Showing results by narrator "Vikas" in All Categories

Akbar was one of the most admired and also one of the most feared emperors of India. He patronized art and promoted religious harmony, due to which he is called "Akbar the Great". In his court was present one of the wisest men of his time - Birbal. The interactions between Akbar and Birbal are the stuff of legend and folklore due to the interesting problems and situations that Akbar posed and the witty solutions and answers that Birbal gave.

Pinky Kumar wears the social justice warrior badge with pride. From raccoon hospitals to persecuted rock stars, no cause is too esoteric for her to champion. But a teeny tiny part of her also really enjoys making her conservative, buttoned-up corporate lawyer parents cringe. Samir Jha might have a few...quirks remaining from the time he had to take care of his sick mother, like the endless lists he makes in his planner and the way he schedules every minute of every day, but those are good things. They make life predictable and steady.

A decade ago, Azaan, a rebellious teenager with dreams of becoming an actor, was exiled from Redding, California to a religious academy in Egypt by his imam father. His crime? Getting caught kissing Madison, the girlfriend he isn’t supposed to have. But while letting his family believe he is studying to become a preacher, Azaan ditched school and embarked on an acting career. Given that he has minimal contact and nonexistent plans to return home, he figured no one would ever know.

Selena Montez, the “aristocrat whisperer,” needs to complete one last job before she can leave New York City. After a disastrous experience with another socialite family, she needs this account to be a win. Even if Henry pulls her guard down with his authenticity and kindness—this has to be just business. But as she and Henry grow closer, her secret connection to high society starts to catch up to her. That, paired with an attraction they can’t fight, means Selena herself might be the greatest threat to Henry’s reputation.

A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book—a total flop—all the more devastating. Now, David is single, lonely, and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript, one that will redeem him in the eyes of readers, reviewers, the entire publishing world…and maybe even his ex-boyfriend.

In seventy-two hours, a blockbuster expose will reveal Victoria Stevens's multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband, Guy Sarvananthan, to face the fallout—and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Opting for the latter, he takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world's biggest problems to "eradicate forever."

Bobby N. Kowen is living his life to the fullest. He’s making friends, he’s learning new things all the time, he’s falling in love, he’s having adventures. He’s doing more in a single week than most of us experience in a lifetime. But that’s the thing. That one week is all that Bobby has. Birth to death...in just seven days. Bobby’s life is truly a race against time. No one who meets him will ever be the same. And they will each wonder: Do we live too long to really appreciate how precious life is?

Vivid, vibrant, and unwaveringly affecting, The Best Possible Experience brings us intimate, impeccably realized accounts of individuals living in one of the most populous countries in the world, and its American diaspora, all haunted, in every sense of the word, by a loss of home. Classically elegant in prose and consistently modern in outlook, Injam’s stories question what it means to have a home, to return home, and show, above all, that home is not a place so much as a people ready to accept you as you are.

Madhuri Iyer is doomed. Doomed for her upcoming senior year to be a total failure, according to her astrology-obsessed mother, and doomed to a happily ever after with her first boyfriend, according to her family curse. Determined to prove the existence of her free will, Madhuri devises an experimental relationship with the one boy she knows she’ll never fall for: her childhood best friend, Arjun Mehta. But Arjun’s feelings for her are a variable she didn’t account for.

From the former faith adviser to President Obama comes a fresh manifesto for those who seek to promote positive change and build a more diverse and just democracy. The goal of social change work is not a more ferocious revolution; it is a more beautiful social order. It is harder to organize a fair trial than it is to fire up a crowd, more challenging to build a good school than it is to tell others they are doing education all wrong.

Without an end in sight to the struggle, Aiden's on the verge of breaking. A new dungeon prophesizes an even more chaotic future—the icing on the proverbial doom cake. Yet, even before that time comes, he has far more pressing matters to attend to. The Valkyr have captured Adam and the others from the school who went their own way. To add injury to insult, the captured group is forced to fight like gladiators and aid the warmongering Angels and Fallen in their conquest. Seeing no other option, Aiden has to make a hard choice.

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others. With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.

Joseph was an unlikely choice to be the earthly father of Jesus. There was nothing about him on the surface that would have prompted any of us to consider him worthy. And yet, no other man in history has been charged with the tremendous responsibility he was given. He wasn’t randomly chosen by God. He wasn’t chosen simply because he and Mary were engaged to be married. He was, most definitely, not an after-thought or a footnote. He and Mary were betrothed because God had chosen them both and ordered their steps accordingly … from before the beginning of time.

Ratty Barclay wasn't supposed to be born a four-foot-tall, walking, talking rodent, but thanks to the Barclay family curse, he's had to live in hiding from the rest of the world. All he wants for his thirteenth birthday is to return to his family's abandoned estate on Fairweather Island to somehow break the curse. Then he'll finally get to live his life as a four-foot-tall, walking, talking human boy.

Jesse Gil thought it’d be easy running a business healing the sick and raising the dead–just put up an amazing billboard and people should beg him to take their money, right? Results weren’t as expected and when he resurrects Shawn, who comes into his own magical abilities, he feels obligated to take him on as an apprentice. Unfortunately, it seems that his new student’s sole purpose is to mess everything up. Shawn takes it upon himself to raise someone from the dead on his own, so Jesse finds himself facing a nightmarish creature, a body without a soul.

Farrah sees her father just one day every year—her birthday. But this year, her wish to bring them closer goes wildly awry when Farrah discovers she is a half-jinn...and her father is one of the seven great jinn kings. Her wish traps her father inside a legendary ring, and the other six jinn kings will follow unless Farrah can rectify her mistake. Pursued by menacing shadow jinn, Farrah’s quest takes her to a floating mountain range.

Kitty has a grand idea: “Let’s throw a kitty-corn party!” But when newcomer Puppy messes up Kitty’s perfectly laid plans and steals Unicorn’s attention and affection, Kitty is NOT pleased. When jealousy takes hold, can Unicorn help Kitty see that nothing will ever threaten a friendship as strong as theirs? Reassuring kids that true friends never run out of love for each other, the magical, best-selling team of Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham reunite for another heart-bursting story featuring an utterly adorable kitty-corn pair—plus Puppy too! ARF!

Twelve-year-old Raj is happiest flying kites with his best friend, Iqbal. As their kites soar, Raj feels free, like his beloved India soon will be, and he can’t wait to celebrate their independence. But when a British lawyer draws a line across a map, splitting India in two, Raj is thrust into a fractured world. With Partition declared, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim families are torn apart—and Raj’s Hindu and Iqbal’s Muslim families are among them.

Nothing is easy about being a ghost sidekick. No one knows that better than Malcolm, especially when you're bound to a hard-living mage private investigator like Alice Worth. Alice is a danger magnet, and the long-suffering Malcolm has realized being dead won't keep him safe from the threats that haunt Alice's every step.

Rome, 58 AD. The dinner party didn’t turn out the way Aemilius Valerius expected. He didn’t expect a place at the main table. He didn’t expect to drink that much. He didn’t expect to hook up with one of the scarier dancers. And he most certainly didn’t expect to trip over the bloody corpse of his host on the floor of the informal dining room. One man’s grisly murder is another man’s opportunity. Valerius teams up with the investigator, a plebeian with a chip on his shoulder, to discover the killer.