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Snapshots
As the wine and conversion begin to flow at a reunion between six women who were friends at school, memories start to surface – some happy others bitter – sweet and a few that are downright poisonous. Forced to confront dark secrets that they thought lay buried deep in the past, the women began to turn against one another and the mood of the party turns nightmarish... Death, infidelity, incest, rape, lies and the evil that lurks beneath everyday lives of people from the substance of Snapshots, Shobhaa De's explosive best-seller.
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Strange Obsession
Strange Obsession is the story of the gorgeous young super-model Amrita Aggarwal. Within months of her arrival in Bombay, she is the envy of its beautiful people. Then, one day, she attracts the attentions of a mysterious woman called Minx. As the months pass and the demands of her unwelcome suitor grow, Amrita's life turns nightmarish... An unforgettable novel of sexual obsession and its calamitous consequences.
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The Pregnant King
‘I am not sure that I am a man,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?’ Among the many hundreds of characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, perhaps the world’s greatest epic and certainly one of the oldest, is Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son. This extraordinary novel is his story. It is also the story of his mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; of young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; of Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; of Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; of Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and of Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others. Building on Hinduism’s rich and complex mythology—but driven by a very contemporary sensibility—Devdutt Pattanaik creates a lush and fecund work of fiction in which the lines are continually blurred between men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Confronted with such fluidity the reader is drawn into Yuvanashva’s struggle to be fair to all—those here, those there and all those in between.
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Shoot the Falcon
Thrilling, action-packed and thoroughly entertaining, this is one book you will find hard to put down until you reach the final spine-chilling end! Forget what they said about revenge. It was delicious served hot or cold. There’s blood in the sand as Raj, Nagi and Madhuri fight to keep a dangerous weapons cache out of the hands of home-grown terrorists. When the IB and private eye Rekha Dixit cross paths on the trail of an underworld kingpin in Rajasthan, sparks fly, threatening war across the borders. Its yet another dynamite packed thriller for the Bollywood Knights until a beautiful starlet gets caught in the crossfire. Shoot the Falcon, the third book featuring the teen detectives from Mumbai’s dazzling film world, the Bollywood Knights, is a roller coaster ride through the romantic and treacherous dunes of remote Rajasthan.
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No Easy Day: The Only First Hand Account of the Na
For the first time anywhere, a first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from inside the US Navy SEAL team who carried out the extraordinary mission to kill the terrorist mastermind. From the streets of Iraq to the successful rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from pirates in the Indian Ocean; from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, operator Mark Owen of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group - commonly known as SEAL Team Six - has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines. No Easy Day puts readers inside the elite, handpicked twenty-four-man team as they train for the most important mission of their lives, Operation Neptune Spear. The SEALs were going after bin Laden. Two weeks later, from a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, the helicopter-borne assault force took off into the night and flew low across the border. Then, deep inside Pakistan's heavily defended airspace, things started to go badly wrong. From the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter that threatened the mission with disaster through to the radio call confirming their target was dead, the SEAL team raid on bin Laden's secret HQ is recounted in nail-biting second-by-second detail. In No Easy Day, team leader Mark Owen takes readers behind enemy lines with one of the world's most astonishing fighting forces. It is the only insider's account of their most spectacular mission.
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Greyfriars Bobby
Bobby, an active Skye terrier, adores his master Auld Jock, and when the old man dies, Bobby refuses to leave his grave in Greyfriars Churchyard in Edinburgh. By day, he plays with the local orphans and eats at a nearby tavern, and every night for fourteen years Bobby returns faithfully to sleep by his master.
