Ads #24 HOT NEW RELEASES IN BOOKS TO BUY ON AMAZON

1. How To Live Your Life

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print Length: 124 pages

Release Date: 19 May 2022

Price: ₹309.00

Review

It's a letter with advice ... it's Ruskin Bond's definition of Life!

Be whatever you want to be...

Give it your heart and soul, and you will have made something of your life, my friend. You are all my sons and daughters when it comes to telling you --

HOW TO LIVE YOUR LIFE.

-- Ruskin Bond

A book packed with all the good advice anyone, any age, would love and benefit from because it is sound wisdom distilled from the wonderful life and times of the inimitable Ruskin Bond, unmistakably one of India's most popular authors.

Each piece of valuable advice is worth its weight in gold!

About Author

Ruskin Bond is one of India's most well-known children's writers. He received the Padma Shri in 1999 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. He lives in Landour, Mussoorie. Shamika Chaves is a children's book illustrator and graphic designer based in Mumbai. She has worked on several children's books, including her first two books as an author and illustrator, Your Journal Of Memories and Happy Holidays! Visit @shamikasdoodles on Instagram or www.shamikasdoodles.com to learn more about her work. Chaaya Prabhat is a graphic designer, illustrator and lettering artist. After completing her M.A in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design, she is now working independently in Chennai. She has worked with several international clients such on picture-book and digital illustration projects.

2. The Living Mountain

Author: Amitav Ghosh

Publisher: Fourth Estate India

Print Length: 48 pages

Price: ₹338.00

Review

A new story from internationally renowned author Amitav Ghosh, The Living Mountain is a cautionary tale of how we have systematically exploited nature, leading to an environmental collapse.

Recounted as a dream, this is a fable about Mahaparbat, the Living Mountain; the indigenous valley dwellers who live and prosper in its shelter; the assault on the mountain for commercial benefit by the Anthropoi, humans whose sole aim is to reap the bounty of nature; and the disaster that unfolds as a result.

The Living Mountain is especially relevant today when we have been battling a pandemic and are facing a climate catastrophe: both of which are products of our insufficient understanding of mankind's relationship with nature, and our sustained appropriation and abuse of natural resources. This is a book of our times, for our times, and it will resonate strongly with readers of all ages.

About Author

Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956, and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; he studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction including The Shadow Lines, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, the Ibis Trilogy, Gun Island, The Great Derangement, The Nutmeg's Curse and Jungle Nama.

Amitav Ghosh's work has been translated into more than thirty languages. His essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic and the New York Times. He has been awarded and honoured across the world for his work.In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the past decade. The same year, the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honour, was conferred on him: he was the first English-language writer to receive it.

3. Listen to Your Heart

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher: Puffin

Print Length: 104 pages

Release Date: 19 May 2022

Price: ₹265.00

Review

Shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Ruskin embarks on a literary journey and reaches England after charting unknown waters. Greeted by the uncertainties of a new city, he muses over his loneliness, switches jobs, falls in love, befriends the ocean and relentlessly chases a big dream!

What follows next is the metamorphosis of a journal entry into a novel as we time-travel to the fascinating events that led to the making of his iconic book, The Room on the Roof.

Capturing memorable experiences from young Ruskin's life, Listen to Your Heart is an inspiration for aspiring young writers, a meditation on embracing fears, seizing every opportunity but most importantly living one's dreams.

About Author

Ruskin Bond, born in Kasauli in 1934, grew up in Jamnagar, Dehradun, New Delhi and Shimla. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, which was written when he was seventeen, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written over 500 short stories, essays and novellas (including Vagrants in the Valley and A Flight of Pigeons) and more than forty books for children. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1992, the Padma Shri in 1999, the Delhi government's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 and Padma Bhushan in 2014 for his contribution to literature.

4. The Magicians of Mazda

Author: Ashwin Sanghi

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Print Length: 492 pages

Release Date: 21 May 2022

Price: ₹344.00

Review

YATHA AHU VAIRYO ATHA RATUSH ASHAT CHIT HACHA VANGHEUSH...

