A parable in smart prose, wrapped in enigmatic magic realism

The story barges through all barriers of time...

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 Time Riders: A thrilling ride across time

In Time Riders - first in new sc-fi thriller series - Scarrow has skillfully merged the concepts/imaginations related to modern as well as futuristic technologies with the conventional time travel narrative ideas - going back in past or visiting the future. This novel for young adults has a very exciting plot which is pegged on the notion that if one could change the past it would affect the present and future conditions.

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 Sanskrit love story: keeping the flavor intact

In fact, like most of the classic Sanskrit stories, Kadambari too is a multi-layered narrative with story-within-a-story format. Everything connects eventually even as you enjoy the surfeit of alankaras, i.e., ornate metaphors and similes peppered with hyperbolic descriptions of valour, beauty, wisdom and other qualities of various persons, places and things.

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 The absorbing parable on self-discovery

The narrative is absorbing. The gradual manner in which Diana sheds her ego ("kills" her "self") and rediscovers her true self impels one to read the book from first page to the last.

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 Pacy, intriguing and thrilling

Dan Brown seems to have perfected the formula for writing bestsellers. Take ladleful of established facts, real institutions and persons, add dollops of myths and legends, cook it on the simmering heat of suspense, garnish it with action and serve the resultant dish as cathartic climax in a beautifully crafted narrative. This time it is an explosive mix of Noetic Science, Freemasonry, murder, mystery and action.

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 The Da Vinci Code

This is one of those books that can be read at several levels. You can read it as a whodunit to while away your time at the airport, railway station or while waiting for your turn at the dentist’s. You can treat it as a literary tour de force and marvel at the simplicity of the language, the sophistication of the plot - not to mention the cerebral contents - and the manner in which various characters come alive on its pages. It is also possible to consider it as a rather brilliant attempt at research involving multidisciplinary approach. Read it any which way you want to, this book is gonna linger in your memory for a long long time.

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 Turning fables into sound practical advice

Norgaard has reinterpreted some of Andersen’s more famous fairy tales, using them as parables for modern day workplace

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 A prosy saga

This is a saga of three underdogs, whose lives are intertwined by ties of blood, mutual hatred and/or love, which inevitably but separately meander towards tragic ends. One is Mathai Kochapu Konnikara, another his son Varghese Konnikara and the third is Paddy aka Patricia Murphy – daughter of an Irish father and Anglo-Indian mother.

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 Not so elementary, my dear Watson

Writing detective fiction is not all that elementary. What say, my dear Watson?

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 Eclectic narratives

This anthology has translation of fifteen Assamese short stories by writers young and old. There is no specific theme although poverty and terrorism form motifs of quite a few narratives here. In fact, one is a pleasantly surprised that instead of getting obsessed with the extremist violence Assamese writers have been able to deal with themes that go beyond Assam and terrorism. For example, The Cavern investigates racism in America.

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 Luck

Luck by Dhruba Hazarika. Penguin. Pages: 156. Price: Rs. 199/- I never nurs’d a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die!

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