The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Novel

The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Novel PDF Author: Manu Joseph
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
A quirky and darkly comic take on domestic life in southern India. The PEN Open Book Award called Manu Joseph "that rare bird who can wildly entertain his readers as forcefully as he moves them." In The Illicit Happiness of Other People, Joseph brilliantly brings his talents to the story of an Indian Christian family living far afield in south India. It has been three years since seventeen-year-old Unni Chacko mysteriously fell from a balcony to his death. His family—journalist father Ousep, who smokes two cigarettes at once “because three is too much”; mother Mariamma, who fantasizes gleefully about murdering her husband; and twelve-year-old love-struck brother Thoma with zero self-esteem, have coped by not coping. When the post office delivers a comic drawn by Unni that had been lost in the mail, Ousep, shocked out of his stupor, ventures on a quest to understand his son and rewrite his family’s story. Combining family drama with philosophy, social satire with satisfying storytelling, The Illicit Happiness of Other People reminds us that the greatest mystery of all—the one most worth our time and energy—is understanding the people we love.

The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Novel

The Illicit Happiness of Other People: A Novel PDF Author: Manu Joseph
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book Here

Book Description
A quirky and darkly comic take on domestic life in southern India. The PEN Open Book Award called Manu Joseph "that rare bird who can wildly entertain his readers as forcefully as he moves them." In The Illicit Happiness of Other People, Joseph brilliantly brings his talents to the story of an Indian Christian family living far afield in south India. It has been three years since seventeen-year-old Unni Chacko mysteriously fell from a balcony to his death. His family—journalist father Ousep, who smokes two cigarettes at once “because three is too much”; mother Mariamma, who fantasizes gleefully about murdering her husband; and twelve-year-old love-struck brother Thoma with zero self-esteem, have coped by not coping. When the post office delivers a comic drawn by Unni that had been lost in the mail, Ousep, shocked out of his stupor, ventures on a quest to understand his son and rewrite his family’s story. Combining family drama with philosophy, social satire with satisfying storytelling, The Illicit Happiness of Other People reminds us that the greatest mystery of all—the one most worth our time and energy—is understanding the people we love.

The Illicit Happiness Of Other People

The Illicit Happiness Of Other People PDF Author: Manu Joseph
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1443416398
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Ousep Chacko, journalist and failed novelist, prides himself on being “the last of the real men.” His wife, Mariamma, finds ways to feed her family despite their lack of money, but in her spare time she fantasizes about Ousep’s early death. One day, their seventeen-year-old son, Unni—a boy obsessed with comics—does something terrible and inexplicable. Ousep and Mariamma separately try to solve the mystery of Unni’s action but find no answers. Three years later, Ousep receives a package that sends him back to the search. He starts to hound his son’s friends and a famous neurosurgeon. Meanwhile, younger son Thoma—a twelve-year-old with below-sea-level self-esteem—falls desperately in love with their haughty, beautiful teenage neighbour, who has her own secrets. The Illicit Happiness of Other People—a smart, wry and poignant novel—is part mystery, part philosophy and part unlikely love story.

The Illicit Happiness Of Other People

The Illicit Happiness Of Other People PDF Author: Manu Joseph
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9351360741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Seventeen-year-old Unni Chacko has done something terrible. The only clue to his action lies in a comic strip he has drawn, which has fallen into the hands of his father Ousep, an anarchist. Ousep begins investigating the extraordinary life of his son, blissfully unaware that his long-suffering wife is plotting to kill him. Set in Madras in 1990, this is a darkly comic story involving the relentless pursuit of a failed writer who has found purpose, an adolescent cartoonist's dangerous interpretation of truth, the plots of a brilliant housewife, and the pure love of a twelve-year-old boy for a beautiful girl.

Serious Men: A Novel

Serious Men: A Novel PDF Author: Manu Joseph
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039333953X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbai’s humid tenements. Ayyan Mani will not be constrained by Indian traditions. Despite working at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai as the lowly personal assistant to a brilliant but insufferable astronomer, he dreams of more for himself and his family. Ever wily and ambitious, Ayyan weaves two plots: the first to cheer up his weary, soap-opera-addicted wife by creating outrageous fictions around their ten-year-old son; the other to sabotage the married director by using his boss’s seeming romance with the institute’s first female—and very attractive—researcher. Meanwhile, as the institute’s Brahmins wage a vicious war over theories about alien life, Ayyan sees his deceptions intertwining and setting in motion a series of extraordinary events he cannot stop. Unfailingly funny and irreverent, Serious Men is at once a hilarious portrayal of runaway egos and ambitions and a moving portrait of love and its strange workings. One of 2010’s “First Novels to Savor.” —Sunday Telegraph

Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous

Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous PDF Author: Manu Joseph
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9352770455
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A building collapses in Mumbai. In the debris is a man who is mumbling something in delirium. It appears that he is passing on the real-time movements of a young Muslim couple. Elsewhere, a young intelligence agent is assigned to shadow two terror suspects, one of whom is a teenager and the sweetheart of her street, Laila.Taking up a slice of recent history, the novel glares at the entire system - not just politicians, the bureaucracy, the police and lackeys, but also the good folks. Pervasive in its satire, wicked in its humour and broad-based in its canvas, Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous is one of the most stylish and honest works of fiction about India ever written.

Single, Carefree, Mellow

Single, Carefree, Mellow PDF Author: Katherine Heiny
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385353642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
For the commitment-averse women in these eleven sublime laugh-out-loud stories, falling in love is never easy and always inconvenient. “Single, Carefree, Mellow is a lot like the women who populate it: smart and sexy and a little bit ruthless.” —Entertainment Weekly “Something like Cheever mixed with Ephron.” —The New York Times Book Review Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living above her garage will hear her kids swearing than that he will find out she’s sleeping with her running partner. The women grapple with love amidst everything from unwelcome houseguests to disastrous birthday parties as Katherine Heiny spins a debut that is superbly accomplished and endlessly entertaining.

Bewilderness

Bewilderness PDF Author: Karen Tucker
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1646220250
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Set in rural, poverty-stricken North Carolina, this "beautiful, gritty, and piercing" novel follows two young women--best friends--as they "journey through the highs and lows of friendship, love, and addiction," perfect for readers of Julie Buntin's Marlena (Erika Carter, author of Lucky You). Irene, a lonely nineteen-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joy ride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to fund the next high. Together, Irene and Luce run nickel-tossing scams at the county fair and trick dealers into trading legit pharms for birth-control pills. Everything is wild and wonderful until Luce finds a boyfriend who wants to help her get clean. Soon the two of them decide to move away and start a new, sober life in Florida--leaving Irene behind. Told in a riveting dialogue between the girls' addicted past and their hopes for a better future, Bewilderness is not just a brilliant, funny, heartbreaking novel about opioid abuse, it's also a moving look at how intense, intimate friendships can shape every young woman's life.

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending PDF Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307957330
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Leave the World Behind

Leave the World Behind PDF Author: Rumaan Alam
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062667653
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Now a Netflix film starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans and Kevin Bacon. Written for the Screen and Directed by Sam Esmail. Executive Producers Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, Nick Krishnamurthy, Rumaan Alam A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Fiction One of Barack Obama's Summer Reads A Best Book of the Year From: The Washington Post * Time * NPR * Elle * Esquire * Kirkus * Library Journal * The Chicago Public Library * The New York Public Library * BookPage * The Globe and Mail * EW.com * The LA Times * USA Today * InStyle * The New Yorker * AARP * Publisher's Lunch * LitHub * Book Marks * Electric Literature * Brooklyn Based * The Boston Globe A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis. Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?

American Witch

American Witch PDF Author: Thea Harrison
Publisher: Teddy Harrison LLC
ISBN: 1947046187
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Thea Harrison comes a novel that is pure magic. Power can change a person… For months Molly Sullivan endures the inexplicable: electrical surges, car breakdowns, visions. She even wonders if she might be the cause… and wonders if she might be crazy. Then she discovers her husband has cheated on her. Again. Now Molly realizes she is a newly awakening witch and a woman pushed over the edge. Revenge can shape a person… Josiah Mason is a Powerful witch and the leader of a secret coven with a shared goal: to destroy an ancient enemy who has ruined many lives. Josiah lost years to this man, and his sole focus is revenge. He’s prepared for every contingency—except encountering a beautiful new witch who understands nothing of the immense Power building within her or the attraction she wields over him. Danger can bring them together… When divorcing her husband, Molly uncovers a dangerous secret he’s willing to kill to protect. She turns to Josiah for help, and they discover a connection between Molly’s husband and Josiah’s enemy. As they work together, a spark ignites between them that threatens to become an inferno. But Molly is done compromising herself for any man, and Josiah’s mission is his top priority. And the enemy is cunning, cruel, and drawing ever closer. As the danger escalates, so does the tension between them. Is a lasting relationship possible? Will either of them live long enough to try?