It is a well-known precept that all good fiction is about change. What makes From the Eye of my Mind such an interesting read is that its narrator is an 18-year-old high functioning autistic girl, hence not a person particularly enthusiastic to change. T.G.C. Prasad writes the resulting tension with skill; he offers a glimpse into the workings of an uncommonly rare mind and tells a story that might have succumbed to sentimentality in the hands of a less sensitive writer.

Jamal Khwaja clearly is his father’s son. Maulana Mohammed Ali Jowhar, the leading light of the Khilafat Movement — which Gandhiji supported in the hope of building Hindu-Muslim amity and a united struggle for freedom — is supposed to have once said that “even the most degraded Muhammadan was better than Gandhi.”

Tom Carter found himself homeless, jobless, with little money and 6,000 miles from home after answering a job posting on Craigslist that turned out to be a scam.

Despite a dramatic uptake in the economy in recent years, satisfactory social outcomes have eluded India, where mass poverty and near-chaotic civic life refuse to go away.

Rs 699

Naman Ramachandran was placed on Planet Earth with the express purpose of writing the definitive biography of Superstar Rajinikanth,” announces the cover flap, next to a photograph of the author posing with the subject of his book — Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography. Like its cover that glitters, inside too there is gloss, but little substance.

Rs 850

Indranil Banerjie

The September 11, 2001, terrorist strike on the United States has generated a huge body of literature on terrorism and its various facets.

pp. 412, `399

Just after 7 pm on a weekday, in weather that counts as the Mumbai winter, I make my way through the quiet bylanes of Dadar Parsi Colony.

Rs 350

Injustice. Redemption. Evil. Good. Right. Wrong. Wretchedness. Chance. Good fortune. Much like the saga of the luckless Jamal Malik in the superhit phenomenon Slumdog Millionaire, based on the book Q&A by Vikas Swarup, the writer-diplomat’s latest epic, The Accidental Apprentice, is about Sapna Sinha, a 23-year-old girl who faces several larger-than-life incidents that dramatically alter her destiny.

Rs 1,750

Mammals are a fascinating group of animals and the South Asian region is bestowed with some amazing species — ranging from the tiny Pipistrelle Bat, which weighs less than three grams, to the large Asian Elephant which could weigh three-six tonnes.

Rs 299

You’re closer to me than a cheek on a pillow;
You’re nearer to me than the beat of my heart;
You’re more welcome than beauty in everyday faces;
You’re dearer than sunlight,
My little sun.
You’re sweeter than honey sucked from the honeycomb;
You’re brighter than stars and wilder than storms;
More complete in your loving than the circle of reason;
I breathe out; you breathe in,
My little sun.