Close to Home
By: Parvati Sharma
Pages: 201 Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 399
Mrinalini has everything she wants: a loving husband, a good cook and the hope of a book deal. However, when her old roommate tells her that she is selfish, Mrinalini is determined to prove her wrong. She is then forced to take care of her maid’s child. Raising a child is not an easy task at all and it gets worse as her husband has left his lucrative job. Her troubles double when her upstairs tenant and literary rival gets his book published before Mrinalini’s.
India’s Afghan Muddle
By: Harsh V Pant
Pages: 192 Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: Rs 450
Harsh Pant writes about India’s views towards Afghanistan and how these have affected India’s own vital interests. The book studies the changing nature of India’s foreign policy, offering arguments that New Delhi continues to respond to a strategic environment shaped by unrelated factors instead of developing an autonomous stance. The book argues India’s refusal to be proactive has damaged its own interests.
Mr Mac and Me
By: Esther Freud
Pages: 304 Publisher: Bloomsbury
Price: Rs 499
It is 1914, and Thomas Maggs, the son of the local publican, lives with his parents and sister in a village on the Suffolk coast. Then one day a mysterious Scotsman arrives. To Thomas he looks like a detective, in his black cape and hat of felted wool. Esther Freud paints a vivid portrait of a home front community during the First World War, and of a man who was one of the most brilliant and misunderstood artists of his generation.
The Bone Clocks
By: David Mitchell
Pages: 595 Publisher: Sceptre/Hachette India
Price: Rs 699
One summer’s day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for ‘asylum’. Decades will pass before Holly understands what sort of asylum the woman was seeking. The book follows the twists and turns of Holly’s life—a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality.
Grey Hornbills at Dusk : Nature Rambles through Delhi
By: Bulbul Sharma
Pages: 189 Publisher: Aleph
Price: Rs 295
In a lifetime spent exploring the gardens, monuments and forest areas in Delhi, Bulbul Sharma has observed and written about numerous bird, animal and plant species. From the Grey Hornbills at Lodi Garden to the handsome resident Indian Eagle-owl at Tughlakabad Fort, she records all manner of bird and animal behaviour through the changing seasons of the city in this slim book.