Showing results by narrator "Deepa Samuel" in All Categories

Chosen. Framed by my father’s murderer. Running from the fae courts. Fated to never touch the man who sets my blood on fire.

Vivid and compelling, The Henna Artist opens a door into a world that is at once lush and fascinating, stark and cruel. Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own. Years later, she is confronted by her husband who has tracked her down.

Malik, now 20 and finished his private school education, has just met a young woman named Nimmi when he leaves to apprentice at the Facilities Office of the Jaipur Royal Palace. Their latest project: a state-of-the-art cinema. Malik soon finds that not much has changed as he navigates the Pink City of his childhood. Power and money still move seamlessly among the wealthy class, and favors flow from the palace, but only if certain secrets remain buried.

Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve. With the right image, values, and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent—the Virtual elite—and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water, or even humanity. The system has no flaws. Until the elusive "Ten Percent Thief" steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city.

When Amaya is invited to Kaavi's over-the-top wedding in Sri Lanka, Amaya is surprised and a little hurt to hear from her former best-friend after so many years of radio silence. But when Amaya learns that the groom is her very own ex-boyfriend, she is consumed by a single thought: she must stop the wedding from happening, no matter the cost. But Amaya might not be the only one with a plan to keep the bride from getting her happily ever after. When Kaavi goes missing and is presumed dead, the evidence points towards Amaya.

The magical tea has worn off. My eyes are wide open. And it’s with horror that I realize the fate of two realms rests on my shoulders after my mother’s ultimate sacrifice to trap Rubezahl in Underhill. Terrified humans clamoring for answers, whispered rumors from both Seelie and Unseelie, and a stepmother who seeks the throne for surprising reasons are the least of my troubles. Rubezahl has returned far sooner than I thought possible. I’m not ready. I can’t win this. And not only that… He has something crucial if we are to win. He’s taken something I cannot live without.

Global inequality is growing. Financial markets disenfranchise women, the 99 percent, and the planet itself. But what if we found the source of power and turned it inside out? What if we made the tools of the system available to all? From growing up with constrained life chances, to working as the first Bangladeshi woman on Wall Street, to becoming a global leader in impact investing, Shahnaz takes us on a mesmerizing trek of innovation, compassion, and enterprise.

Pronounced ENN-EE-UH-GRAM, stemming from the Greek words ennea (nine) and grammos (a written symbol), the Enneagram is a centuries-old categorization tool that classifies human personalities into nine interconnected personality types. Authors Liz Carver and Josh Green help you discover how knowing your type—and the types of those around you—can affect your daily life, your decisions, and your relationships with others, and how to use this wisdom to live life with more clarity, peace, and insight than you ever thought possible.

Ever since she was adopted from an orphanage in Sri Lanka, Paloma has led a privileged Californian life: the best schools, a generous allowance and parents so perfect that Paloma fears she'll never live up to them. Now at 30, Paloma has managed to disappoint her parents so thoroughly that their relationship will never recover. Unemployed and friendless, the only person still talking to her is Arun - the Indian man subletting her spare room. That is until Arun discovers Paloma's darkest secret and the next day is found face-down in a pool of blood.

As an intelligent, beautiful woman raised in a small mountain village, Gini never would have imagined a place like The Mansion exists. Stolen by Darius into a dark underworld where the famed Mullah Omar arranges pleasure marriages to the highest bidder, Gini fights for survival. At first frightened by the dangerous man who keeps her prisoner, Darius slowly becomes the one light in her dark world.

For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations. For Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe.

War is destroying the galaxy. Esmae has vanished without a trace. A terrifying, ravenous beast is devouring the stars one by one. Titania is offered a gift that may well be a curse. Alexi, the exiled prince, is asked to pay a heavy price for his mistakes. And far, far away, on a dark, mysterious planet, a sleeping god stirs awake. As the end of the world draws ever closer, Esmae and Alexi must decide how far they’ll go to win - and who they’ll sacrifice along the way.

In trendy Silicon Valley, Priya has everything she needs - a loving husband, a career, and a home - but the one thing she wants most is the child she's unable to have. In a Southern Indian village, Asha doesn't have much - raising two children in a tiny hut, she and her husband can barely keep a tin roof over their heads - but she wants a better education for her gifted son. Pressured by her family, Asha reluctantly checks into the Happy Mothers House: a baby farm where she can rent her only asset - her womb - to a childless couple overseas.

A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.

By combining a 5-year history rooted in time-tested, ancient traditions with cutting-edge science, Dr. Chiti Parikh, executive director of the Integrative Health and Wellbeing Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and a clinical professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, provides the steps you can take to bring your body into a lasting state of balance and live a longer life with more energy, less pain, and renewed confidence.

Sixteen-year-old Koral and her older brother Emrik risk their lives each day to capture the monstrous maristags that live in the black seas around their island. They have to, or else their family will starve. In an oceanic world swarming with vicious beasts, the Landers—the ruling elite, have indentured Koral's family to provide the maristags for the Glory Race, a deadly chariot tournament reserved for the upper class. The winning contender receives gold and glory. The others—if they're lucky—survive.

Akshaya is the hybrid daughter of a human mother and an alloy, a genetically engineered posthuman—and she’s the future of life on the planet Meru. But not if the determined Akshaya can help it. Before choosing where her future lies, she wants to circumnavigate the most historic orb in the universe—the birthplace of humanity: Earth.

This wonderfully fresh and revelatory book invites you to create a personal yoga practice that seamlessly melds health and well-being with spiritual insight, Earth stewardship, and cultural transformation. Wilderness guide and yoga instructor Rebecca Wildbear came to yoga after a life-threatening encounter with cancer in her twenties. Over years of teaching and healing, she devised the unique and user-friendly practice she presents in Wild Yoga. In this book, she guides you in connecting to the natural world and living from your soul while also addressing environmental activism.

At twenty-one years old, Gia Kumari finally leaves the Delhi orphanage where she was raised. With few prospects for the future, she receives an unexpected invitation from a stranger named Sonia Shah in San Francisco: an internship at Sonia’s weddings and events company. Gia and America. It’s love at first sight as she navigates an unfamiliar but irresistible new world of firsts.

Seventeen-year-old Krescent Dune is buried under the weight of her dead parents’ debt and the ruinous legacy they left behind. The only way she can earn enough money to escape her unforgiving island is by battling monstrous creatures in an underground fighting pit. After a fight goes terribly wrong, she’s banned from the pits. Now hopeless, she is offered a deal: in exchange for the erasure of her debts, she must join and protect a hunting party for a rescue mission deep within the mining caves beneath the island.