Forbidden Desires

A new job beckons Shanaya to Bangalore. Her bags are packed, and she is all set for the new life. But she wants to pamper herself and enjoy, coz it’s her last day in Delhi, where she has spent some really good times. She is out exploring when she bumps into a stranger; he sweeps her off her feet with his magnetic charm, way with words and a well-chiseled body. What’s the harm of having a good time, she wonders! After all, she’d be gone the next day - no strings attached. While she gets adventurous, she barely knows what life is planning to throw at her.

It’s the week before New Year’s Eve, and Shanaya’s boyfriend is away for an official conference. She doesn’t want to waste a chance to have a harmless fling while he is away. While looking for a date for her New Year’s party, she meets a mystery man on Tinder - a young, charming and dapper gentleman who has no hidden agendas. He just wants to show Shanaya a good time at the party...and in the bed.   

Hi, I'm Keshav, and my life is screwed. I hate my job and my girlfriend left me. Ah, the beautiful Zara. Zara is from Kashmir. She is a Muslim. And did I tell you my family is a bit, well, traditional? Anyway, leave that. Zara and I broke up four years ago. She moved on. I didn't. I drank every night to forget her, I called, I messaged, and stalked her on social media. She just ignored me. However, that night, on the eve of her birthday, Zara messaged me. She called me over, like old times, to her hostel room 105.

When Vipasha, Vee to friends, 18 and single, makes the decision to have her baby, she does more than give up her promising modelling career. She ends up cutting ties with her family and with Ankush, the man she thought she was in love with. Fast-forward 16 years, and she now has two unusual careers: she runs a dog-boarding facility and is a gym instructor. Aryan thinks she is the coolest mom in the world and hopes she will one day find her Prince Charming - exactly what her best friend, Suchi, has in mind for her.

A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.

Prisha Khatri is a regular college graduate, focused on her career, desperate to finally move out of her parents’ house...and freshly dumped by her successful fiancé. When she lands a job at a prestigious media house, she’s glad to have something to take her mind off her heartbreak. What she doesn’t expect is to be landed on a business trip with a famously fiery reporter Rajesh Lagheri. He’s travelling to a business conference for a story and doesn’t seem impressed by her involvement. But as soon as they’re out of the office, things change.

Some of the best relationships that exist in this world are nameless ones. They crouch behind those sanctioned by society: the legitimate ones, the ones that you can define because they are approved, allowed, understood and normal. In this finely crafted short story, Preeti Shenoy examines one of these ‘nameless relationships’, peeling back the layers of complexities that underlie marriage, love, desire - and the many grey zones that lie between two people.

When literature student Anastasia Steele interviews successful entrepreneur Christian Grey, she finds him very attractive and deeply intimidating. Convinced that their meeting went badly, she tries to put him out of her mind – until he turns up at the store where she works part-time, and invites her out. Unworldly and innocent, Ana is shocked to find she wants this man. And, when he warns her to keep her distance, it only makes her want him more.

From victims to victims to victors, this collection of stories contains intricate details of 13 women who went on to leave their permanent mark on the face of the Mumbai Mafiosi.

Romantic, liberating and totally addictive, the Fifty Shades trilogy will obsess you, possess you and stay with you forever.... Daunted by the dark secrets of the tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Ana Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a US publishing house. But desire for Grey still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, she cannot resist. Soon she is learning more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades than she ever thought possible.

In the wake of her mother's death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir's politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And then life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence.

When 26-year-old Ayan is sent to live with his grumpy old grandfather Gopal Shanker in a tiny village in Kerala, he is understandably devastated. What can a sleepy, idyllic village without even internet connectivity offer a young man?

Ankita Sharma has the world at her feet. She is young, good-looking and smart and has tonnes of friends and boys swooning over her. College life is what every youngster dreams of, and she also manages to get into a premier management school for her MBA. Six months later she is a patient in a mental health hospital. How did Ankita get here? What were the events that led to this? Will she ever get back her life again? Life has cruelly and coldly snatched that which meant the most to her, and she must now fight to get it all back.

In his maiden novel, Abhishek Kumar reveals the timeless wisdom of wealth creation and accumulation and shows how anybody - no matter where they stand in life at this time - can become a millionaire. The rules provided in this book are not a get-rich-quick formula, but they do guide the listener to financial independence, which can be achieved on nothing more than an average salary. 

It feels like I'm on autopilot; I have no control over anything. The pain of losing you is so crippling that I can barely hold pieces of myself together. The slightest nudge could break me. But somehow, my possessed brain knows what I need. It's telling me to stick to my choice, to stay away from you, to open a Word document and bleed on paper, try to throw up all my jumbled thoughts in form of words, collect all disconnected facts, try to make sense of it all.