties, this gifted teacher of nada yoga admits to sometimes feeling she’s missed out on a real childhood. Lata Mani, a respected academician in the US, was plunged into the path of tantra after a major accident left her with a brain injury. Today, she talks of how the spiritual life is deeply anchored in the wisdom of the body—not unlike the soaring yet rooted redwood trees of her adopted home. Maa Karpoori, a feisty young woman, found her calling when she joined a local yoga class. Through a rollercoaster ride that catapulted her from marriage to monkhood, she retains her fierce independence and contagious joy of living. In this extraordinary book, poet and seeker Arundhathi Subramaniam gives us a glimpse into the lives of four self-contained, unapologetic female spiritual travellers. Sensitive, insightful and spare, Women Who Wear Only Themselves is a revelation and a celebration.

Seventeen-year-old Cassie is a natural at reading people. Piecing together the tiniest details, she can tell you who you are and what you want. But it’s not a skill that she’s ever taken seriously. That is, until the FBI come knocking: they’ve begun a classified program that uses exceptional teenagers to crack infamous cold cases, and they need Cassie. What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length. Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive.

A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life"Every cell in my body is filled with the code of generations of trauma, of death, of birth, of migration, of history that I cannot understand. . . . I want to have words for what my bones know." By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD--a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma--but you can learn to move with it. Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body--and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing At 24, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup of Arthur’s wife—and that said wife has no idea Hera exists. With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.

A bracelet. A curse. And golden fishbones to be returned to the sea ...Guangdong, 1940. When Ha Yut Ying narrowly escapes Japanese soldiers by turning invisible, she knows her new-found magic must be kept a secret. But her mother, whose dreams foretell the future, suspects her daughter has changed, and warns her of a curse upon their family. For her protection, she gives her a gold bracelet whose links are shaped like fishbones.​After the war, Ha Yut Ying is sent to live with her father and his second wife, who have become wealthy factory owners in Hong Kong. Her stepmother, jealous of her beauty, forces her to work in the family's shoe factory.But when Yut Ying collides with a boy on a bicycle on her way to work, she loses her bracelet. The boy is Tommy Yeung, scion of a local soymilk tycoon. And their encounter will change both of their destinies forever...

Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of... a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart. Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again” list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.