Growing up in India, Kamini often found herself struggling to be noticed: noticed by her beloved, storytelling father, whose position as a railway officer took him away from home for long stretches of time; and noticed by her distant, distracted mother, Saroja, whose biting remarks earned her the nickname Tamarind Woman—and whose frequent disappearances while her husband was away led to whispers of dalliances and affairs. Now Kamini is grown, living in Canada in a sort of self-imposed exile from her eccentric family and all the turmoil they represent. After her father’s death, her mother embarks upon a solo journey across India by train— because what is the use of a lifetime railway pass if she doesn’t use it? The trip brings the past rushing back for Saroja and Kamini—as both are forced to confront their dreams, disappointments, and long-guarded secrets.

A beautiful and brilliant portrait of two generations of women. Set in India’s railway colonies, this is the story of Kamini and her mother Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While in Canada beginning her graduate studies, Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying she has sold their home and is travelling through India. Both are forced into the past to confront their dreams and losses and to explore the love that binds mothers and daughters everywhere.

Kamini has recently moved from India to Canada. Plunged into the past by acrimonious telephone calls and odd postcards from her mother, she tries to make sense of the eccentric family she has left behind. Why was her Mother as bitter as a tamarind with her lot in life? Why did she seem to love Roopa best, rubbing almond oil on her skin at bath-time and never scolding her for getting her sums wrong? And where did she disappear to while Dadda was away on business, leaving her daughters in the care of a superstitious old ayah? A wise and affectionate portrait of two generations of women in an Indian family, Tamarind Woman is a beautifully evocative novel that explores the mutability of memory and unravels the deep ties of love and resentment that bind mothers and daughters everywhere.

“It is no accident that the places in the world where we see the most instability are those in which the rights of women and girls are denied. Isha Sesay’s indispensable and gripping account of the brutal abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram terrorists provides a stark reminder of the great unfinished business of the 21st century: equality for girls and women around the world.”— Hillary Rodham Clinton The first definitive account of the lost girls of Boko Haram and why their story still matters—by celebrated international journalist Isha Sesay. In the early morning of April 14, 2014, the militant Islamic group Boko Haram violently burst into the small town of Chibok, Nigeria, and abducted 276 girls from their school dorm rooms. From poor families, these girls were determined to make better lives for themselves, but pursuing an education made them targets, resulting in one of the most high-profile abductions in modern history. While the Chibok kidnapping made international headlines, and prompted the #BringBackOurGirls movement, many unanswered questions surrounding that fateful night remain about the girls’ experiences in captivity, and where many of them are today. In Beneath the Tamarind Tree, Isha Sesay tells this story as no one else can. Originally from Sierra Leone, Sesay led CNN’s Africa reporting for more than a decade, and she was on the front lines when this story broke. With unprecedented access to a group of girls who made it home, she follows the journeys of Priscilla, Saa, and Dorcas in an uplifting tale of sisterhood and survival. Sesay delves into the Nigerian government’s inadequate response to the kidnapping, exposes the hierarchy of how the news gets covered, and synthesizes crucial lessons about global national security. She also reminds us of the personal sacrifice required of journalists to bring us the truth at a time of growing mistrust of the media. Beneath the Tamarind Tree is a gripping read and a story of resilience with a soaring message of hope at its core, reminding us of the ever-present truth that progress for all of us hinges on unleashing the potential of women.

A powerful story of loss and identity, home and family, Tamarind and the Star of Ishta weaves a family mystery together with adventure and wonder from Costa Award-winning author, Jasbinder Bilan. Tamarind has never met her Indian mother, Chinty, who died shortly after she was born. But when her father remarries, Tamarind is sent to India to stay with the family she has never met, in their atmospheric ancestral home—a huge mansion high in the Himalaya mountains. Her arrival in India brings culture shock, secrets, and unanswered questions: What is the tension between her father and the family, and why will no one talk about her mother? Instead of answers, she is greeted with ominous silence. Taking refuge in the lush gardens one moon-lit night, she follows a friendly monkey to find an abandoned hut and a glowing star ring, and meets Ishta, a mysterious mountain girl. Tamarind unravels the mysteries of the house alongside the search for her own identity.

