The Best of Ruskin Bond

Since time immemorial, India has been an ocean bed over which numerous stories have flowed and enriched the world. Storytellers from Tulsidas to Rohinton Mistry have added their magic to this magnificent repository. Inspired in part by Somadeva’s Kathasaritasagara, William Radice collects these timeless tales of India and tells them anew through his unique idiom. Like itinerant storytellers, he fills these tales with emotion and wit, bringing them alive for the contemporary listener.

The story of the Ramayana had been told innumerable times. The enthralling story of Rama, the incarnation of God, who slew Ravana, the evil demon of darkness, is known to every Indian. And in the pages of history, as always, it is the version told by the victors that lives on. The voice of the vanquished remains lost in silence. But what if Ravana and his people had a different story to tell? The story of the Ravanayana had never been told. Asura is the epic tale of the vanquished Asura people, a story that has been cherished by the oppressed outcastes of India for 3,000 years.

Hindus have one God. They also have 330 million gods: male gods; female gods; personal gods; family gods; household gods; village gods; gods of space and time; gods for specific castes and particular professions; gods who reside in trees; in animals; in minerals; in geometrical patterns and in man-made objects. Then there are a whole host of demons. But no Devil.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Girl, Woman, Other, written by Bernardine Evaristo, read by Anna-Maria Nabirye. Teeming with life and crackling with energy, told through many distinctive voices, this novel follows the lives of 12 very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

India, 3400 BCE. A land in tumult, poverty and chaos. Most people suffer quietly. A few rebel. Some fight for a better world. Some for themselves. Some don’t give a damn. Raavan. Fathered by one of the most illustrious sages of the time. Blessed by the Gods with talents beyond all. Cursed by fate to be tested to the extremes. A formidable teenage pirate, he is filled with equal parts courage, cruelty and fearsome resolve. A resolve to be a giant among men, to conquer, plunder and seize the greatness that he thinks is his right.

The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

Anupam Kher discusses how we can knowingly teach ourselves to live fully in the present. Spread across 50 chapters, the actor-turned-life-coach talks about his tested mantras of success and practical things to do that can be followed every day. Kher takes examples from the real world to emphasize the significance of positivity and self-motivation in the journey of self-realization. 

How to Eat is part of a charming series of books from Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, exploring the essential foundations of mindful meditation and practice. How to Eat explains what it means to eat as a meditative practice and that the results of mindful eating are both global and personal. Eating a meal can help develop compassion and understanding, reminding practitioners that there are things they can do to help nourish people who are hungry and lonely. It can however also encourages moderation and will aid readers to achieve an optimum health and body weight.

Mano Majra is a place, Khushwant Singh tells us at the beginning of this novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the "ghost train" arrives, a silent funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refuges, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endures and transcends the ravages of war.

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys’ delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.

When an important Mafia boss is assassinated, no one knows anything. Omerta, the Mafia code of silence, is at work. No information is to be found, not from corrupt banks, rival gangs, or even from the courts. However, the nephew of the dead man and the head of the FBI are determined to track down the murderers. So determined, they join forces to begin their own investigation. After all, in the Mafia world, everyone has a price.

In a city graveyard, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet between two graves. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby appears quite suddenly, a little after midnight, in a crib of litter. In a snowy valley, a father writes to his five-year-old daughter about the number of people who attended her funeral. And in the Jannat Guest House, two people who've known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around one another as though they have only just met.

Saleem Sinai is born on the stroke of midnight on 14th-15th August 1947, at the exact moment that India and Pakistan become separate, independent nations. From that moment on, his fate is mysteriously handcuffed to the history of his country. But Saleem's story starts almost 30 years earlier, when his grandfather, Dr Aadam Aziz, falls in love with a woman concealed behind a perforated sheet. That pivotal moment in Kashmir in 1919 sparks a series of bizarre events that will lead to the birth of a boy with an extraordinary destiny.

When the younger players in India's cricket team find out that advertising executive Zoya Singh Solanki was born at the very moment India won the World Cup back in 1983, they are intrigued. When having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, they are impressed. And when not eating with her results in defeat, they decide she's a lucky charm. The nation goes a step further. Amazed at the ragtag team's sudden spurt of victories, it declares her a goddess.