Experience the cultural history of Indian tea production; journey across this rich and fascinating country, to discover ancient landscapes, the natural environments of tea cultivation, the passions and the human story behind one of the most celebrated and sought after beverages.

If India has always beckoned, but something held you back -- or if you have traveled to India and feel a longing in your heart to return -- make the Chai Pilgrimage through the pages of this book. Patrick Shaw and Jenny Kostecki-Shaw spent four months in northern India, steeping themselves in chai culture. They kept journals, made paintings and took pictures. Using chai as their compass, they also made friends, worshiped at remote temples, and drank a lot of chai. Firsthand, they learned from the extraordinary hospitality of the Indian people that "Guest is God," being treated as family members in many homes. Inspired by the pungent spice palette, they returned to their northern New Mexico home and created this ecstatic book of art. Every page is a song of praise to the Indian people and the Hindu gods, to the healing chai spices, to the small farmers who grow tea, to every chai wallah in every stand along their journey. Patrick and Jenny captured and translated not just the Hindi language and the sweetness of the people but the spirit of love itself. Every word, painting and recipe is suffused with the pure flavor of devotion.

She was a sixty-two-year-old California grandmother, retired program director and college professor when she joined the Peace Corps. Within months, Joan Heron found herself in Turkmenistan, a small, impoverished country born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Using meager resources, a beginner’s grasp of the Russian language, tremendous trust in friendship and a can-do will, Ms. Heron embarks on a two-year adventure in an alien, male chauvinist, often obstructionist environment. Her compelling true story, told with humor and immense compassion for the people and their plight, reaches across borders, cultures and politics to illuminate the strength and riches of the human spirit.

Amira Khan has no plans to break her no-dating rule. Thirty-year-old engineer Amira Khan has set one rule for herself: no dating until her grad-school thesis is done. Nothing can distract her from completing a paper that is so good her boss will give her the promotion she deserves when she returns to work in the city. Amira leaves campus early, planning to work in the quiet basement apartment of her family’s house. But she arrives home to find that her grandmother has rented the basement to . . . a barbershop quartet. Seriously? The living situation is awkward: Amira needs silence; the quartet needs to rehearse for a competition; and Duncan, the small-town baritone with the flannel shirts, is driving her up the wall. As Amira and Duncan clash, she is surprised to feel a simmering attraction for him. How can she be interested in someone who doesn’t get her, or her family’s culture? This is not a complication she needs when her future is at stake. But when intolerance rears its ugly head and people who are close to Amira get hurt, she learns that there is more to Duncan than meets the eye. Now she must decide what she is willing to fight for. In the end, it may be that this small-town singer is the only person who sees her at all.

Explore exciting new recipes from the streets of India's four biggest cities.

A profound literary debut that recounts a child’s singular story Since I made you, you may imagine I set myself on fire— or better, say: you lit the funeral pyre from ten thousand days away. A young woman in Paris encounters an uncanny presence on a tour of a small museum. A study by Rodin of the dancer Little Hanako—titled Head of Sorrow—triggers in the young woman recognition of her mother, a mother erased from her life since childhood. Thus begins Eleanor Chai’s Standing Water, one of the most remarkable first books of poetry in recent years. It is a journey into the past as well as the present—into the narrative hidden from the poet since birth, as well as the strategies that she has adopted to survive. It is a journey about how we learn to cope with, to perceive and describe, the world. It is a story about savage privilege and deprivation. Haunting the whole is the figure of the real Little Hanako—Rodin’s model, a Japanese artist displaced in Europe, the medium through which other artists dream and discover the world.

Fifty-four rabbis, from all branches of Judaism, tell their favorite stories--classic Bible stories, rabbinic and modern commentaries, folktales, and legends. Each story, ranging in length from one to seven pages, reflects a Jewish ideal or value and is told in the individual rabbi's unique speaking style. Each concludes with a note from the contributor explaining the story's lesson and why it is the rabbi's favorite. CONTENTS: The book is divided into four sections: Section One: Community -- Stories about relationships, tzedakah, and tikun olam, our responsibility to heal the world Section Two: Religion -- Stories about Jewish identity, practices, and spirituality Section Three: God's World --Stories about the ways in which we relate to God and live according to God's plan Section Four: Outlook -- Stories about our attitudes, choices, and quests for truth, honesty, wisdom, and courage