New books on the shelves

Speculative fiction, pen portrait of 1950s’ India, a book on bibliophily, and more.

Published : Jan 12, 2023 10:15 IST

The Alice Project 

Satwik Gade 

HarperCollins India 

Rs.399 

Alice’s greatest pleasure is hanging out with his friends at the chai shop outside their old college. He has a relaxed life until a series of events —the death of a college friend, a budding romance —force him to reckon with the fact that life will change, whether he wants it to or not. 

Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead  

Elle Cosimano

Headline 

Rs.599 

In this whacky thriller, Finlay Donovan, a single mother of two, is struggling to finish her novel when things start going downhill. She has to keep an ex-husband alive, deal with hit-women disguised as soccer moms and a hot cop, Detective Nick Anthony, who seems determined to get back into her life. 

Our Missing Hearts 

Celeste Ng

Abacus 

Rs.699 

In this work of speculative fiction, 12-year-old Bird Gardner lives in a world where children of dissidents are relocated and libraries are forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, a Chinese American poet, who left the family when he was nine. Bird grows up disavowing his mother and her poems but when he receives a letter containing a drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her.

Pankaja 

Vasanth Kannabiran 

Speaking Tiger

Rs.350

In this novel, women’s rights activist Vasanth Kannabiran paints a vivid portrait of what it meant to be an upper-caste Hindu woman in 1950s’ India. With astute insights on marriage, widowhood and sexuality, the story reveals the inner workings of a casteist, patriarchal society.

Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine

Mark Galeotti

Osprey Publishing

Rs.999

An engaging and important history of how Vladimir Putin and his conflicts including his devastating invasion of Ukraine, have inexorably reshaped Russia, which also demystifies the capabilities of the Russian military and gives a glimpse into what the future may hold.

The Book Beautiful: A Memoir of Collecting Rare and Fine Books

Pradeep Sebastian

Hachette India

Rs.699

A book as much about the love for fine press books as it is about the pleasures of bibliophily—the camaraderie between fellow collectors and dealers, bibliographic connoisseurship, the thrill of the chase, and the joy of striking a juicy bargain.

Box to box: 75 years of the Indian football team

Jaydeep Basu

IMH

Rs.650

Tracing the journey of the Indian football team post-Independence, how it grew in popularity to become the Asian champion in the 1960s and how narrow political considerations dented its fortunes in the 1970s, this myth-busting book is a reminder of what the beautiful game was, and could have been, in India.

A Most Noble Life: The Biography of Ashrafunnisa Begum (1840–1903)

Muhammadi Begum, translated from Urdu by C. M. Naim

Orient BlackSwan

Rs. 630

This is the first complete English translation of Hayat-e-Ashraf (1904), the extraordinary story of Ashrafunnisa Begum, who was born in an obscure village in Uttar Pradesh, taught herself to read and write in secret, and went on to teach and inspire generations of young girls at the Victoria Girls’ School in Lahore in the 19th century.

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