Sail Away

By : Celia Imrie  | Published by : Bloomsbury India

The deliciously witty, irresistibly indulgent new novel from the top ten Sunday Times bestselling author of Not Quite Nice follows the exploits of two retired women on an Atlantic cruise ship The phone hasn’t rung for months. Suzy Marshall is discovering that work can be sluggish for an actress over sixty – even for the former star of a 1980s TV series. So when her agent offers her the plum role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich, it seems like a godsend. Until, that is, the play is abruptly cancelled in suspicious circumstances, and Suzy is forced to take a job on a cruise ship to get home. Meanwhile Amanda Herbert finds herself homeless in rainy Clapham. Her flat purchase has fallen through, and her children are absorbed in their own dramas. Then she spots an advertisement for an Atlantic cruise, and realises three weeks on-board would tide her over – and save her money – until the crisis is solved.  As the two women set sail on a new adventure, neither can possibly predict the strange characters and dodgy dealings they will encounter – nor the unexpected rewards they will reap. Vividly evoking the old­world glamour of a cruise ship – and the complex politics of its staff quarters – Sail Away is at once a hilarious romp and a thrilling tale of intrigue, from the acclaimed pen of Celia Imrie.

Celia Imrie is an Olivier award-winning and Screen Actors Guild-nominated actress. She is known for her film roles in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Calendar Girls and Nanny McPhee. Celia has recently starred in the major films Bridget Jones’s Baby, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, Year by the Sea and A Cure for Wellness.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

By : @Stu_Turton |  Published By : Bloomsbury India.

A brilliantly original high concept murder mystery from a fantastic new talent: Gosford Park meets Inception, by way of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express ‘Somebody’s going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won’t appear to be a murder and so the murderer won’t be caught. Rectify that injustice and I’ll show you the way out.’ It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot. The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...

Stuart Turton is a freelance travel journalist who has previously worked in Shanghai and Dubai. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is his debut novel. He is the winner of the Brighton and Hove Short Story Prize and was longlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Opening Lines competition. He lives in West London with his wife. 

Folk

By : Zoe Gilbert | Published by : Bloomsbury India.

A captivating, magical and haunting debut novel of breathtaking imagination, from the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award The remote island village of Neverness is a world far from our time and place. The air hangs rich with the coconut-scent of gorse and the salty bite of the sea. Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline. The villagers’ lives are inseparable from nature and its enchantments. Verlyn Webbe, born with a wing for an arm, unfurls his feathers in defiance of past shame; Plum is snatched by a water bull and dragged to his lair; little Crab Skerry takes his first run through the gorse-maze; Madden sleepwalks through violent storms, haunted by horses and her father’s wishes.  As the tales of this island community interweave over the course of a generation, their earthy desires, resentments, idle gossip and painful losses create a staggeringly original world. Crackling with echoes of ancient folklore, but entirely, wonderfully, her own, Zoe Gilbert’s Folk is a dark, beautiful and intoxicating debut.

Zoe Gilbert is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2014. Her work has appeared in anthologies from Comma, Cinnamon, Labello, and Pankhearst presses, and has been published in journals including The Stinging Fly, Mechanics’ Institute Review, Bohemyth, Holdfast, Lighthouse, and the British Fantasy Society Journal. In 2015 she appeared at the Beijing Bookworm Festival in China on behalf of the British Council and was commissioned by Microsoft to create a short story book. She is working on a PhD in Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, focusing on the influence of folk tales on contemporary short stories. 

A Black Fox Running

By : Brian Carter  |  Published by : Bloomsbury India.

A beautiful lost classic of nature writing which sits alongside Tarka the Otter, Watership Down, War Horse and The Story of a Red Deer This is the story of Wulfgar, the dark-furred fox of Dartmoor, and of his nemesis, Scoble the trapper, in the seasons leading up to the pitiless winter of 1947. As breathtaking in its descriptions of the natural world as it is perceptive its portrayal of damaged humanity, it is both a portrait of place and a gripping story of survival. Uniquely straddling the worlds of animals and men, Brian Carter’s A Black Fox Running is a masterpiece: lyrical, unforgiving and unforgettable.

Brian Carter Brian Carter was an artist, poet, columnist, children’s author, naturalist and broadcaster who influenced a generation of nature writers. His six novels all explore man’s relationship with nature, the first of which, A Black Fox Running, was published in 1981.

Melissa Harrison's debut novel Clay won the Portsmouth First Fiction Award, was selected for Amazon’s ‘Rising Stars’ programme and chosen by Ali Smith as a Book of the Year for 2013. Her second novel At Hawthorn Time was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015 and longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016. 

DAC Dhaka

By : Adnan Morshed & Nesfun Nahar  |  Published by : Bloomsbury India.

This guidebook focuses on 25 buildings in Dhaka, representing different architectural phases since the Mughal era, beginning in the early 17th century. (The earliest surviving structure in Dhaka is a small pre-Mughal mosque in Old Dhaka.) The list is neither exhaustive, nor necessarily representative of the “best” in town. Rather, the goal is to narrate the stories of the city through the buildings that played transformative roles in its architectural formation. The featured buildings (a) communicate larger ideas about Dhaka’s building tradition, (b) represent an architectural trend, (c) influence the architectural scene, and (d) offer a spatial story in the evolution of this city.

Adnan Morshed received his Doctorate and Master’s in Architecture from MIT. Morshed earned his Bachelor’s in Architecture from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), in Dhaka, where he also taught. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.

Nesfun Nahar is an architect and urbanist. She began her Doctorate degree research on Architectural Modernism at the Bangladeh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), in Dhaka, where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture.

