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Books on performing arts in India have   either been of the coffee table variety or dense and too theoretical. Books on classical dance in particular have often reiterated the existing primers and treatises like the Natya Shastra or the Abhinaya Darpana. Dance photography of course is a visual delight and some books on classical dance try to get by with a profusion of glamorous images. For too long, not much was written about the performing arts, for the tradition was sceptical of the written word and relied mostly on oral narrative accounts.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a prolific writer, social activist and a teacher of creative writing skills. In her latest work Before We Visit the Goddess she has deftly chronicled the diasporic enigmas spanning three generations and showcasing the agglutination of Indian and American cultural identities.

Here’s a real bonanza of stories! That’s what strikes one at first glance. Thirty-one short stories by well-known children’s authors … stories about school life-urban and rural, stories about dating and falling in love, futuristic stories that take one back to the crude past—that is, the present, strange stories about ghosts in boarding schools and school reunions, stories about stories that help make friends … it’s a lavish spread!

What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.—Italo CalvinoThis is how Sudeep Sen introduces his book Ero Text to us. He brings together texts set in five sections—‘desire, disease, delusion, dream and downpour’. These pieces cross genres and boundaries of short prose, experimental fiction and poetry.

Compiled and edited by Khushwant Singh’s daughter, writer/publisher Mala Dayal, Me, The Jokerman, is a selection of his writings that appeared periodically over the years in the columns of nationally acclaimed newspapers and magazines such as The Hindustan Times, The Illustrated Weekly of India and The Tribune. These had made him a household name for his vigorous wit and sharp, analytical point of view. Singh never demurred from saying it as it was, or as he saw it was, and this assemblage of over fifty of his essays, most of them as yet unpublished in book form, are an example of his honesty, courage, humour and style.

You think of Arthur Conan Doyle, and the name that immediately comes to mind is that of the iconic Baker Street detective Sherlock Holmes. For lovers of crime fiction and Holmes, Baker Street is on the bucket list during any trip to London. Even today, Sherlock remains the most popular and iconic detective of all times, comparable perhaps only to Poirot, with a canon that has enthralled generation after generation of crime fiction lovers.