Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes

Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes

Author: Betsy Woodman

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-07-17

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0805093494

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Scottish expatriate Jana Bibi helps to save the small town in India she has grown to call home and the oddball characters she considers family.


Love Potion Number 10

Love Potion Number 10

Author: Betsy Woodman

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2013-08-13

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 080509797X

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In the newest Jana Bibi adventure from Betsy Woodman, Jana, Mr. Ganguly, and the gang are back as their small town in India is rocked by an espionage scandal and a homemade remedy that has love on everyone's mind The Jolly Grant House still welcomes all its visitors with the sign Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes hanging proudly outside its front door. Jana's fortune-telling has brought a lot of attention to the small town of Hamara Nagar, and now that the dust has settled and the town is safe from the threat of being flooded by a government dam, all eyes are on the Scottish-born card-reader Jana and her feisty, loose-beaked parrot, Mr. Ganguly. Some people, though, are not to be trusted, and Mr. Ganguly finds himself the target of a potential kidnapping that puts Jana and her household on edge. Meanwhile, love is in the air and, thanks to Abenath's Apothecary, it's also in a bottle. Abenath has created an intoxicating brew that he calls Love Potion Number 10, which seems to have Jana in a tizzy. While she explores her newest hobby, dream interpretation, her head is swimming with questions: Is a new love possible at age fifty-nine? If so, would she ever marry again? All around her she sees different kinds of love and connection—family, arranged marriages, chemical attractions, even intercontinental romance between people who have only met through letters—so when an old flame arrives and rekindles long-gone feelings, Jana begins to think that Love Potion Number 10 just might be the magic elixir its inventor thinks it is.


Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortune

Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortune

Author: Betsey Woodman

Publisher: Random House India

Published: 2012-10-26

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 8184003463

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In the first of a charming series, we meet Jana Bibi, who has inherited her grandfather’s house in a quaint hill station in India. Casting aside the conventions of her upper-crust upbringing, Janet (Jana) Laird moves with her chatty parrot, Mr. Ganguly, and her loyal housekeeper, Mary, to Hamara Nagar, a town where the local merchants are philosophers, the chief of police is a bully, and a bagpipe-playing Gurkha keeps wild monkeys at bay. Settling in, Jana meets the town’s colorful local characters who gather at the Why Not? tea shop—the contemplative darzi who struggles with his business and family; a kindly shopkeeper whose shop is bursting at the seams with objects of unknown provenance; a newspaper editor who burns the midnight oil at his printing press; a tyrannical head of police who rules with an iron hand; and a young man with a golden voice, who wants to be a singer in the movies. When word gets out that a new government dam will flood the little hill station, forcing everyone to move and start over, Jana is enlisted to save the community. Will Hamara Nagar survive? With some luck and Mr. Ganguly the fortune-telling parrot, the townspeople may have fate on their side.


Emeralds Included

Emeralds Included

Author: Betsy Woodman

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1627790543

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Feathers fly and cultures clash as the Jolly Grant House prepares to welcome a special delivery from Scotland In the third installment of the Jana Bibi series, Betsy Woodman takes us back to the Jolly Grant house for the arrival of Jana's son, Jack, from Scotland, and his Hungarian bride-to-be, Katarina Esterhazy. The whole gang is excited to welcome their international visitors—and Jana is determined to repair the house to Jack's high standards and those of her grandfather, from whom she inherited the eccentric building. But this puts a strain on Jana, both emotionally and financially, and she risks her most prized and valuable possession—the (surprisingly real!) emeralds she got from the Treasure Emporium—to help her through it. Jana saved the town from a government dam in Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes and foiled an international bird-smuggling ring in Love Potion Number 10, but in Emeralds Included, Jana faces her biggest challenges yet: preparing for her son's arrival and planning a wedding in the upside-down town of Hamara Nagar!


Climbing the Stairs

Climbing the Stairs

Author: Padma Venkatraman

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-02-04

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1101650540

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During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police, she is forced to live with her grandfather’s large traditional family, where the women live apart from the men and are meant to be married off as soon as possible. Vidya’s only refuge becomes her grandfather’s upstairs library, which is forbidden to women. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house who relishes her intellectual curiosity. But when Vidya’s brother makes a choice the family cannot condone, and when Raman seems to want more than friendship, Vidkya must question all she has believed in. Padma Venkatraman’s debut novel poignantly shows a girl struggling to find her place in a mixedup world. Climbing the Stairs is a powerful story about love and loss set against a fascinating historical backdrop. Read Padma Venkatraman's posts on the Penguin Blog.


Our Women are Free

Our Women are Free

Author: Wynne Maggi

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780472067831

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An exploration of the lives of women among the Kalasha, a tiny, vibrant community in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province


The Wandering Falcon

The Wandering Falcon

Author: Jamil Ahmad

Publisher: Penguin Books India

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0670085332

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The boy known as Tor Baz—the black falcon —wanders between tribes. He meets men who fight under different flags, and women who risk everything if they break their society’s code of honour. Where has he come from, and where will destiny take him? Set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban, Jamil Ahmad’s stunning debut takes us to the essence of human life in the forbidden areas where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet. Today the ‘tribal areas’ are often spoken about as a remote region, a hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks and conflict. In The Wandering Falcon, this highly traditional, honour-bound culture is revealed from the inside for the first time. With rare tenderness and perception, Jamil Ahmad describes a world of custom and cruelty, of love and gentleness, of hardship and survival; a fragile, unforgiving world that is changing as modern forces make themselves known. With the fate-defying story of Tor Baz, he has written an unforgettable novel of insight, compassion and timeless wisdom. It is true, I am neither a Mahsud nor a Wazir. But I can tell you as little about who I am as I can about who I shall be. Think of Tor Baz as your hunting falcon. That should be enough.


Durable Goods

Durable Goods

Author: Elizabeth Berg

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2003-05-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 081296814X

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On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or escapes to her best friend’s house—until Katie’s admiration for her strong-willed sister leads her on an adventure that transforms her life. Written with an unerring ability to capture the sadness of growth, the pain of change, the nearly visible vibrations that connect people, this beautiful novel by the bestselling author of Open House reminds us how wonderful—and wounding—a deeper understanding of life can be.


An American Brat

An American Brat

Author: Bapsi Sidhwa

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Published: 2012-11-01

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1571318291

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A sheltered Pakistani girl is sent to America by her parents, with unexpected results: “Entertaining, often hilarious . . . Not just another immigrant’s tale.” —Publishers Weekly Feroza Ginwalla, a pampered, protected sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl, is sent to America by her parents, who are alarmed by the fundamentalism overtaking Pakistan—and influencing their daughter. Hoping that a few months with her uncle, an MIT grad student, will soften the girl’s rigid thinking, they get more than they bargained for: Feroza, enthralled by American culture and her new freedom, insists on staying. A bargain is struck, allowing Feroza to attend college with the understanding that she will return home and marry well. As a student in a small western town, Feroza finds her perceptions of America, her homeland, and herself beginning to alter. When she falls in love with a Jewish American, her family is aghast. Feroza realizes just how far she has come—and wonders how much further she can go—in a delightful, remarkably funny coming-of-age novel that offers an acute portrayal of America as seen through the eyes of a perceptive young immigrant. “Humorous and affecting.” —Library Journal “Exceptional.” —Los Angeles Times “Her characters [are] painted so vividly you can almost hear them bickering.” —The New York Times