A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps Shakespeare's most popular play, particularly as a first introduction to Shakespeare for children--filled as it is with a marvelous mixture of aristocrats, workers, and fairies. For this edition, Peter Holland's introduction looks at dreams and dreamers, tracing the materials out of which Shakespeare constructs his world of night and shadows....Read More...Hide Pages: 124
Parineeta by Sarachandra Chattopadhyay Lalita, an orphaned girl who lives with her uncle considers herself betrothed to Shekhar, her benefactor and guardian. After several failed attempts, Lalita finally gets the egotistical Shekhar to admit that he reciprocates her feelings. However, tensions erupt between Shekhar's prosperous father and Lalita's poor but principled uncle, and the situation is further complicated by the arrival on the scene of Girin, a mild-mannered and eligible bachelor, who is attracted to Lalita. The lover's world is turned upside down, and Shekhar and Lalita find themselves estranged. Years later, they meet again, and the story takes another unexpected turn.Read More...Hide Pages: 112
Devdas by Sarachandra Chattopadhyay First published in Bengali in 1917, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay's tragic tale of Devdas has become synonymous with a passionate, intense love that does not find consummation.
It is the story of Devdas and Paro, childhood sweethearts who are torn apart when Devdas is sent away to Calcutta by his father, the local zamindar. When Devdas returns to his village, now a handsome lad of nineteen, Paro asks him to marry her. But Devdas is unable to stand up to parental opposition to the match and rejects the proposition. Stunned, Paro agrees to marry an elderly widower. Devdas returns to Calcutta, but every waking hour of his is now filled with thoughts of Paro and his unfulfilled love for her. Desperate to resolve the situation somehow, he runs to Paro who is now married and asks her to elope with him, but she refuses.
Heartbroken, he seeks solace in alcohol and in the company of the courtesan Chandramukhi. Chandramukhi falls in love with Devdas, but even when he is with her he can only think of Paro. It is now his destiny to hurtle on relentlessly on the path to self-destruction. Devdas?s tortured life ends when, dying of a liver ailment brought on by alcoholism, he journeys to Paro?s house to see her one last time. Arriving in the middle of the night, he dies unknown, untended, on her doorstep. Paro comes to know of his death only the following morning.Read More...Hide Pages: 128
Just Like Heaven by Marc Levy What do you do when you find a stranger in your closet; particularly when she's surprised that you can even see her -- and she can disappear and reappear at whim? What if she then tells you that her body is actually in a coma on the other side of town? Should you have her see a psychiatrist or should you consult one yourself? Or do you take a chance and believe in her, and allow yourself to be swept up in an extraordinary adventure?
This is the beginning of the dilemma that Arthur, a young San Francisco architect, is faced with when he discovers Lauren in his apartment.
Arthur is the only man who can share Lauren's secret, the only one who can see her, hear her, and talk to her when no one else so much as senses her presence. So when doctors prepare to end Lauren's physical care -- which would destroy the magical bond she and Arthur cherish -- he must find a way to save her. For, after all, it is only her love that can save him.Read More...Hide Pages: 229
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs.Read More...Hide Pages: 290
Ice-Candy-Man by Bapsi Sidhwa The story of the upheaval of the 1974 partition of India seen through the eyes of a Parsee girl growing up in Lahore. Through her relationships with her Hindu Ayah, the Muslim cook, the Sikh zoo attendant and the ice candy man, she shows how ordinary citizens reacted to the horrific turmoil...Read More...Hide Pages: 276
On a desperate journey, two runaways meet and join forces. Though they are only looking to escape their harsh and narrow lives, they soon find themselves at the center of a terrible battle. It is a battle that will decide their fate and the fate of Narnia itself.Read More...Hide Pages: 270
Narnia ... where a dragon awakens ... where stars walk the earth ... where anything can happen.A king and some unexpected companions embark on a voyage that will take them beyond all known lands. As they sail farther and farther from charted waters, they discover that their quest is more than they imagined and that the world's end is only the beginning.Read More...Hide Pages: 270
Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, a noble band of friends are sent to rescue a prince held captive. But their mission to Underland brings them face-to-face with an evil more beautiful and more deadly than they ever expected.Read More...Hide Pages: 265
Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore Home and the World (Ghare Baire) is the story set against the backdrop of the partition of Bengal by the British in 1905. It is the story of a young liberal-minded zamindar Nikhilesh, his educated and sensitive wife Bimala and Nikhilesh's friend Sandip, a charismatic and nationalist leader whom Bimala finds herself attracted to. A perceptive explosion of difficulties, surrounding women's emancipation in pre-modern India, and a telling portrayal of the chasms inherent in the nationalist movement, Home and the World has generated endless debate and discussion.Read More...Hide Pages: 216 Accolades Nobel Prize Winning Author
Beyond the Three Seas: Travellers´ Tales from Mughal India
Beyond the Three Seas: Travellers´ Tales from Mughal India by Michael H.Fisher
Many of the European travellers that visited Mughal India left behind enthralling accounts of their experiences. Beyond the Three Seas is a collection of the best of these writings, starting from the mid fifteenth century and spanning two hundred years. There are stories of hunting with the emperor Akbar and his blindfolded panthers; of being stripped penniless in Surat and fleeing from angry villagers in Bengal in the middle of the night; descriptions of the Mughal roadside sarais, trying paan for the first time and of the lax morals of Indian women. The travellers themselves could not be more different: from the god-fearing, petulant Russian, Afanasy Nikitin to the Portuguese Father Antonio Monserrate desperately trying to convert Akbar to the plucky eighteen-year-old Venetian Niccolao Manucci who finds himself a patron in Dara Shukoh. Full of colour, detail and the occasional tall story, rarely has Mughal India been brought so vividly and fascinatingly alive.
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong is one of the most talked about- and inspirational-sports figures of all time. He was Sports Illustrated 's 2002 Sportsman of the Year-and now, after his record-shattering string of Tour de France victories, some proclaimed him the greatest athlete of all time.
This is the book in which he shares his journey through triumph, tragedy, transformation, and transcendence. It is the story of a world-famous cyclist and his fight against cancer.
Nobody's Fool
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
Richard Russo's slyly funny and moving novel follows the unexpected operation of grace in a deadbeat town in upstate New York-and in the life of one of its unluckiest citizens, Sully, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years.
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its sly and uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs. Nobody's Fool is storytelling at its most generous.
This book has also been made into a major motion picture by Paramount Pictures starring Paul Newman, Melanie Griffith, and Jessica Tandy.
