Somerset Maugham

Darlingji
by Kishwar Desai

In the late nineteenth century, in a small village in northern India, a thirteen-year-old Brahmin widow meets a Muslim sarangi player and elopes with him. Many years later, their daughter Jaddanbai moves to Bombay and becomes a star of the early talkies. Chấteau Marine, her home on Marine Drive, is famous for its evening mehfils and for the dreams it nurtures: regular visitors include Dilip Kumar, Mehboob and Kamal Amrohi. It is also the home of Fatima, Jaddanbai's daughter, who will set the screen ablaze as Nargis, the most accomplished actress of her time.

Far removed from this world of glamour, a young boy named Balraj Dutt spends his teenage years attempting to rehabilitate himself and his family after the trauma of Partition. In 1950, at the age of twenty, he arrives in Bombay. And there his life takes an unexpected turn: he is given the lead role in a new film, and is soon on his way to becoming Sunil Dutt, the film star.

Then comes the moment that transforms both their lives: on 1 March 1957, during the making of Mother India, Nargis is trapped in a circle of flames and Sunil risks his life to save her. They recuperate together, and fall in love. Nargis has been in a long but futile relationship with the mercurial Raj Kapoor, and in Sunil she finally finds an anchor. Their relationship is stormy and secretive to start with, but it survives every crisis to culminate in a quite wedding on 11 March 1958. What follows are years of togetherness, including the joys of caring for three children, Sanjay, Namrata and Priya but also days of pain and heartbreak: financuial trouble, Nargis's illness, Sanjay's addiction to drugs.

Based on the diaries and letters of Nargis, Sunil and their daughter Priya, as well as on conversations and interviews with family and friends, Darlingji ? as they often addressed each other is a probing yet affectionate biography of two extraordinary people and their love for each other.

Little White Lies
by Strachan Bernadette

Jilted bride, Billie Baskerville is summoned by her Aunt Barbara to remotest Sussex. Aunt Babs is going to Australia on a OAP-GAP year, and needs Billie to take over running her shop...her wedding dress shop. Putting a cynical, groom-hating, wedding-loathing, bride-detesting girl in charge of such a shop might seem a little hasty, but before long Billie can't help but get swept away with the romance of the whole thing, and with village life. She gives the shop a much-needed makeover, reunites lovers, not to mention longlost relatives and also starts rebuilding her own life again. It's all starting to look up - even if her family are crazy, her gay best friend is converting every man in the village, and Billie is still emailing her ex. But then, enter stage left, a very handsome firefighter...

Angels & Demons
by Dan Brown

An ancient secret brotherhood.
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
An unthinkable target.

In Angels and Demons World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth...the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.