This is an anthology of short poems, fiction and nonfiction pieces by Kamala Das To the Indian reader of fiction and poetry, Kamala Das (1934-2009) needs no introduction. Her novels, collections of poetry and short stories in English and Malayalam - and indeed her life itself - have both challenged and redefined the boundaries of middle-class morality. Her sensational autobiography, published in English as My Story, created a storm in literary circles and established her as the iconoclast of her generation. Her conversion to Islam in 1999 at the age of sixty-five sent social and literary circles into another tizzy. Wages of Love: Uncollected Writings of Kamala Das brings together stories, plays, poems and non-fiction writing that have previously not been anthologized. While 'The Fair-Skinned Babu' is the sardonic tale of an author who has become a Muslim searching for a contract killer to commission her own killing, 'Neipayasam' is the poignant story of a father feeding his children the delicious dessert prepared by their mother whose death that morning the children are too young to comprehend. In one of her essays, she writes about contesting the parliamentary election in 1984 and, in another, about Khushwant Singh's allegation that she had manipulated her nomination for the Nobel. Expertly compiled by Suresh Kohli, and including a heartfelt introduction by him, Wages of Love revives the free soul and literary genius that was Kamala Das.

Dulcinea "Cin" Craven, having inherited magical powers and become the target of a vampire and a demon who want them for themselves, teams up with the warriors of the Righteous, meeting and falling in love with Michael who gives her the option to remain human or become immortal like him.

Roman and medieval poets and authors not only explored the physicality and sexuality of love, driven by passion and desire, but also saw love as a labour, a project to be worked on and achieved to reach the final goal.

Two generations ago, young men and women with only a high-school degree would have entered the plentiful industrial occupations which then sustained the middle-class ideal of a male-breadwinner family. Such jobs have all but vanished over the past forty years, and in their absence ever-growing numbers of young adults now hold precarious, low-paid jobs with few fringe benefits. Facing such insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. This has created a large marriage gap between them and their more affluent, college-educated peers. In Labor’s Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew Cherlin offers a new historical assessment of the rise and fall of working-class families in America, demonstrating how momentous social and economic transformations have contributed to the collapse of this once-stable social class and what this seismic cultural shift means for the nation’s future. Drawing from more than a hundred years of census data, Cherlin documents how today’s marriage gap mirrors that of the Gilded Age of the late-nineteenth century, a time of high inequality much like our own. Cherlin demonstrates that the widespread prosperity of working-class families in the mid-twentieth century, when both income inequality and the marriage gap were low, is the true outlier in the history of the American family. In fact, changes in the economy, culture, and family formation in recent decades have been so great that Cherlin suggests that the working-class family pattern has largely disappeared. Labor's Love Lost shows that the primary problem of the fall of the working-class family from its mid-twentieth century peak is not that the male-breadwinner family has declined, but that nothing stable has replaced it. The breakdown of a stable family structure has serious consequences for low-income families, particularly for children, many of whom underperform in school, thereby reducing their future employment prospects and perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of economic disadvantage. To address this disparity, Cherlin recommends policies to foster educational opportunities for children and adolescents from disadvantaged families. He also stresses the need for labor market interventions, such as subsidizing low wages through tax credits and raising the minimum wage. Labor's Love Lost provides a compelling analysis of the historical dynamics and ramifications of the growing number of young adults disconnected from steady, decent-paying jobs and from marriage. Cherlin’s investigation of today’s “would-be working class” shines a much-needed spotlight on the struggling middle of our society in today’s new Gilded Age.

Sarah Gilchrist has fled London and a troubled past to join the University of Edinburgh's medical school in 1882, the first year it admits women. Determined to become a doctor despite the misgivings of her family and society, Sarah quickly finds plenty of barriers at school itself: professors who refuse to teach their new pupils, male students determined to force out their female counterparts, and female peers who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman.Desperate for a proper education, Sarah turns to one of the city’s ramshackle charitable hospitals for additional training. The St Giles’ Infirmary for Women ministers to the downtrodden and drunk, the thieves and whores with nowhere else to go. She learns a great deal there, but when one of Sarah’s patients turns up in the university dissecting room as a battered corpse, Sarah finds herself drawn into a murky underworld of bribery, brothels, and body snatchers.Sarah is determined to find out what happened to Lucy and bring those responsible for her death to justice. But as she searches for answers in Edinburgh’s dank alleyways, bawdy houses and fight clubs, Sarah comes closer and closer to uncovering one of Edinburgh’s most lucrative trades, and, in doing so, puts her own life at risk…

This is an anthology of short poems, fiction and nonfiction pieces by Kamala Das To the Indian reader of fiction and poetry, Kamala Das (1934-2009) needs no introduction. Her novels, collections of poetry and short stories in English and Malayalam - and indeed her life itself - have both challenged and redefined the boundaries of middle-class morality. Her sensational autobiography, published in English as My Story, created a storm in literary circles and established her as the iconoclast of her generation. Her conversion to Islam in 1999 at the age of sixty-five sent social and literary circles into another tizzy. Wages of Love: Uncollected Writings of Kamala Das brings together stories, plays, poems and non-fiction writing that have previously not been anthologized. While 'The Fair-Skinned Babu' is the sardonic tale of an author who has become a Muslim searching for a contract killer to commission her own killing, 'Neipayasam' is the poignant story of a father feeding his children the delicious dessert prepared by their mother whose death that morning the children are too young to comprehend. In one of her essays, she writes about contesting the parliamentary election in 1984 and, in another, about Khushwant Singh's allegation that she had manipulated her nomination for the Nobel. Expertly compiled by Suresh Kohli, and including a heartfelt introduction by him, Wages of Love revives the free soul and literary genius that was Kamala Das.