Temples of Desire and Other Stories have a compelling narrative that takes you through a multitude of intrigues and happenings, woven around the very social fibre of countryside India, gripping the reader like a vice. Sexual promiscuity and permissiveness, greed and integrity and blind beliefs, are the engines of stimulus that drive the behaviour of the characters of the five short stories from the author’s quiver. Read on, as the realisation dawns that she had become helpless and migratory like a stray chicken in the world of foxes.
A beggar girl struggling her way out in this big, bad world helplessly hoping for a benevolent hand, a housewife for whom marriage has lost its meaning long back and she is only carrying the habit of it now, a young girl who wishes to bring quality education to her illiterate village folks, an orphan who roots for her true identity in the child she is yet to birth, a village tea seller who wishes to become a famous actor in Bombay. 'Temple Classroom and Other Stories' is a collection of various facets that form our lives and the lives around us. These are the stories that were written over a period of 2 years in buses, trains and metros…on laptop, mobile and computer. Some of these tales were written from the myriads of experiences that life threw at the author and some are figments of her imagination, borne out of its various impressions.
“A debut story collection of the rarest kind ... you wish that every single entry could be an entire novel." —Entertainment Weekly Fresh, intimate stories of women’s lives from an extraordinary new literary voice, laying bare the unexpected beauty and irony in contemporary life A college freshman, traveling home, strikesup an odd, ephemeral friendship with the couple next to her on the plane. A mother prepares for her son’s wedding, her own life unraveling as his comes together. A long-lost stepbrother’s visit to New York prompts a family’s reckoning with its old taboos. A wife considers the secrets her marriage once contained. An office worker, exhausted by the ambitions of the men around her, emerges into a gridlocked city one afternoon to make a decision. In these eleven powerful stories, thrilling desire and melancholic yearning animate women’s lives, from the brink of adulthood to the labyrinthine path between twenty and thirty, to middle age, when certain possibilities quietly elapse. Tender, lucid, and piercingly funny, Objects of Desire is a collection pulsing with subtle drama, rich with unforgettable scenes, and alive with moments of recognition each more startling than the last—a spellbinding debut that announces a major talent.
"One of the best novelists since Jane Austen."—Philadelphia Inquirer The protagonist of this World War II novel is a prisoner of the German army in France. In order to keep himself sane while denying the charges and absorbing the beatings of his captors, Richard Temple conducts a minute examination—one might almost call it a prosecution—of his own life. Temple escapes from a blighted childhood and his widowed, alcoholic mother thanks to an artistic gift, the one thing of value he has to his name. His life as a painter in London of the '30s is cruelly deprived. In order to eat, he squanders this one asset by becoming a forger of art, specializing in minor works by Utrillo. He is rescued by the love of a beautiful and wealthy woman, and it is the failure of this relationship and the outbreak of war that propel him into the world of espionage.
In his international bestseller Beneath a Marble Sky, John Shors wrote about the ancient passion, beauty, and brilliance that inspired the building of the Taj Mahal. Now with Temple of a Thousand Faces, he brings to life the legendary temple of Angkor Wat, an unrivaled marvel of ornately carved towers and stone statues. There, in a story set nearly a thousand years ago, an empire is lost, a royal love is tested, and heroism is reborn. When his land is taken by force, Prince Jayavar of the Khmer people narrowly escapes death at the hands of the conquering Cham king, Indravarman. Exiled from their homeland, he and his mystical wife Ajadevi set up a secret camp in the jungle with the intention of amassing an army bold enough to reclaim their kingdom and free their people. Meanwhile, Indravarman rules with an iron fist, pitting even his most trusted men against each other and quashing any hint of rebellion. Moving from a poor fisherman's family whose sons find the courage to take up arms against their oppressors, to a beautiful bride who becomes a prize of war, to an ambitious warrior whose allegiance is torn--Temple of a Thousand Faces is an unforgettable saga of love, betrayal, and survival at any cost. READERS GUIDE INCLUDED
Undeservedly, the weird and chilling ghost stories of Arthur Christopher Benson and Robert Hugh Benson have been neglected for far too long. As exercises in the art of luring the reader into a state of unease, they are as potent as they were when the ink was barely dry on the page.