After the release of Anita Rau Badami's critically acclaimed first novel, Tamarind Mem, it was evident a promising new talent had joined the Canadian literary community. Her dazzling literary follow-up is The Hero's Walk, a novel teeming with the author's trademark tumble of the haphazard beauty, wreckage and folly of ordinary lives. Set in the dusty seaside town of Toturpuram on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk traces the terrain of family and forgiveness through the lives of an exuberant cast of characters bewildered by the rapid pace of change in today's India. Each member of the Rao family pits his or her chance at personal fulfillment against the conventions of a crumbling caste and class system. Anita Rau Badami explains that "The Hero's Walk is a novel about so many things: loss, disappointment, choices and the importance of coming to terms with yourself and the circumstances of your life without losing the dignity embedded in all of us. At one level it is about heroism - not the hero of the classic epic, those enormous god-sized heroes - but my fascination with the day-to-day heroes and the heroism that's needed to survive all the unexpected disasters and pitfalls of life."

Contemporary Caribbean Women's Poetry provides detailed readings of individual poems by women poets whose work has not yet received the sustained critical attention it deserves. These readings are contextualized both within Caribbean cultural debates and postcolonial and feminist critical discourses in a lively and engaged way; revisiting nationalist debates as well as topical issues about the performance of gendered and raced identities within poetic discourse. Newly available in paperback, this book is groundbreaking reading for all those interested in postcolonialism, Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies and contemporary poetry.

I have no hesitation in calling what I am about to write a “war record,” for my life was “twice in jeopardy,” as will be seen later on, and I served faithfully as a volunteer, though without compensation, during the entire war of the Rebellion. It is true I was not in the ranks, but I was at the front, and perhaps had a more continuous experience of army life during those four terribly eventful years than any other woman of the North. Born in Charleston, S. C., my sympathies were naturally with the South, but on December 9, 1861, I became a Union woman by marrying a Northern soldier in Philadelphia. The romance which resulted in this desertion to the enemy would perhaps interest the reader, yet I do not propose to tell it; for I am sure the very realistic life which it enabled me to experience for three winters in camp at army head-quarters will interest him more. My first commander was Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, to whom I reported on December 11, 1861, at Frederick, Md., where my bridegroom was then a captain of an independent company, which he named and equipped as “Zouaves d’Afrique.” The army being in winter quarters, a general disposition prevailed among officers and men to make the season pass merrily. Though the war had by this time assumed serious proportions and the battle of Bull Run had been fought, yet there were many who still believed that the counsels of peace and forbearance would prevail and that the conflict would be of short duration; and this I remember was the daily theme of discussion. Frederick had become a garrisoned town, every train bringing troops and supplies; army wagons and their four-mule teams had possession of the streets, while the sidewalks and shop windows were monopolized by the volunteer officers in their bright buttons and gold lace, who permitted themselves to be disturbed only by the appearance of a pretty face, or by the steady tread of the patrol with their white gloves and polished rifles. My apartments in Frederick consisted of two very modest third-story rooms, sparsely furnished, with the use of a kitchen, at a cheap rent, for we neither of us had any money; yet we indulged in the luxury of the best cook in the army, no other than Nunzio Finelli (one of our zouaves), who was afterwards the steward of the Union League of Philadelphia, and a renowned restaurateur in the same city. Finelli was then a very young man, with a face as handsome as the famous “Neapolitan boy” in the picture, and a voice as sweet and sympathetic as Brignoli’s. A most obliging disposition and a fondness for operatic music made him therefore a great acquisition to our little household,—and many an omelette soufflé was first beaten into snowflakes, while the dulcet and plaintive notes of “Ah che la morte” or “Spirito gentil,” reaching the street, detained the spellbound passers-by; and sometimes when his friend and compatriot, Constantino Calarisi (another zouave), joined him in the kitchen, we were treated to a duet which even Patti would have applauded, for they were both very remarkable singers. Poor Finelli! a few months later a bullet at the battle of Cedar Mountain terribly disfigured him, and when I next saw him the shape of his injured nose reminded me of the inhabitants of the Ghetto.

Three children. Alone on the ocean waves, after a fierce storm throws their parents from the Pamela Jane into the icy waters below. Maya, Simon and Penny now face a wild rescue adventure that will lead them to a truly magical place . . . Imagine an island with green mountains looming over pink sandy beaches and tide pools lit by the moon. An island with the darkest of secrets, where pirates lurk and jaguars roam – and a precious stone holds a power that is both wondrous and terrifying. This is where the children must go. No one from the Outside has escaped the island before. Danger is everywhere. But they can’t turn back now. Could you?