AS THE MASTER, SO IS THE JUDGE TO BE CHOSEN IN ACCORD WITH TRUTH.

A fleet of boats dock at the port of Sanjan in Gujarat in 720 CE. They carry eighteen thousand frightened souls fleeing the cruelty of Iran's Umayyad Caliphate. Chanting Sanskrit-like prayers, the high priest consecrates a sacred fire to thank their god, Ahura Mazda, leading them to a new home and hope. He uses a mysterious substance to spark the flame, but few know of its miraculous properties or provenance.

Centuries later, Parsi scientist Jim Dastoor is abducted from his Seattle laboratory and whisked away to Tehran. The Ayatollah believes Jim is the key to uncovering the ancient relic known as the Athravan Star and his men will do anything to possess it, even murder.

From the ancient ruins of Persepolis to the Taliban camps of Afghanistan, from the womb of an Udvada fire temple to the icy mountains of Kashmir, from the dreadful coffin cells of Tehran to the deathly calm of Diu's Tower of Silence, Jim and his historian wife, Linda, are sucked into a terrifying chase across vividly changing landscapes.

Deftly navigating between time and geography, The Magicians of Mazda travels backwards, through the epochs of Islamic jihad, Macedonian revenge, Achaemenid glory, messianic birth, Aryan schism-to the Vedic fount from where it began.

This is Ashwin Sanghi's most gripping and provocative novel yet.

About Author

Ashwin Sanghi is among India's highest-selling English fiction authors. He has written several bestsellers in the Bharat Series (The Rozabal Line, Chanakya's Chant, The Krishna Key, The Sialkot Saga, Keepers of the Kalachakra, The Vault of Vishnu) and two New York Times bestselling crime thrillers with James Patterson, Private India (sold in the US as City on Fire) and Private Delhi (sold in the US as Count to Ten). He has also co-authored several non-fiction titles in the 13 Steps Series on Luck, Wealth, Marks, Health and Parenting.

5. The Art of Management

Author: Shiv Shivakumar

Publisher: Penguin Portfolio

Print Length: 288 pages

Release Date: 9 May 2022

Price: ₹329.00

Review

Careers are changing, and the capabilities required to stay relevant are changing even more rapidly. We seem to have endless choices, at least at the beginning of a career, but these start narrowing after middle management. How does one think about one's own life and career in this changing decade?

The whole discipline of career management now has three elements to it:

Managing yourself;

Managing your team; and

Managing your business

In this book, Shiv Shivakumar points out that today, unlike in the past, all the three elements are your responsibility. With in-depth interviews with top leaders across the spectrum and an insightful foreword by Sachin Tendulkar, The Art of Management is a must-read.

About Author

Shiv Shivakumar, or Shiv as he is popularly known, is one of India's longest-serving CEOs. He is currently the group executive president at Aditya Birla Group. He has worked across multiple industries and categories, and has handled over sixty brands in his career. He was CEO for Nokia in India and subsequently led the company's emerging markets unit; he was also chairman and CEO for PepsiCo South Asia. He is regarded as one of India's leading management and leadership thinkers and speakers.

6. The India Way : Strategies for an Uncertain World

Author: S. Jaishankar

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Print Length: 248 pages

Release Date: 18 May 2022

Price: ₹385.00

Review

The global order is always evolving, and in that sense, change could well be seen as a constant factor. But that ongoing evolution has now been given a sharper edge by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, developments in Afghanistan, the Ukraine conflict and greater friction among key powers. 'One Trend and Four Shocks' are thus creating a new landscape.

The 'Four Shocks' have, each in their own way, led to heightened global anxiety and insecurity. This era of upheaval entails greater expectations from India, putting it on the path to becoming a leading power.

In The India Way, S. Jaishankar, India's Minister of External Affairs, analyses these challenges and spells out possible policy responses. In doing so, he is very conscious of balancing India's national interest with international responsibilities. He places this thinking in the context of history and tradition, appropriate for a civilizational power that seeks to reclaim its place on the world stage.

