A portal to a world of folk fantasy
Where the Cobbled Path Leads is a folk fantasy novel, interweaving fantasy fiction with Naga spirit stories and folklore. Eleven-year-old Vime is struggling to come to terms with the demise of her beloved mother. She has a special place she frequents -- a cobbled footpath near her house which leads to a forest. On the day of her mother’s death anniversary, not wanting to return home, Vime follows the cobbled footpath all the way to the deep end of the woods and discovers that the trail leads to a magnificent tree. She falls asleep under it only to wake up and find that the footpath has disappeared. Tei, a forest spirit, helps her relocate the missing pathway.
Vime is soon to discover that this tree is no ordinary tree. It is a portal between the human and spirit world, and Vime keeps finding her way back to it. Distressed that her father might remarry, she decides to leave her earthly life and join her mother in the spiritual world. As she travels to, from and through these realms, she understands what it is to embrace and survive grief, and what it means to surrender herself to these old spirits, not all of whom are good.*
Varan Bhaat to Biryani
This book is a catalogue of the author’s food experiences. Anecdotes from her parents, tips from travels and visits to farmers’ markets across the world, knowledge from the internet and culinary books, and her own intuition and years of permutations and combinations in the kitchen have contributed to it. Besides traditional Maharashtrian recipes, Roopa Nabar has also showcased the best of her kitchen experiments with recipes from different parts of the country and the globe. “Through the process of compiling, testing and tasting the recipes, jotting down the anecdotes and smiling like a proud parent as my creations got clicked for the book - I revisited all my favourite sights, smells and sounds in my happy place, my kitchen!” she writes, adding that the book is the reader’s “all-access pass” into her kitchen. She hopes the reader too feels “the magic of local ingredients like alsandes and aluche phatphate, the spice hit in coconutty fish curries, the aromas of a majestic dum biryani and, of course, the comfort in each morsel of varan-bhaat.” With a foreword by chef Sanjeev Kapoor, this is a welcome addition to the burgeoning library of Indian culinary titles.*
The fallout of history’s deadliest storm
{{/usCountry}}The fallout of history’s deadliest storm
{{/usCountry}}The deadliest storm in modern history ripped Pakistan in two and led the world to the brink of nuclear war when American and Soviet forces converged in the Bay of Bengal.
In November 1970, a storm set a collision course with the most densely populated coastline on earth. Over the course of just a few hours, the Great Bhola Cyclone killed 500,000 people and began a chain reaction of turmoil, genocide and war. The Vortex is the dramatic story of how that storm sparked a country to revolution.
Bhola made landfall during a fragile time, when Pakistan was on the brink of a historic election. The fallout ignited a conflagration of political intrigue, corruption, violence, idealism and bravery, which played out in the lives of tens of millions of Bangladeshis. Authors Scott Carney and Jason Miklian take us into the story of the cyclone and its aftermath, told through the eyes of the men and women who lived through it, including the infamous president of Pakistan, General Yahya Khan, and his close friend, the President of the United States Richard Nixon, American expats Jon and Candy Rhode, soccer star-turned-soldier Hafiz Uddin Ahmad and a young Bengali revolutionary, Mohammed Hai.
Thrillingly paced and written in incredible detail, The Vortex is not just a story about the painful birth of a new nation but also a universal tale of resilience and liberation in the face of climate emergency, which affects every single person on the planet.*
*All copy from book flap.