Real Time: Stories and a Reminiscence

Life Expectancy
by Dean Koontz

Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy-a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between.

Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke.

What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson,five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his twenty-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth.

Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would be born with with fused digits on his left foot. Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling significance.

What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous-a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through.

Woman on Top
by Seema Goswami

The Essential Book for every Working Woman.

Don't know how to handle a difficult boss? A colleague won't stop asking you out? Not sure how to negotiate a pay rise? Kids complaining you're never at home? Life as a working woman is tough-especially if you want to get to the top. You have to work harder than most men and still be the one who runs the show at home. You will be judged by your performance but how you look will also affect your grade. And don't forget the glass ceiling! It's still there and you will bump against it. Woman on Top answers all your questions, deals with every issue you've ever had to grapple with -- and makes you laugh along the way. It is the one book every working woman will want to keep in her handbag.

The Zoya Factor
by Anuja Chauhan

When the younger players in India's cricket team find out that advertising executive Zoya Singh Solanki was born at the very moment India won the World Cup back in 1983, they are intrigued. When having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, they are impressed. And when not eating with her results in defeat, they decide she's a lucky charm.

The nation goes a step further. Amazed at the ragtag team's sudden spurt of victories, it declares her a Goddess.

So when the eccentric IBCC president and his mesmeric, always-exquisitely-attired Swamiji invite Zoya to accompany the team to the tenth ICC World Cup, she has no choice but to agree.

Pursued by international cricket boards on the one hand, wooed by Cola majors on the other, Zoya struggles to stay grounded in the thick of the world cup action. And it doesn't help that she keeps clashing with the erratically brilliant new skipper who tells her flatly that he doesn't believe in luck?