'One of the many interesting aspects of The India Way is the use of a rare lens - the Mahabharata - to frame the current global strategic problems and India's foreign policy challenges. Jaishankar's judgments on themes ranging from non-alignment to balance of power will surely draw much critical interest within India and beyond. There is no doubt that the book opens an important window into Delhi's changing worldview ... The emerging cohort of strategic communities can and must learn from all traditions of statecraft - including Western, Chinese and Indian. The last few decades have unsurprisingly seen an explosion of international studies on the Chinese tradition of statecraft. Jaishankar's The India Way is a timely call to fill the deficit on the Indian end.' - C. Raja Mohan, Indian Express

'Nothing should distract from the book's fundamental objective, namely, the elucidation of India's vision of itself and its behavior in global politics ... The India Way offers an utterly authentic vision of how the official mind in India imagines the country's international posture. To say that this volume is brilliant in both style and substance would be an understatement ... It should be indispensable reading.' - Ashley J. Tellis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

'The India Way is a meditation on the sources of India's conduct on the global stage, and on the evolution of Indian foreign policy at a time of unprecedented changes in the global order. Dr Jaishankar's credentials are impeccable when it comes to dissecting India's options in an increasingly turbulent world. And he does so with a scholar's sincerity and a practitioner's panache.' - Harsh V. Pant, Hindustan Times

'The India Way is a timely message to the new India which is becoming stronger and is seeking its due place in the world. The book is not a mere academic analysis or erudite exercise. It is the call of a serving External Affairs Minister with experience of four decades of distinguished career as a diplomat ... Jaishankar's bold, dispassionate, candid and clear articulation fits the description of diplomacy by Thiruvalluvar in his poem: "Diplomacy is articulation according to the need of the time with profound knowledge and without fear."' - R. Viswanathan, The Week

'Rarely does an incumbent foreign minister have the time or inclination to write a book on foreign policy. But when a seasoned practitioner of diplomacy with a scholastic mind like Dr S. Jaishankar is in the saddle, a long work drawing upon deep reflection is not out of turn. The India Way is both an act of selfexpression by a keen observer and lover of international relations, and a vehicle to communicate to the world how India is adapting to historic changes ... This book is educative about what the future holds for an aspirational country. It is a clarion call to play the game of realpolitik.' - Sreeram Chaulia, Asian Age

'Some books are read for who has written them; some are for the contents, and some for style. One should read Dr S Jaishankar's book for all three. A former Foreign Secretary of India and now its Foreign Minister, Jaishankar has written on what could be a strategy for India, with an interesting style of weaving a story through looking back (from Awadh and even Mahabharata) to look ahead.' - D. Suba Chandran, The Book Review Literary Trust

'S. Jaishankar lays out the broad framework of India's policymaking. He emphasizes a realistic approach free of dogmas, willing to take risks and ready to engage different powers at the same time. He offers an overview of the evolution of India's foreign policy through the pitfalls and the opportunities ahead ... The foreign policy framework The India Way offers is an authoritative account of New Delhi's worldview.' - Stanly Johny, The Hindu

About Author

S. Jaishankar has been India's Minister of External Affairs since May 2019. He is a member of the Rajya Sabha representing Gujarat. He was India's foreign secretary from 2015 to 2018. In a career spanning four decades in the Indian Foreign Service, he served as India's ambassador to China and the US, among other roles, and played an important part in the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

7. Sumitra and Anees : An Indian Marriage - Tales and Recipes from a Khichdi Family

Author: Seema Chishti

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print Length: 200 pages

Release Date: 6 May 2022

Price: ₹337.00

Review

In the India of today, social and communal fault lines have become starker than ever before. Inter-faith marriages, once seen as the hallmark of a plural society, are now being increasingly used to further a divisive political narrative.

Journalist Seema Chishti, herself the product of an inter-faith marriage from a time when the 'idea of India' was not just an idea but a lived reality, tells in this book the story of her parents: Sumitra, a Kshatriya Hindu from Mysore in Karnataka, and Anees, a Syed Muslim from Deoria in Uttar Pradesh. Woven into their story are recipes from Sumitra's kitchen, a site of confluence for the diverse culinary traditions she mastered.

This short book is an ode to all that made the coming together of Sumitra and Anees possible - a tribute to the big promise of India they brought into their modest home.

