This is an adventure series, modelling the life of the African girl-child and giving her a voice. Its a real life story of an African child, her pain, sorrow and the turning point in her life that has changed her world completely.

The First Promise is a translation of Ashapurna Debi s novel, Pratham Pratisruti, originally published in Bengali in 1964. Celebrated as one of the most popular and path-breaking novels of its time, it has received continual critical acclaim: the Rabindra Puraskar (the Tagore Prize) in 1966 and the Bharitiya Jnanpith, India s highest literary award, in 1977. Spanning the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ashapurna tells the story of the struggles and efforts of women in nineteenth-century, colonial Bengal in a deceptively easy and conversational style. The charming eight-year old heroine, Satyabati is a child bride who leaves her husband s village for Calcutta, the capital of British India where she is caught in the social dynamics of women s education, social reform agendas, modern medicine and urban entertainment. As she makes her way through this complex maze, making sense of the rapidly changing world around her, Satyabati nurtures hopes and aspirations for her daughter. But the promises held out by modernity turn out to be empty, instigating Satyabati to break away from her inherited world and initiate a quest that takes her to the very heart of tradition.

In this novel, Sharat Chandra has portrayed the external beauty as well as the internal beauty and mental feelings of the Indian woman with amazing dexterity. He has done so in such a perfect manner that no other novelist of Indian languages has been able to reach his level. lolita of 'Parineeta', like every female characters of other novels penned by Sharat Chandra, depicts live images of the problems related to the life of women, the internal clashes among them and their innate feelings Among many novels of Sharat Chandra, 'Parineeta' is a superior novel. Many successful movies have been made by taking this novel as a script base.

The Bikol language of the Philippines, spoken in the southernmost peninsula of Luzon Island and extending into the island provinces of Catanduanes and Masbate, is presented in this bilingual dictionary. An introduction explains the Bikol alphabet, orthographic representation (including policies adopted in writing Spanish and English loan words), foreign sounds in Bikol, and Bikol phonology. A section on the use of the dictionary outlines affixes, tenses, verbal and nonverbal stress, combined affix forms, the causative series "pa-," "mang-" and "pang-" series, "pang-" as a nominal, "maki-" and "paki-" series, "hing-" series, unintentional action, ability series, "magin," and plural nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The Bikol-English and English-Bikol dictionary sections follow.