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Smell
When her father is killed in a riot in Nairobi, Leela’s mother chooses to send her away to her childless aunt and uncle in Paris, while she herself, along with her two sons, seeks refuge with her brother in London. Forced to make the brutal transition from the open spaces and warm security of her home in Kenya to the claustrophobia of a poky apartment in Paris, Leela settles into the cheerless routine of helping her aunt in the house and working at her uncle’s store. But even this tenuous protection is short-lived, and one night she finds herself alone on the streets of an alien city, without a passport of money. As she struggles to survive, stumbling from job to job and from relationship, Leela discovers in herself an unusual quality – her extraordinary sensitivity to smell. A seemingly innocuous and occasionally useful attribute, it gradually begins to colour her ever emotion and response, from sexual arousal to the enjoyment of food. But when the dark feral stench of her own body threatens to overpower her, Leela is frightened into the realization that perhaps she has lost al control over her life ...
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The Taming of Women
As Anandhayi gives birth to her fifth child downstairs, with only her ancient mother-in-law for help, upstairs her husband Periyannan sleeps with a woman he has summoned to spend the night with him. Women of many generations live in that house at the end of the road, with the tyrannical and charismatic Periyannan always trying to bring them under his control. Voracious in his appetites, for both power and sex, Periyannan is a domineering antagonist to the tender but tenacious Anandhayi. In her most celebrated novel, Sivakami vividly evokes a world where women and men are in constant conflict, scrambling for the little power to which they can hold on. It is her superb satiric eyecapturing in comic vignettes of exquisite detail the life of women in a village transforming into a small townthat brings relief to this bleak, blistering vision of humanity, leaving the reader simultaneously amused and devastated.
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Gamble
As one of the youngest ever winners of the Grand National, Nick 'Foxy' Foxton's career as a world class jockey is on perfect track until a near fatal accident cuts his dream brutally short. But when he returns to Aintree as a spectator years later, nothing can prepare him for what unfolds. Minutes before the biggest event on the racing calendar, Nick's affable American colleague Herb Kovak is shot at point blank range, the gunman disappearing amongst the stunned crowd. Along with the police, Nick is left baffled as to why anyone would want to kill such an apparently gentle soul. With the press speculating links to gangland crime and a crumpled note containing a threatening message found in the dead man's coat, Nick begins to doubt how well he really knew Herb. And on discovering Herb had named him as the benefactor of his will, Nick questions why he has been entrusted with the legacy. Is this a generous gift from a friend or is it, in fact, a poisoned chalice?
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The Book of Destruction
A unique novel that focuses on the act of murder! Murder is committed for its own sake in the three fictional episodes of The Book of Destruction. In The Gardener, the narrator learns from the thug Seshadri that he has been selected for assassination for no reason but the pure purpose of killing. A discotheque is bombed out of existence in The Hotelier and the Traveller. In the third episode, leading the narrator to an elaborately staged orgy and sacrifice, stitched clothes escape from a tailors shop and soar down the streets to take over bodies. The cruelty of killers and the wretchedness of victims are shifted to the margins as the novel focuses on the act of murder. In his inimitable style, Anand takes the mesmerized reader on a journey of three stages the practice of killing, the sacrifice of the victim and the sacrifice of the sacrificerbefore bringing the story of destruction to its finale. A unique novel that focuses on the act of murder! Murder is committed for its own sake in the three fictional episodes of The Book of Destruction. In The Gardener, the narrator learns from the thug Seshadri that he has been selected for assassination for no reason but the pure purpose of killing. A discotheque is bombed out of existence in The Hotelier and the Traveller. In the third episode, leading the narrator to an elaborately staged orgy and sacrifice, stitched clothes escape from a tailors shop and soar down the streets to take over bodies. The cruelty of killers and the wretchedness of victims are shifted to the margins as the novel focuses on the act of murder. In his inimitable style, Anand takes the mesmerized reader on a journey of three stages the practice of killing, the sacrifice of the victim and the sacrifice of the sacrificerbefore bringing the story of destruction to its finale.
