These moments of my childhood in Howrah, Calcutta, Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Dehradun, remain in my mind, as the highlights of my growing up years, in the company of my grandparents, parents and my beloved older brother. When life was lived at an easier pace, days and nights seemed endless, full of promise and adventure.

The Last of The White Ants unrolls a colourful canvas of events and relationships interwoven within the daily life of British Colonial Civil Servants in Zomba, Nyasaland, in the 10-year run-up to Independence in 1964.

Meet the superstars of India’s animal kingdom! A crocodile who loves eating rice. A mule who won an award for bravery. A photogenic tigress who ruled Ranthambore. Swashbuckling monitor lizards. Rats believed to be the children of a goddess. Cuddly dogs who help nervous travellers. Five thousand punctual parrots... These and many other curious creatures, along with their equally curious human friends, inhabit the pages of this very curious book. Soar, crawl, hop and scamper about with them as they take you on a most unusual journey around the country. Cheerfully told and charmingly illustrated, these animal stories, collected from cities, jungles, rescue missions and maybe even your own neighbourhood, are funny, fascinating and downright adorable. And the best part? They’re all completely true!

Lined with grandeur, tragedy and fantasy, Tarana Husain Khan's odyssey maps the social, political and religious contours of 1897 Sherpur with the fascinating and strong-willed Feroza Begum at the centre of the storm. On an evening not too many evenings ago, the blue-eyed Feroza, flouting her family's orders, attended Nawab Shams Ali Khan's sawani celebrations at the Benazir Palace. Tragedy coloured the night when she found herself kidnapped and withheld in the Nawab's harem - bustling, tantalizing and rife with sinister power play. As tyranny and repression tightened their hold inside the royal walls, at the Bazaar Chowk, dastangoi Kallan Mirza enchanted his listeners with the legend of sorcerer Tareek Jaan and his chimeric city, the Tilism-e-Azam, where women were confined in underground basements. Misfortune and subjugation link eras when Ameera, Feroza's great-granddaughter, is restricted to her house and finds solace in her Dadi's retelling of Feroza's tragedy. When Ameera's circumstances begin mirroring the strife and indignities pervasive in 1897 Sherpur, she must reflect if society has shifted enough for women and their choices. Written with careful flamboyance and striking evocativeness, The Begum and the Dastan is a world imbued with love, splendour and heartbreak, only saved by the women who refuse to play by the rule book.

If you were climbing a tree, just what might you see? Birds or animals or insects? Would you swing like a monkey? Or pick the ripest fruit straight from the branch? Join award-winning author and illustrator, Durga Yael Bernhard, on a trip around the world to climb its weirdest and most wonderful trees. No matter if you are in Africa, Asia, Europe, or America, there is a grand adventure waiting for you—provided you have a tree to climb in your neighborhood! Just Like Me, Climbing a Tree explores 12 of the most distinctive trees from across the globe, and includes educational notes about each of the trees to help answer questions that curious young minds might have.

A couple of years after his father's death, ten-year-old Ruskin travels to Dehradun to spend his holidays with his new family. As he reacquaints himself with his mother, now remarried and with a busy social life, his stepfather and new siblings, a pensive Ruskin longs for his father's company, his stamp collection and the old gramophone. Trying to escape this unfamiliar place, he immerses himself in books and explores the forest glades, canals and bazaars of the little town, forming some unlikely friendships on the way. After the much-loved Looking for the Rainbow, the master storyteller lends another backward glance at his boyhood years-a vacation that took place over seventy winters ago-remembering his days with rare humour, remarkable charm and twinges of heartache.