Scottish expatriate Jana Bibi helps to save the small town in India she has grown to call home and the oddball characters she considers family.

In the newest Jana Bibi adventure from Betsy Woodman, Jana, Mr. Ganguly, and the gang are back as their small town in India is rocked by an espionage scandal and a homemade remedy that has love on everyone's mind The Jolly Grant House still welcomes all its visitors with the sign Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes hanging proudly outside its front door. Jana's fortune-telling has brought a lot of attention to the small town of Hamara Nagar, and now that the dust has settled and the town is safe from the threat of being flooded by a government dam, all eyes are on the Scottish-born card-reader Jana and her feisty, loose-beaked parrot, Mr. Ganguly. Some people, though, are not to be trusted, and Mr. Ganguly finds himself the target of a potential kidnapping that puts Jana and her household on edge. Meanwhile, love is in the air and, thanks to Abenath's Apothecary, it's also in a bottle. Abenath has created an intoxicating brew that he calls Love Potion Number 10, which seems to have Jana in a tizzy. While she explores her newest hobby, dream interpretation, her head is swimming with questions: Is a new love possible at age fifty-nine? If so, would she ever marry again? All around her she sees different kinds of love and connection—family, arranged marriages, chemical attractions, even intercontinental romance between people who have only met through letters—so when an old flame arrives and rekindles long-gone feelings, Jana begins to think that Love Potion Number 10 just might be the magic elixir its inventor thinks it is.

Feathers fly and cultures clash as the Jolly Grant House prepares to welcome a special delivery from Scotland In the third installment of the Jana Bibi series, Betsy Woodman takes us back to the Jolly Grant house for the arrival of Jana's son, Jack, from Scotland, and his Hungarian bride-to-be, Katarina Esterhazy. The whole gang is excited to welcome their international visitors—and Jana is determined to repair the house to Jack's high standards and those of her grandfather, from whom she inherited the eccentric building. But this puts a strain on Jana, both emotionally and financially, and she risks her most prized and valuable possession—the (surprisingly real!) emeralds she got from the Treasure Emporium—to help her through it. Jana saved the town from a government dam in Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes and foiled an international bird-smuggling ring in Love Potion Number 10, but in Emeralds Included, Jana faces her biggest challenges yet: preparing for her son's arrival and planning a wedding in the upside-down town of Hamara Nagar!

A PILOT, A JOURNALIST, AND A SEMEN TRAFFICKER WALK ONTO A PLANE . . . When flight AW2921 crashes into the Hudson River and all 162 passengers survive, it’s a Monday morning miracle. What the rapturous public doesn’t know: the whole thing was staged as a last-ditch attempt at resurrecting the Air Wanderlust stock price. Captain Hank Swagger piloted the miracle plane into the river. Disgraced TV news anchor Lucy Springer was “luckily” the only reporter on board, and the first to capture the story. Con man Normal Fulk recently faked his own death to escape the consequences of his barely legal career as a celebrity semen trafficker. Toting his last big score—the “John Lennon”—Normal has to leave it behind on the sinking plane or risk being identified and arrested. In the aftermath of the crash and the chaotic week that follows, Lucy, Normal, and Captain Swagger are all about to discover what it means to be at the center of a miracle that is anything but.

During World War II and the last days of British occupation in India, fifteen-year-old Vidya dreams of attending college. But when her forward-thinking father is beaten senseless by the British police, she is forced to live with her grandfather’s large traditional family, where the women live apart from the men and are meant to be married off as soon as possible. Vidya’s only refuge becomes her grandfather’s upstairs library, which is forbidden to women. There she meets Raman, a young man also living in the house who relishes her intellectual curiosity. But when Vidya’s brother makes a choice the family cannot condone, and when Raman seems to want more than friendship, Vidkya must question all she has believed in. Padma Venkatraman’s debut novel poignantly shows a girl struggling to find her place in a mixedup world. Climbing the Stairs is a powerful story about love and loss set against a fascinating historical backdrop. Read Padma Venkatraman's posts on the Penguin Blog.

Can you work in India while you live in Bharat? James Joseph was in his late thirties, well ensconced in his job as a director with Microsoft, when he decided to take a family vacation to Aluva, Kerala. His six-year-old daughter tasted a jackfruit from a tree in their own yard and remarked, ‘Daddy, this is so delicious. I wish I could eat the fruits from this tree every year.’ Part memoir, part how-to, this is his amazing story of starting out from the backwaters of Kerala, becoming a corporate captain in America and then finding a way to have a successful career while working out of his village in Kerala. This book also contains tips and techniques for anyone frustrated with living in cities. How do you set up a home office? How do you integrate with the local community? Where do your kids go to school? How do you convince your company to give you this opportunity? God’s Own Office may well inspire you to transform your life.

The boy known as Tor Baz—the black falcon —wanders between tribes. He meets men who fight under different flags, and women who risk everything if they break their society’s code of honour. Where has he come from, and where will destiny take him? Set in the decades before the rise of the Taliban, Jamil Ahmad’s stunning debut takes us to the essence of human life in the forbidden areas where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet. Today the ‘tribal areas’ are often spoken about as a remote region, a hotbed of conspiracies, drone attacks and conflict. In The Wandering Falcon, this highly traditional, honour-bound culture is revealed from the inside for the first time. With rare tenderness and perception, Jamil Ahmad describes a world of custom and cruelty, of love and gentleness, of hardship and survival; a fragile, unforgiving world that is changing as modern forces make themselves known. With the fate-defying story of Tor Baz, he has written an unforgettable novel of insight, compassion and timeless wisdom. It is true, I am neither a Mahsud nor a Wazir. But I can tell you as little about who I am as I can about who I shall be. Think of Tor Baz as your hunting falcon. That should be enough.