About Author

Seema Chishti has grown up, studied, lived and worked in Delhi as a journalist-writer for three decades. Her family ties to Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have meant a long engagement with these states over the years. She is interested in politics, society, questions of identity and technology and in examining the changes in information and digital space and its impact on our democracy and on the way we live. She is the co-author of Note by Note, The India Story (1947-2017) and has worked with the BBC in London and India, The Indian Express and HTV.

8. The Earned Life (Lead Title): Lose Regret, Choose Fulfilment

Author: Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter

Publisher: Penguin Business

Print Length: 304 pages

Release Date: 12 May 2022

Price: ₹640.00

Review

'Helps you keep achieving - and find peace and happiness in the process' Amy Edmondson

We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome.

In his most personal and powerful work to date, world-renowned leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith offers a better way to approach fulfilment that goes against everything we're taught about achievement. Taking inspiration from Buddhism, Goldsmith reveals that the key to living the earned life, unbound by regret, requires connecting the habit of earning rewards to something greater than our personal successes.

Goldsmith implores readers to avoid the Great Western Disease of "I'll be happy when...." He offers practical advice and exercises aimed at helping us shed the obstacles that prevent us from creating fulfilling lives. From learning to privilege your future over your present, knowing how to weigh up opportunity and risk accurately, honing your 'one-trick genius' and needing to earn credibility twice, the book is packed with transformative insights and tools that will help readers close the gap between what they plan to achieve and what they actually get done-and avoid the trap of existential regret, the kind that reroutes destinies and persecutes our memories.

Full of illuminating stories from Goldsmith's legendary career as a coach to some of the world's highest-achieving leaders and reflections on his own life, The Earned Life is a roadmap for ambitious people seeking a higher purpose.

'Inspiring insight from the world's top coach. Goldsmith left me tingling from the journey of reflection I'd been taken on' Bruce Daisley

About Author

Marshall Goldsmith is the world's no.1 executive coach and has worked with CEOs for over 150 companies. He teaches executive education at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, is a founding partner of the Marshall Goldsmith Group, and was named the world's most influential business thinker on the Thinkers50 list. He is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, some co-authored with literary agent Mark Reiter, including Triggers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Goldsmith's books have been translated into 28 languages.

9. Superpowers on the Shore

Author: Sejal Mehta

Publisher: Penguin Viking

Print Length: 256 pages

Release Date: 16 May 2022

Price: ₹400.00

Review

Our coasts are large, vast wildernesses that witness the mystical pageantry of life. They have given us monsters and myths, they are fathoms deep and full of whispers, home to unknown creatures and sprawling ecosystems. They are chasms of beauty and frontiers of possibility. From the space between land and sea, revealed only at low tide, comes a coruscating kaleidoscope of colours and brilliance: the intertidal zone. And the marine lifeforms of these zones are capable of superpowers. Yes, superpowers! Of the kind that comic book characters can only dream of.

The Indian coastline hosts some magnificent intertidal species: solar-powered slugs, escape artist octopuses, venomous jellies, harpooning conus sea snails, to name just a few. It is as biodiverse as a forest wildlife safari, and twice as secretive. From bioluminescence and advanced sonic capabilities to camouflage and shapeshifting, these cloaked assassins are capable of otherworldly skill. Superpowers on the Shore by Sejal Mehta is a dazzling, assured look at some of the creatures with whom we share our world, our water, our monsoons, our beaches and the sandcastles therein.

Come witness the magic of our intertidal superheroes, their fragile beauty and their iridescent drama. Put on your waterproof shoes, pack a bottle of whimsy, bring your sense of wonder. And prepare to be mesmerized

About Author

Sejal Mehta is a journalist and editor. She has worked, and written for, the magazine and newspaper industry for the past 20 years, including Lonely Planet Magazine India, National Geographic Traveller India, Nature inFocus, among others. She is also a published author of children's books. For the last four years, she has walked across shores in India with the team of Marine Life of Mumbai, a citizen-led initiative documenting and creating awareness about the city's coastal biodiversity. Her forte has become making science palatable and fun to lay audiences. Through her conversations about the intertidal zone with adults and children over the years, she has found an engaged audience, ready to convert to tidepooling on their own.

