>>Fantasy

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

The timeless classic of growing-up and the human dignity that unites us all, To Kill a Mockingbird is an unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it.

The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga

Balram Halwai, son of a rickshaw puller is servant, a philosopher, an enterpreneur...and a murderer.All through his childhood, as he works at a teashop,slogging away, he nurses a dream of escape-away from the murky waters of Mother Ganga. His chance comes in the form of rich village landlord who hires him as his chauffeur for his son, daughter-in-law and their two dogs.

Balram sees Delhi for the first the first time from behind the steering wheel of a Honda and its a revelation.Balram's reeducation begins amidst traffic jams, call centers,slums and shopping malls. Caught between the desire to be a loyal servant and desire to do better for himself, he learns of a new morality of a new India. He sees himself as a tiger...one that will escape its prison.

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

In tales set in India and the United States, Divakaruni illuminates the transformations of personal landscapes, real and imagined, brought about by the choices men and women make at every stage of their lives.

"The Love of a Good Man" tells of an Indian woman happily settled in the United States who must confront the past when her long-estranged father begs to meet his only grandson. In "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," which was selected for The Best American Short Stories 1999 and short-listed for a 1999 O. Henry Award, a widow, inadvertently eavesdropping, discovers that her cherished, old-fashioned ways are an embarrassment to her daughter-in-law. A young American woman joins a pilgrimage of women in Kashmir and, in the land of her ancestors, comes to view herself and her family in a new light in "The Lives of Strangers," Two women, uprooted from their native land by violence and deception, find unexpected comfort and hope in each other in "The Blooming Season for Cacti." And in the title story, a young woman turns to her painting and the wisdom of her grandmother for the strength to accept ther fiance's past when it arrives on her doorstep.

Whether Divakaruni is writing about the adjustments of immigrants to a foreign land or the accommodations families make to the disruptive differences between generations, she poignantly portrays the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the alluring promise of change.