Thrity N Umrigar

"Poor and illiterate, Bhima had faithfully worked for the Dubash family, an upper-middle-class Parsi household, for more than twenty years. Yet after courageously speaking the truth about a heinous crime perpetrated against her own family, the devoted servant was cruelly fired. The sting of that dismissal was made more painful coming from Sera Dubash, the temperamental employer who had long been Bhima's only confidante. A woman who has endured despair...

American divorcée Armaiti has six months to live and her last wish is to see her three best friends again--Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta, all in Bombay. But Nishta's husband, Iqbal, a fellow university idealist turned fundamentalist, will be the biggest obstacle to fulfilling Armaiti's final desire.

Having lost their beloved only child to a sudden illness, Frank and Ellie Benton hope to rebuild their lives by accepting a job offer in India but find their new home compromised by Frank's efforts to heal his grief through a friendship with a young boy.

"Remy Wadia left India for the United States long ago, carrying his resentment of his mother with him. He has now returned to Bombay to adopt a baby--and to see his elderly mother for the first time in several years. Discovering that she is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life, he is struck with guilt for not realizing just how sick she has become. His unexpected appearance and assiduous attention revives her and...

The bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The Space Between Us and The World We Found deftly explores issues of race, class, privilege, and power and asks us to consider uncomfortable moral questions in this probing, ambitious, emotionally wrenching novel of two families--one black, one white. During a terrible heat wave in 1991--the worst in a decade--ten-year-old Anton has been locked in an apartment in the projects, alone, for seven days,...

At the wedding of a young man from a middle-class apartment building in Bombay, the men and women of this unique community gather together and look back on their youthful, idealistic selves and consider the changes the years have wrought. The lives of the Parsi men and women who grew up together in Wadi Baug are revealed in all their complicated humanity: Adi Patel's disintegration into alcoholism Dosamai's gossiping tongue and Soli Contractor's betrayal...

Binny's class is learning about different holiday traditions, and today it is time for Binny to share the story of her favorite holiday, Diwali, the Festival of Lights--and she even has some special treats to give her classmates. Includes information on the five days of Diwali, what it commemorates, and its special traditions.

Maya is celebrating Holi with her grandparents in India with special foods and brilliantly colored powders. Includes recipe for Holi treat.

"Cleveland is a working-class town, though its great institutions were founded by twentieth-century robber barons and magnates . . . It's this mix of the wealthy and the working class that makes this city--an urban center of brick and girders surrounded by verdant suburbs--a perfect backdrop for lawlessness. Cleveland has certainly seen its share of high-profile crime. Eliot Ness, Cleveland's director of public safety in the 1930s, hunted unsuccessfully...