A Life of Adventure and Delight delivers eight masterful stories from dazzlingly original and critically acclaimed author Akhil Sharma. Hailed as a storyteller whose fiction is “a glowing work of art” (Wall Street Journal), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice “as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky” (The Nation). In A Life of Adventure and Delight, Sharma delivers eight masterful stories that focus on Indian protagonists at home and abroad and that plunge the reader into the unpredictable workings of the human heart. A young woman in an arranged marriage awakens one day surprised to find herself in love with her husband. A retired divorcé tries to become the perfect partner by reading women’s magazines. A man’s longstanding contempt for his cousin suddenly shifts inward when he witnesses his cousin caring for a sick woman. Tender and darkly comic, the protagonists in A Life of Adventure and Delight deceive themselves and engage in odd behaviors as they navigate how to be good, how to make meaningful relationships, and the strengths and pitfalls of self-interest. Elegantly written and emotionally immediate, the stories provide an intimate, honest assessment of human relationships between mothers and sons, sons and lovers, and husband and wives from a dazzlingly original, critically acclaimed writer.

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels Winner of the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award "Gorgeously tender at its core…beautiful, heartstopping…Family Life really blazes." —Sonali Deraniyagala, New York Times Book Review Hailed as a "supreme storyteller" (Philadelphia Inquirer) for his "cunning, dismaying and beautifully conceived" fiction (New York Times), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice "as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky" (The Nation). In his highly anticipated second novel, Family Life, he delivers a story of astonishing intensity and emotional precision. We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju play cricket in the streets, waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their father in America. America to the Mishras is, indeed, everything they could have imagined and more: when automatic glass doors open before them, they feel that surely they must have been mistaken for somebody important. Pressing an elevator button and the elevator closing its doors and rising, they have a feeling of power at the fact that the elevator is obeying them. Life is extraordinary until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother severely brain-damaged and the other lost and virtually orphaned in a strange land. Ajay, the family’s younger son, prays to a God he envisions as Superman, longing to find his place amid the ruins of his family’s new life. Heart-wrenching and darkly funny, Family Life is a universal story of a boy torn between duty and his own survival.

Revised and featuring a new foreword by the author, this uncompromising novel returns, more powerful than ever: "A portrait of a country ravaged by vendetta and graft, its public spaces loud with the complaints of religious bigots and its private spaces cradling unspeakable pain." (Hilary Mantel, New York Review of Books) An Obedient Father introduced one of the most admired voices in contemporary fiction. Set in Delhi in the 1990s, it tells the story of an inept bureaucrat enmired in corruption, and of the daughter who alone knows the true depth of his crimes. Decried in India for its frank treatment of child abuse, the novel was widely praised elsewhere for its compassion, and for a plot that mingled the domestic with the political, tragedy with farce. Yet, as Akhil Sharma writes in his foreword to this new edition, he was haunted by what he considered shortcomings within the book: almost twenty years later, he returned to face them. Here is the result, a leaner, surer version with even greater power.

Lawrence hates being teased about his dimples, but nothing he does seems to make any difference. Joe goes right on teasing him, and the teasing gets meaner and meaner. Finally, Lawrence notices something about his friend Stewart that may provide the tool he needs to tease-proof himself once and for all.

After nearly a decade of dutifully climbing the corporate ladder to become a partner in a headhunting firm, Lucy Leonelli was feeling restless in a life that was seemingly mapped out for her, and she could not shake the sense that she was missing out on something... something out there. Realising that the answer was right in front of her – in a country so full of clandestine communities and colourful, eccentric characters – Lucy made the daring decision to hit the pause button on her career and hang up her suit in favour of a year exploring twenty-six wildly different subcultures. Over the next twelve months, she lived with battle re-enactors, circus performers, hill baggers, Morris dancers, naturists, trainspotters, yogis, zeitgeist political activists and more, experiencing first-hand their social rituals and customs in the hope that, somewhere along the way, she might just uncover the most authentic version of herself. A Year in the Life charts Lucy’s adventure as she sang naked karaoke with naturists, jumped from one very high place to another with parkour daredevils, partied in tight latex with self-proclaimed vampires and fought the undead in an epic LARP battle. It tells of the importance of community in an increasingly isolating society; of the unquenchable human thirst for a sense of belonging; of how misguided our own prejudices can be; and of how when we open the door to others, we might just learn something about ourselves.