10. Five Seats of Power: Leadership Insights from the Mahabharata

Author: Raghu Ananthanarayanan

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Print Length: 296 pages

Release Date: 15 May 2022

Price: ₹329.00

Review

In Five Seats of Power, Raghu Ananthanarayanan uses insights from the Yoga Shastra and the Mahabharata to offer principles and practices to enable behavioural transformation. Transformation that, in turn, will ignite an individual's natural genius. He presents each of the five Pandavas - Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva - as an archetype of a particular kind of power: of order and stability, passion and action, and curiosity and knowledge, among others. Drawing on each of these archetypal energies, he explores the functional and dysfunctional aspects of the use of power. He examines how, in order to mobilize one's heroic potential, a person must celebrate their desirable qualities, while resolving the dark and compulsive energies within themselves.

The book also includes interviews with visionary business leaders, such as N.R. Narayana Murthy and S. Ramadorai, that exemplify the lessons gathered from analysing the heroes from the Mahabharata.

This is an invaluable guide to becoming the best you can be.

About Author

Raghu Ananthanarayanan is one of the chief mentors at Ritambhara Ashram in the Nilgiris. His work involves helping individuals, groups and organizations discover their dharma, and become the best they can be. He has co-founded many organizations focused on inner transformation and its application in various fields. He has also authored several books and papers on yoga, inner transformation and organizational alignment. He can be contacted at raghu.tao@gmail.com.

11. The Comfort Book

Author: Matt Haig

Publisher: Canongate Books

Print Length: 272 pages

Release Date: 10 May 2022

Price: ₹401.00

Review

THE INSTANT NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Profound, witty and uplifting' Observer

'Full of eloquent, cogent and positive reminders of the beauty of life' Independent

The Comfort Book is a collection of consolations learned in hard times and suggestions for making the bad days better. Drawing on maxims, memoir and the inspirational lives of others, these meditations offer new ways of seeing ourselves and the world.

This is the book to pick up when you need the wisdom of a friend, the comfort of a hug or a reminder that hope comes from unexpected places.

Full of eloquent, cogent and positive reminders of the beauty of life . . . Will prove enormously sustaining and valuable to a lot of people . . . Genuinely uplifting . . . Haig is a sensitive, introspective and thoughtful guide to the human dilemmas that affect us all ― Independent

The Comfort Book, a collection of aphorisms and inspirational stories of survival against the odds, is a guide to living and finding hope in these disjointed times ― Guardian

The literary equivalent of a steaming hot chocolate on a chilly day . . . The ideal read for dipping into whenever you need a pick-me-up or change of perspective ― Metro

Profound, witty and uplifting, and a stirring testament to hope and the imagination ― Observer

Pick up this book any time you're in need of a boost of positivity, calm and - as it says on the cover - comfort ― ELLE

Promises two things I can't get enough of: hugs and lists . . . After a year starved of hope and hugs to the extreme, I can't think of a greater comfort read than that ― Evening Standard, Best Summer Reads

Bite-sized advice and aphorisms . . . Full of solid good sense and hard-won wisdom ― Scotsman

Every page of Haig's smooth prose will inspire you to think. Whether it is about fitting in, facing one's demons or happiness itself, each short anecdote, quote or simple sentence does just what the book aims to do: give comfort ― Herald

The Comfort Book . . . is brilliant, full of nuggets of profundity to consume when you're feeling low. And [Haig] has a way of discussing mental health that rises above the general confessional noise

― Irish Independent

[A] thought-provoking, affirming collection that is both personal and universal . . . With Haig's trademark empathy and celebration of the resilience of the human heart, this is a book we all need and deserve ― Booklist

About Author

Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive, Notes on a Nervous Planet and The Comfort Book, as well as several novels for adults, including The Midnight Library, which has become a worldwide phenomenon and sold over two million copies.

Haig also writes award-winning books for children, including A Boy Called Christmas, which has been made into a feature film with an all-star cast. He has been awarded the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal. His work has been translated into over fifty languages.