"In the Sanctity of the Snake Pit" discloses the tribulations of the Vietnam helicopter war, and provides deeply moving insight into the lives of those crewmen who routinely flew combat assault missions. Written in narrative non-fiction, the book reveals the rarely told account of air to ground combat, and the surreal events of adolescent soldiers, many exposed for the first time to their mortality. In 1969 sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll dominated most of these young lives, but they stood and fought hard believing they were doing the right thing irrespective of politics, and public opinion! Setting the backdrop is the 135th Assault Helicopter Unit, a fighting contingency made up of Royal Australian Navy personnel and members of the United States Army. As the only multi-national experimental military unit in Vietnam, they maintained the highest order of discipline and wrought devastation on the Viet Cong in South Vietnam’s delta region. With a year long adventure before him, the protagonist, MITCHELL COLLINS reflects on his desire to fly in the machines he was trained to repair. Almost immediately he is transformed into an aerial combatant of the unit’s elite Taipan platoon flying helicopter gunships. Their mission is to protect the troop transport choppers carrying ground forces into the fight. Once the troops are in the landing zone, the Taipan’s provided gun support and reconnaissance. His experiences were unlike other combatants who fought on the ground, the intensity and frequency of actions were multiplied by their mobility. Mitchell soon contemplates on his heartfelt emotion of the carnage and of losing comrades. In his last three months he fly’s the night missions of the hunter/killers”, and his chances for survival dwindle.

Praised on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in the author’s native Uganda, Moses Isegawa’s first novel Abyssinian Chronicles was a “big, transcendently ambitious book” (Boston Globe) that “blasts open the tidy borders of the conventional novel and redraws the literary map to reveal a whole new world” (Elle). In Snakepit, Isegawa returns to the surreal, brutalizing landscapes of his homeland during the time of dictator Idi Amin, when interlocking webs of emotional cruelty kept tyrants gratified and servants cooperative, a land where no one–not husbands or wives, parents or lovers–is ever safe from the implacable desires of men in power. Men like General Bazooka, who rues the day he hired Cambridge-educated Bat Katanga as his “Bureaucrat Two”–a man too good at his job–and places in his midst (and his bed) a seductive operative named Victoria, whose mission and motives are anything but simple. Ambitious and acquisitive, more than a little arrogant, Katanga finds himself steadily boxed in by events spiraling madly out of control, where deception, extortion, and murder are just so many cards to be played.

"If the short story is an art, then Steven Harris understands that and has made use of a wide palette in creating his 'New Visions'." Louise Crossley From the author of Fiction Burns comes this latest collection of short stories, New Visions. With the introduction by Louise Crossley, there are twenty eight stories in all, some previously included in his 2009 anthology And Other Stories, others completely new, but all uniquely Harris.

East Pakistan. March 1971. Imtiaz Khan arrives at his uncle’s house in Dhaka for what he thinks will be a quick visit, only to be held back when the Pakistan Army makes a surprise attack on the University, murdering students and professors in cold blood. As the smell of sulphur and gunpowder become a part of their lives, young pro-independence fighters – the Mukti Bahini – find a haven in the home of Imtiaz’s uncle and aunt, Kamruzzaman and Aisha Chowdhury, and they are swept up in the tide of freedom that drives them all. On the other side, Fazal Shaukat – a young captain in the Pakistan Army with a family name to live up to – finds that the war he has signed up for isn’t going away anytime soon. There are things bigger than him or his family at stake, even as Pakistan finds itself torn asunder, Jinnah’s dream turning into a nightmare. Set against the backdrop of a monumental historical event, In the Time of the Others is about what it means to live during violent times. Fierce, searingly honest and revealing, this powerful debut explores how lives intersect during a time of war and upheaval, and how violence changes all that is human.

"Spanning over half a century, this volume contains all the short stories Khushwant Singh has every written, including the delightful tongue-in-cheek 'The Maharani of Chootiapuram', written in 2008."--Back cover.

A selection of the most enjoyable and popular short stories from India. Best Loved Indian Stories brings together tales from different parts of the country that have enthralled readers of all ages. This volume, the first of two, represents the best English stories written by Indians in the twentieth century. In these twenty stories you will meet unforgettable characters like the inimitable Muni with his two goats in R.K. Narayan’s classic ‘A Horse and Two Goats', the pious Vishnu in Khushwant Singh's 'The Mark of Vishnu’, the innocent basket-seller with the enchanting eyes in Ruskin Bond's unforgettable 'Night Train at Deoli', the dying grandmother with her eccentric demands in Githa Hariharan's ‘Remains of the Feast’ and many other men and women who have touched our lives over the generations. The authors included in this volume are: Anjana Appachana Anita Desai Attia Hosain Bharati Mukherjee Githa Hariharan K.A. Abbas Keki N. Daruwalla Khushwant Singh Manjula Padmanabhan Manoj Das Manohar Malgonkar Mulk Raj Anand Nayantara Sahgal Nergis Dalai Padma Hejrnadi R.K. Narayan Raja Rao Ruskin Bond Santha Rarna Rau Shashi Deshpande.

New Reformatted Edition This book is a compilation of classic short stories by five great Indian writers – Raja Rao, Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand, Dr. Mulk Raj Anand and Khushwant Singh. Though not necessarily representative of the authors’ complete works, the stories have been carefully chosen to showcase their versatility and skill as storytellers. The collection covers an extraordinary range of themes, styles and settings, allowing the reader a glimpse of another world gone by. Yet, these stories seem timeless, and the characters in them show the same foibles, fears and hopes as do people in the brave new world of the 21st century.