Based on the life of the middle class intellectuals of Calcutta, it is an unforgettable story of a Bohemian brother and his two sisters caught in the cross-currents of changing social values. In many ways the story reflects a vivid picture of India's social transition - a phase in which the older elements are not altogether dead, and the emergent ones not fully evolved.

God's Terrible Voice in the City: wherein are set forth the sound of the voice, in a narration of the two dreadful judgments of plague and fire, inflicted upon the city of London. Thomas Vincent was a clergyman who had given a long and powerful sermon about the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. He, like many others at the time, believed the fire was a punishment from God for Londoners' sins. He lists 25 sins in detail, such as religious hypocrisy, lying, swearing, laziness, drunkenness, pride, gluttony, envy and lust. Coming so soon after the dreadful plague of 1665, which killed 100,000, the fire must have seemed a divine judgment. In God's Terrible Voice in the City, Vincent includes a dramatic account of the fire, which captures the atmosphere and terror of the event as well as some fascinating details.

An anthology of articles on the evolution of minimal music in New York in 1972-1982, which originally appeared in the Village Voice (New York).

A New York Times bestselling writer explores what our unique sonic signature reveals about our species, our culture, and each one of us. Finally, a vital topic that has never had its own book gets its due. There’s no shortage of books about public speaking or language or song. But until now, there has been no book about the miracle that underlies them all—the human voice itself. And there are few writers who could take on this surprisingly vast topic with more artistry and expertise than John Colapinto. Beginning with the novel—and compelling—argument that our ability to speak is what made us the planet’s dominant species, he guides us from the voice’s beginnings in lungfish millions of years ago to its culmination in the talent of Pavoratti, Martin Luther King Jr., and Beyoncé—and each of us, every day. Along the way, he shows us why the voice is the most efficient, effective means of communication ever devised: it works in all directions, in all weathers, even in the dark, and it can be calibrated to reach one other person or thousands. He reveals why speech is the single most complex and intricate activity humans can perform. He travels up the Amazon to meet the Piraha, a reclusive tribe whose singular language, more musical than any other, can help us hear how melodic principles underpin every word we utter. He heads up to Harvard to see how professional voices are helped and healed, and he ventures out on the campaign trail to see how demagogues wield their voices as weapons. As far-reaching as this book is, much of the delight of reading it lies in how intimate it feels. Everything Colapinto tells us can be tested by our own lungs and mouths and ears and brains. He shows us that, for those who pay attention, the voice is an eloquent means of communicating not only what the speaker means, but also their mood, sexual preference, age, income, even psychological and physical illness. It overstates the case only slightly to say that anyone who talks, or sings, or listens will find a rich trove of thrills in This Is the Voice.

Horace Grondin, deputy head of the Sureté, is in fact Charles Bassicousse, sentenced sixteen years earlier for a murder he did not commit and obsessed with wreaking his revenge on Antoine Tarpagnan, the man he believes did commit the crime. Tarpagnan, an army captain, has fallen in love with Gabriella Pucci, the mistress of Paris's greatest villain. As Tarpagnan searches the underworld for Gabriella, unknown to him, Grondin is searching for him. Reminiscent of Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES, with the zest for characterisation of Dickens, Vautrin's novel revels in the chaos and passion of the period culminating in the savage repression of the Commune. The final climactic moments between Grondin and Tarpagnan take place on the barricades as Paris descends into a fury of bloodletting and panic. Fiction on a grand scale, Vautrin's multi-peopled novel exuberantly recreates the moment.