What's on the book rack

Check out the books of the week

Face to Face

Brian Grazer

Simon & Schuster, 2019, pp 208, Rs 599

In Face to Face, Brian takes you around the world and behind the scenes of some of his most iconic movies and television shows, like A Beautiful Mind, Empire and Arrested Development to show just how much in-person encounters have revolutionised his life, and how they have the power to change yours.

Ninth House

Leigh Bardugo

Hachette, 2019, pp 480, Rs 699

Alex Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. But a free ride to one of the world’s most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch. Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale’s secret societies.

Dilip Kumar

Trinetra Bajpai, Anshula Bajpai

Bloomsbury, 2019, pp 300, Rs 1,299

Lavishly illustrated with over a hundred rare and familiar pictures, this comprehensive book includes chapters on Dilip Kumar’s early years and family, his evolution as an actor, an exhaustive filmography, his relationship with his contemporaries and colleagues, and his romances.

The Markandeya Purana

Bibek Debroy

Penguin, 2019, pp 560, Rs 599

A marvellous amalgam of mythology and metaphysics, the Markandeya Purana unfolds as a series of conversations, in which the Sage Markandeya is asked to answer some deeper questions raised by events in the Mahabharata.

Grand Union

Zadie Smith

Penguin, 2019, pp 256, Rs 699

Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, and the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves.

Valmiki’s Ramayana

Arshia Sattar

Harper Collins, 2019, pp 592, Rs 699

Apart from exploring the fundamental human question of how to be good, the Ramayana is also the story of a god who comes to earth to establish righteousness. The tension between Rama’s essentially divine nature and his all too human trials makes this one of the most compelling epics in world literature.

King Zeno

Nathaniel Rich

Picador, 2019, pp 400, Rs 799

New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an axe murderer on the loose. The lives of a traumatised cop, a conflicted Mafia matriarch, and a brilliant trumpeter converge. In Nathaniel Rich’s King Zeno, the Crescent City gets the rich, dark, sweeping novel it so deserves.

Imaginary Friend

Stephen Chbosky

Hachette, 2019, pp 720, Rs 799

Kate Reese is a single mother fleeing an abusive relationship by starting over in a new town, with her young son Christopher. But Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, is not the safe place they thought it would be...Their world begins to unravel after Christopher vanishes into the Mission Street Woods.