Showing results by narrator "Homer Todiwala" in All Categories

Georges Salines lost his daughter, Lola, in the attack on the Bataclan Theatre in Paris on 13th November 2015. Azdyne Amimour lost his son. Both were aged 28. Lola was one of the 90 victims, Amimour's son one of the attackers. From his meeting with Azdyne Amimour, an unprecedented dialogue emerged. Georges Salines carries the memory of his daughter and many other victims, while Azdyne Amimour seeks to understand how his son was able to commit acts which he condemns without appeal. Driven by mutual curiosity, the two tell their stories and unfold the story of 'their' 13th November.

Drawing from over two decades of service in the British Army, including five tours in Afghanistan and deployments in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, Captain Kailash Limbu shares the core principles that have shaped his journey as a soldier and a man. Through the metaphor of the khukuri, a symbolic and essential tool for every Gurkha, he illustrates how mindset and behaviour are crucial to overcoming challenges, achieving success and leading with honour.

“How do you travel in style across the galaxy?” “What do aliens really look like?” “What is the Fermi paradox and why should we care about it?” Discover the answers to these questions and many more at the Supervillain Academy: the magnificently morbid school for young bad folks-in-training. Learn more about how the search for extraterrestrial life and the search for planets are linked, the exoplanets and extremophiles that can be found all over the galaxy, and the weird and wonderful ways scientists think we (might) be able to travel around space.

At age 16, Fahad hopes to spend the summer with his mother in London. His father, Rafik, has other plans: hauling his son to Abad, the family's feudal estate. Rafik wants to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family—to make him a man. He enlists Ali, a local teenager, in this project, hoping his presence will prove instructive. Instead, over the course of one hot indolent season, attraction blooms between the two boys, and Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and its inhabitants.

Stories Short and Sweet by Ruskin Bond is a collection of his choicest short stories, capturing the myriad facets of life in the hills. Humour, nostalgia, love, friendship, trust and betrayal - Bond captures every mood that makes our life worth remembering.

Having escaped from the half-bombed, blackened power station where he was being imprisoned, 12-year-old Luke is finally reunited with his family above ground. But not everyone made it out of the power station, and the guilt over his friends left behind is eating Luke alive. With the help of ghost-girl named Alma and his friend Jess, Luke will have to face his past and confront his deepest fear, to try to save Ravi, the friend who was there for him in his darkest hours.

Pulp fiction just got a whole lot scarier... Few books ever become loved. Most linger on undead, their sallow pages labyrinths of old, brittle stories and screeds of forgotten knowledge... And other things, besides: Paper-pale forms rustle softly through their leaves. Ink-dark shapes swarming in shadow beneath faded type. And an invitation... Harris delights in collecting the unloved. He wonders if you’d care to donate. A small something for the odd, pale children no-one has seen. An old book, perchance? Neat is sweet; battered is better.

Dr Shahed Yousaf is a prison doctor dedicated to caring for people on the margins of society. An outsider on the inside, in Stitched Up he introduces us to a cast of unforgettable characters, including killers, con men and auto-cannibals. To Dr Yousaf, they are patients first and prisoners second—because any one of us could end up on the wrong side of the law. He tells us honestly and compassionately what it's like to be their doctor in a system that's chronically overcrowded, drastically under-resourced and all too easy to ignore.

The Alyxa School - this is where young people are trained who can hear, smell, taste, feel or see supernaturally well. But a dark force threatens to rise within the walls of the school: Morvan, the dark druid, master of the forbidden sixth sense. Can Finn and his friends finally defeat the mighty druid?

Kidnapped and forced to shovel coal underneath a half-bombed, blackened power station, 12-year-old Luke's life is miserable. Then, he discovers he can see things others can't. Ghostly things. Specifically, a ghost-girl named Alma. Alma, who can ride clouds through the night sky and bend their shape to her will, befriends Luke. And with Alma's help, Luke discovers he is in fact a rare being—half-human and half-something else ... Then Luke learns the terrible truth of why children are being kidnapped and forced to work in the power station.

A heartfelt comedy of manners for fans of Seating Arrangements and Crazy Rich Asians, Diksha Basu's debut novel unfolds the story of a family discovering what it means to be nouveau riche in modern India. Hilarious and wise, The Windfall illuminates with warmth and charm the precariousness of social status, the fragility of pride and, above all, the human drive to build and share a home. Even the rich, it turns out, need to belong somewhere.

Unintentionally, Abhi ruined his five-year relationship with Priya by finding himself with Ellen, a beautiful American girl. Without any exchange of sperm, Abhi was ambushed to get a tattoo inscribed on his skin for Ellen, which became a catastrophe for him. It became the reason for delinquencies with Priya further. My Love Never Faked... is a cute story of love between two hearts beating for one reason called "together".

Like a couple of migratory birds, both Charlie and Edwin leave everything back in their village and settle for a new life in the big city. For Edwin, it was where he was going to chase his dreams of becoming an actor; but for Charlie, it was just another place to be with his only friend, to help him accomplish his dreams. However, life seems to have different plans, as it throws Charlie in the way of Aster, silently walking through instabilities of her own destiny.

The Soccer World Cup 2006, Germany. The chopped-off head of Gotthard Lerch, owner of a billion-dollar porn empire is found inside a bag at a bar. The German security gets all active, and Michael Andler, a detective with the Berlin police, gets on the case. He finds the man's torso inside his office, with a large swastika painted in blood on the wall.

This book is like a 'handbook of everyday humour'. It is based on observation of funny tendencies in people and then creating fictional caricatures and anecdotes around them. The tendency of beating around the mulberry bush has been converted into a fictional character called 'Simon Satellite'. And yes, there are many more such characters and anecdotes, served With a Pinch of Salt....

Anuj had never imagined that his feelings for the vivacious Pakhi, who didn't even believe in love, would bloom beyond his imagination one day. Just when things get going, as always, life's plans go against theirs. This story, in its simplicity and reality, shows us the importance of love, life, friendship and dedication to changing the definition of these.

Neev's life is marked with castastrophes. After losing his parents and almost everything he owned, he finds refuge with his friend Aadi in Agra. Living with an old friend in a new house, busy with a new job in a new environment, revives him somewhat. And then, life happens. As he bumps into love and tries to keep running away from it, love follows him in the person of Aashi - a small-town girl with larger than life aspirations and a novel dream.

Intertidal asks us to reimagine values to live by; heeding the natural world, attending to the climate's calling, and moving away from the old political and cultural values that have proven ecologically disastrous. Set in beaches, marshes, and the wild places of the mind, Intertidal revels in the healing power of nature and explores what it means to reclaim an ecology that has been colonised.

Bedi and Sushma's marriage is arranged. When they first meet, they stumble through a faltering conversation about happiness and hope and agree to go in search of these things together. But even after their children Selena, Tara and Rohan are grown up and have their own families, Bedi and Sushma are still searching. Years later, the siblings attempt to navigate life without their parents. As they travel to the Ganges to unite their father's ashes with the opaque water, it becomes clear that each of them has inherited the same desire to understand what makes a life happy.

In a small farming village in Punjab, India, a boy crouches over his brother's phone in a rapeseed field watching clips of Godard's Bande à part on YouTube. His name is Happy Singh Soni and when he's not sleeping among the cabbages and eating sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy roles; the sad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. He plans a clandestine journey to Europe, where he'll finally land a breakout role.