The Real Modi (Hindi)

By : Arvind Chaturvedi  |  Published by : Bloomsbury India

This is a book written on Narendra Modi in which the Apostles of Narendra Modi have explained him in detail. This is the first such book in the country that Fully based on the facts and the facts stated by them.

Arvind Chaturvedi, who is a Master of Sociologist and a Bachelor of Journalism, is a senior journalist and is presently working in Uttar Pradesh as a Bureau Head of a prestigious news channel in the country. 

100 Great Indian Poems

By : Abhay K  | Published by : Bloomsbury India.

Bridging divisions of Hindu and Muslim, classic and contemporary, including poems in many of India's cornucopia of languages, Abhay K. gives us 100 Indian poems that from the 'stale chapati' of Dilip Chitre to the literate parrots of Basavanna, the 'clay shivalingam' of Eunice de Souza to the 'tiny sweat' of Mir Taqi Mir, give us tangible reminders of how we think, feel, and love. "Abhay K. Is a master anthologist who is superb at picking accessible poems that will reach the general reader." Nicholas Birns, New York University.

Abhay K. is an Indian poet-diplomat and the author of two memoirs and five collections of poems. His poems have appeared in over two dozen literary journals including Poetry Salzburg Review, Asia Literary Review, The Stony Thursday Book 2015, The Missing Slate, Eastlit, Gargoyle, The Caravan, Indian Literature among others and have been translated into Irish, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, Portuguese, Mandarin and Nepali. His Earth Anthemhas been translated into twenty-eight languages.He received the SAARC Literary Award 2013.

Aap Bhi Baniye

... Adhik Saksham, Adhik Kushal, Adhik Safal.

By : Meera Shenoy  | Published by : Bloomsbury India

Management gurus tell us there are lessons to learn from inspirational lives.And that we do not have to wait a life time to integrate these lessons into our lives. The real life stories profiled in this book cover entrepreneurs ranging from some in wheel chairs to blind persons who build their businesses with zest and energy. It looks at CEOs who hire youth with disability and make products for this market, because it makes business sense. And it celebrates those who have converted disability in their personal lives to an opportunity to touch and transform other vulnerable lives. Reading these stories calms and focuses our mind and show us how lucky I am compared to the so many others. They alsoinspire us to stop whining about the vicissitudes of life and to expand our abilities to the utmost. Becoming Smarter and Wiser is a journey - Walk with Us.

Meera Shenoy has worked in senior positions in the government, in private sector and worked as a consultant with multilateral agencies like the World Bank and UNDP. The focus has been skilling underprivileged youth. Her work has demonstrated twice, both for non-disabled rural youth and for youth with disability, that skilling youth to the needs of the market and linking them to jobs can be done in scale. And placing one young boy or girl in a organised sector job takes the entire family out of poverty in a sustained manner. Meera Shenoy is the Founder-Chairperson of Youth4Jobs (www.youth4jobs.org), which focuses on helping companies build an inclusive workforce. Prasad Kaipa is a senior research fellow and a visiting professor at the Indian School of Business (ISB) and was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC) and also the CEO of the Kaipa Group in California and works with companies and senior executives in the areas of innovation and leadership development. He is a Smith Richardson Visiting Fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership since June 2010. He has been an advisor and coach focusing on innovation and leadership since 1990 to over 110 CEOs, executive team members and board members in Global Fortune 500 companies. Prasad co-founded the Entrepreneur Institute for TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) in 2002 to help entrepreneurs connect their innovative ideas, products and services with effective ways to engage and co-create with others in the ecosystem. 

My Allahabad Story

By : Himendra Nath Varma | Published by : Bloomsbury India.

My Allahabad Story recollects the author's privileged childhood in a prominent family of the city he is obsessed with. He traces his growing years in the large middle class Kayastha family bringing out in amusing detail, some quaint social customs and traditions that existed half a century ago. The author wonderfully describes the changed complexion of the city with a tinge of despair. Life and times and what happened to Allahabad has been graphically described with nostalgia. An interesting account of an Irish resident brings out the social life that prevailed in Allahabad hundred years ago, interlaced beautifully between the English, Anglo-Indians and Indians.

Born on 24th July 1943, in a distinguished family of Allahabad, Himendra Nath Varma is an alumnus of the Allahabad University. He joined the State Bank of India as a Probationary Officer and retired thirty seven years later as a General Manager. He has served on the Board of IDBI Capital Markets Ltd. and is currently on the Board of SBICAPS Securities Ltd. He lives in New Delhi & Allahabad, and loves reading biographies and listening to Hindustani classical music.

From Quetta to Delhi: A Partition Story

By : Reena Nanda  | Published by : Bloomsbury India.

This story is a cameo set against the backdrop of Partition - a decision taken by political leaders in Britain and India that shattered the lives of ordinary people like the family in this narrative who at that time were living in Quetta, Baluchistan. Viewing victims of the Partition of Punjab in the light of post traumatic stress has been long overdue. The narrator's mother’s method of coping with the traumatic present was to escape into the past by reliving her memories of Quetta and her beloved Pathans along with the mundane, insignificant little details of the women’s daily lives. Her recall hinges on the drama of the trivial, on food,rituals, clothes, religious practices and neighbourhood bonding. It was a syncretic culture, of multilinguism - Urdu,Punjabi and Seraiki, Persian and Sanskrit, of multiple identities through the biradaris - caste,mohalla and religion. The author's grandmother kept the Guru Granth Sahib at home, her mother and sisters practiced Hindu rituals, while her husband was an agnostic. And everyone made pilgrimages to Sufi pirs.