This latest from Amit Chaudhuri (Freedom Song; The Immortals) offers minimal plot: a 22-year-old homesick Indian literature student and aspiring poet wakes in his shabby London studio, practices his singing, meets his university tutor, delivers his rent, and visits his uncle Radhesh, with whom he...
An Indian fakir gets in an old red Mercedes cab at Terminal 2 of Charles de Gaulle Airport and utters his first word – in Swedish – to the driver: "Ikea." Have you heard this one before? Well, no, most probably not ...
Trust me, you're just going to have to go with the impossible premise right up front. If you need a little help, you can choose to go audible, because expert narrator Sneha Mathan will surely help you believe. Go ahead, check your doubts: you'll be amply rewarded by career diplomat...
Leaning toward something light, frothy, and just a little steamy for your next holiday season read? While the printed page is always grand, going audible here is also highly recommended: I'm thinking Priya Ayyar is quickly becoming one of my favorite crisp voices to stick in...
The underdog overpowers her detractors. Check! The unjustly accused is publicly exonerated. Check! An unexpected friendship repairs foolhardy mistrust. Check! Girl power saves all! Check! Surely that sounds like just the superhero adventure tale you want to share with your kiddies! Munia's tiny village is in an uproar over a missing...
Meet Takloo who lives in Anjarle, "a small village in the far, far west of India," not too far south of Mumbai. "If you went further west, you would be a fish in the ocean." Takloo lives with his mother and father, and his beloved...
"Irfan had a story inside his head," the around-the-world adventure begins. "He wrote it on soft white sand so he would remember. A silent wave came and carried the story into the sea" – on the outstretched wings of a mythical golden bird. On another...
Probably my brain is showing its advancing age, but I can't remember the last time I stayed up half the night to finish a book unless I had an impending deadline (procrastinate? me?!). While I started Sleepwalk-ing in daylight stuck in the ears (debut novelist Mira Jacob...
After years of keeping secrets, Rakhee Singh's "demons" have finally "clawed their way free." Without confronting what happened to her family that summer in India when she turned 11, she finds herself unable to embrace her future – her impending architecture degree, her promising design job, and most importantly,...
Here's lucky #7 of the bilingual I See the Sun series from internationally-minded boutique press Satya House – lucky because India celebrates the series' gravitas by being the first to be offered in lasting hardcover. This summer, the rest of the series also reappears in solid incarnation;...
Amin Ahmad not only writes mysteries – The Caretaker and The Last Taxi Ride make up two-thirds of his Ranjit Singh thriller trilogy – I confess he remains quite a personal mystery.] While he’ll answer almost any question from a distance, he’s been quite agile avoiding our carefully...
“You Won’t Believe What Happened!”: A.X. Ahmad’s Ranjit Singh Mysteries “Everyone in my family is a storyteller,” A.X. Ahmad told Charlene Allen in an interview for The Brooklyn Rail. “Nobody has ever had a normal day, and the stories always started with, ‘You won’t believe what...
While Ranjit Singh’s trimming days as The Caretaker might have been left behind on Martha's Vineyard, he can't escape for long from the corruption and intrigue in the murderous lives of the power-elite. In the second installment of A.X. Ahmad's label-defying trilogy, Ranjit reinvents himself as a seasoned New York City cabbie, now divorced...
Clearly, James A. Levine is a 21st-century Renaissance man. He's an endocrinologist and professor at the renowned Mayo Clinic, he co-directs Obesity Solutions, a project of Mayo and Arizona State University (where he also professors), he's credited with pioneering the treadmill desk, he NEATly Gruves ...
Koly, the only daughter in a poor, rural Indian family, leaves all she's ever known to fulfill her duties in an arranged marriage. Once the wedding is over, Koly realizes her family was tricked: her new husband is a sickly young boy whose parents are interested only...
Okay, so what are the chances?! Varsha Bajaj's exuberant debut middle grade novel begins with a food allergy that sends her teen protagonist, the titular Abby Spencer, to the ER with an anaphylactic reaction. Talk about eerily prescient – less than 12 hours later, I'm repeating...
Well, I seem to be totally out of order here: so I read The City of Death (Book 2) first because I had a judging deadline, then backpedaled to catch up by sticking this Fortress (Book 1) in the ears (Bruce Mann narrates well enough, although I...