Fresh, funny, and fearless, The Middle Finger Project is a point-by-point primer on how to get unstuck, slay imposter syndrome, trust in your own worth and ability, and become a strong, capable, wonderful, weird, brilliant, ballsy, unfuckwithable YOU. "Don't worry, this isn't a book about God, nor is it a book about Ryan Gosling (second in command). But it is a book about authority and becoming your own." --Ash Ambirge After a string of dead-end jobs and a death in the family, Ash Ambirge was down to her last $26 and sleeping in a Kmart parking lot when she faced the truth: No one was coming to her rescue. It was up to her to appoint herself. That night led to what eventually became a six-figure freelance career as a sought-after marketing and copywriting consultant, all while sipping coffee from her front porch in Costa Rica. She then launched The Middle Finger Project, a blog and online course hub, which has provided tens of thousands of young "women who disobey" with the tools and mindset to give everyone else's expectations the finger and get on your own path to happiness, wealth, independence, and adventure. In her first book, Ash draws on her unconventional personal story to offer a fun, bracing, and occasionally potty-mouthed manifesto for the transformative power of radical self-reliance. Employing the signature wit and wordsmithing she's used to build an avid following, she offers paradigm-shifting advice along the lines of: • The best feeling in the world is knowing who you are and what you're capable of doing. • Life circumstances are not life sentences. If a Scranton girl who grew up in a trailer park can make it, so can you. • What you believe about yourself will either murder your chances or save your life. So why not believe something good? • You don't need a high-ranking job title to be authorized to contribute. You just need to contribute. • Be your own authority. Authority only works as long as you trust that someone smarter than you is making the rules. • The way you become a force is by being the most radically real version of yourself that you can be. • You only have 12 fucks a day to give, so use them wisely.

An Indie Next List Selection Keri Smith, creator of the mega-bestselling Wreck This Journal, now brings her imagination and inspiration to children with this picture book that explores the very active experience of reading. What if there were a book that changed every time you read it? Actually, every book does this. We are all part of the books we read, because our individual reactions, ideas, and emotions make the book whole, and these things are changing all the time. Keri Smith has helped millions of people free their creativity and find their own voice with her interactive books, and now she brings that sensibility to children and to the act of reading. This picture book is an invitation to honor your own vision and to welcome imperfection. Kids will discover that reading can engage all five senses, and that what they themselves bring to a book is an important contribution. (And of course they'll be invited to do a bit of harmless "wrecking"!)

You bring God joy.And God intends the feeling to be mutual. This book will help you lean into Joyful Delight, Thoughtful Delight, Playful Delight, Delicious Delight, and Desirable Delight in your life with God. Delight! invites you into a real, accessible, and down-to-earth way of experiencing the adventure of following Jesus. Of course you will know struggle and failure. Of course you will know grief and shame. But you don't have to carry the burden of getting your faith walk right; you already make Jesus jump for joy and sing his happy song. The Creator of the Universe thinks you're something special. Even when life is confusing or difficult, the Spirit is shaping you with care and delight. Are you tired of religion? Are you beat down by anxiety or doubt? Do you long for something more in your life of faith? Let go of your burden. Take a deep breath. And let's explore what it means to follow Jesus on the adventure of your life-an adventure marked by challenge and repentance and difficulty, but marked most fundamentally by mutual delight! The LORD will take great delight in you; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17) "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." (John 15:11) From the Book "Following Jesus isn't supposed to weigh you down; it's supposed to make you dance. Following Jesus isn't supposed to limit your fun; it's supposed to open you up to freedom you have never known before. Following Jesus isn't a burden to carry, even when you carry your cross; to follow Jesus is certainly to know suffering and trouble and dying to self and struggling with doubt, but fundamentally-fundamentally!-following Jesus is about delight. Jesus delights in you; and Jesus loves it when you feel the same about him. That's what following Jesus is all about." What People Are Saying In Delight!, Justin Rossow widens our lens for understanding grace as he explores the delight God has in us and the delight God gives to us. The impact will ripple into every area of your spiritual walk. Delight! brings both lightness and depth to the Scriptures and to our relationships with our Great God. HEIDI GOEHMANN, author of Altogether Beautiful: A Study of the Song of Songs Have we lost our sense of delight? Today delight seems to be reduced to each person's version of personal happiness. Or delight is simply missed altogether because we are too busy and anxious to notice it. In a deeply reflective and devotional way, Rossow puts delight back on the agenda of the theology of the Christian life. Taking us on a biblical journey of discovery around God's vision of delight for us, he invites us to receive this gift, revel in it, and, yes, delight in it! LEOPOLDO A. SANCHEZ M., author of Sculptor Spirit: Models of Sanctification from Spirit Christology I have spent a great deal of my life believing in my head that Jesus loved me, yet living practically as if I were always on the verge of being in big trouble. This book offers a refreshing, biblical vision of how to live a life captivated and covered by the love of God. Even more astonishing is the discovery of a God who is full of delight. JAMIE WIECHMAN, cofounder of Breathe Life Ministries

"While disguised as a boy, Jacky Faber experiences adventure and romance on the high seas"--

Join Adam and Christine Jeske as they mine their experience, from riding motorcycles in Africa to dicing celery in Wisconsin, in search of a God who is always present and who is charging every moment with potential. You'll discover the amazing things God is doing in the shadows of even the most ordinary day.