Unpublished auth-ors are a curious lot. Desperate, helpless and often the butt of all jokes. They never know what went wrong with their work. Most publishers respond, if at all, with one-liners rejecting the manuscript for not being upto the required brief. So as few get published, many hundreds sulk at their defeat. While big publishing

Monkeys are curious animals. Stories about their antics amused me as a child. But I never had a chance to see one in its “element”, until recently.

Once there was a girl called Lilly who never lied to her mother but her best friend Irene could never tell the truth. Margaret Mascarenhas’ second novel The Disappearance Of Irene Dos Santos sails through a plot which seems deceptively simple at first. Irene teaches Lilly how to French-kiss but when Lilly is caught kissing a

OCTOBER IS the month when the betting halls talk books. First the Nobel and then the Man Booker spur up considerable literary dust. This year, after the customary debate about those overlooked by the Nobel committee and way-off-the-mark reports about poets being favoured for the 2010 Nobel, the focus is on the Man Booker

Fairy beliefs are mainly based on folklore. They mostly look like humans, subject to minor variations (insect-style frail wings, ability to transform into animals or plants). Stories about their origins range from fallen spirits to dead beings, ancient gods or “elementals” — mythological beings. The last comes closest to the Indian parallel of Yaksha who are also believed to nature-spirits, not always friendly.

Radiant Shadows is the fourth book in the Wicked Lovely series and for those who have been following the chain, there is nothing about Aislinn and Seth (on whom the first book was based) in this story. Those who haven’t will find Radiant Shadows tedious as the story deals with the complex workings and squabbles of various faery courts.

They are on the government records but no one has seen them for ages. Their craft seems to travel places but no one remembers hearing them.

Caught in the middle of a monsoon viral and visiting relatives, I was way behind my schedule for reviewing Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours. My deadline was looming large. I was stressed.

A serpent lives in the heart of the jungle and the abyss of the mind; that is also where author Ruth Padel rears her story. The novel Where the Serpent Lives (Little Brown Books, Rs 595) by the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin progresses by creating reflections of the human emotions in nature. It is a tricky formula that works for Padel in some places but leaves her exposed in most others.

It wasn’t the best or the worst of times, but it must have been the strangest when a British archive restorer chose to write to a bandit languishing in an Indian jail.