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Let the Devil Sleep
Dave Gurney, the most decorated homicide detective in the history of the NYPD, is still trying to adjust to life in upstate New York when a young woman who is producing a documentary on serial killers asks for his input. Soon after this conversation, odd events begin occurring in Dave's life: There is a strange problem with his tractor, a razor-sharp hunting arrow lands in his yard, and he narrowly escapes serious injury in a booby-trapped basement. As things grow more bizarre, Dave finds himself re-examining the case of 'The Good Shepherd' - which, 10 years before, involved a series of roadway shootings and a 'Unabomber-like' manifesto expressing rage at society. The killings ceased, and a cult of analysis grew up around the case with a consensus opinion that no one would dream of challenging - no one, that is, except Dave Gurney. Mocked even by some who'd been his allies in previous investigative outings, Dave is only heeded when the reawakened Good Shepherd proves by his actions that his agenda is more complex than previously thought.
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The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk: Life Stories from
Extraordinary stories about ordinary peoples lives by the inimitable Sudha Murty Over the years, Sudha Murty has come across some fascinating people whose lives make for interesting stories and have astonishing lessons to reveal. Take Vishnu, who achieves every material success but never knows happiness; or Venkat, who talks so much that he has no time to listen. In other stories, a young girl goes on a train journey that changes her life forever; an impoverished village woman provides bathing water to hundreds of people in a drought-stricken area; a do-gooder ghost decides to teach a disconsolate young man Sanskrit; and in the title story, a woman in a flooded village in Odisha teaches the author a life lesson she will never forget.
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For Crying Out Loud
Suitable for those who are driven to wonder just what is the matter with people these days.
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Learning to Fly
Since she was eight years old Victoria wanted to be a star. This autobiography covers her childhood, marriage and motherhood, the Spice Girls and her current career.
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Taking On The World
The Incredible Story Of The Fastest Woman To Sail Around The Globe Solo The Vendee Globe around-the-world sailboat race is sailing's ultimate challenge and the pinnacle of extreme sports--a single handed, nonstop race including 13,000 miles through the planet's most dangerous waters: the Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica. Small wonder that fewer than half the boats that start a Vendee Globe race can finish it. Of those who don't, the luckier drop out; the rest are claimed by the sea. At 5 feet 2 inches tall and age 24, Ellen MacArthur was the smallest and youngest competitor in the 2000-01 Vendee Globe and one of just a handful of women ever to have attempted it. In an event dominated by older men of the elite French long-distance racing fraternity, she was a long shot even to finish. Yet on February 11, 2001, she finished second, and became the youngest sailor to complete the race, the first woman to earn a top-three placing, the fastest woman ever to sail around the world, and the second fastest person ever to do so alone. Her time of 94 days 4 hours 25 minutes shaved 11 days from the previous record. On the day Ellen reached the finish line off the French resort town of Les Sables d'Olonne, an estimated 200,000 people turned out to greet her, and her race website received 4.5 million hits. Her reception, and the media coverage, eclipsed that accorded the winner--the Frenchman Michel Desjoyeaux--the day before. Ellen's accomplishment transcended national boundaries.
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Dude, Where's My Country?
Well, now the world's Bushwhacked. It's time for the good ol' boy to head for the hills, and Mike's on a mission to smoke him out at the next election - and help ordinary people get their country back. What's more, he's going to use his share of the tax cut to do it.
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Black Moon
Storm-bound in hostile waters, ex-cop turned boat minder Rick Broca comes across the wreck of a crashed plane, one very grateful pilot and an ocean full of trouble. Because it soon becomes clear that the rescued man isn’t who he says he is. And when the pair are intercepted by a fishing boat carrying enough artillery to sink a battleship, Rick’s already in too deep. What follows is a terrifying battle for survival in which Rick Broca will come up against the CIA, the FBI and the full might of the US military, as his search for answers leads him through a deadly maze of international espionage and political intrigue where he can only be sure of one thing: that turning back is no longer an option.
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Impulse
The reigning "queen of romance" returns with a masterful new novel of romantic suspense. Catherine Coulter, the bestselling author of False Pretenses, scales new heights that will dazzle and delight even her most ardent fans.