Kavita Daswani

Having just moved from India to Los Angeles for two years, sixteen-year-old Shalini struggles to fit in at school and to keep house for her clinically-depressed mother, but the real challenge comes when she begins falling in love with an American boy despite being engaged since the age of three. Includes glossary.

Lovetorn

Unable to find a man whom she is willing to marry despite the efforts of friends, fortune-tellers, and matchmakers, twenty-four-year-old Anju, confronted by her family's shame, obtains their reluctant permission to travel to the United States, where husband hunting proves no easier, but where unmarried women are much more commonplace. A first novel. Reprint.

For Matrimonial Purposes

Yearning for the glittering world of Paris, Tanaya Shah seizes the opportunity for an arranged marriage to a man living in the City of Lights, but once she arrives in the city, she shuns the match, takes a job as a model, and is disowned by her family, until she is reunited with the man she had been supposed to marry and who is her only connection to her estranged family. Original. 35,000 first printing.

Salaam, Paris

The author of the “enchanting” and “delightful” (USA Today) debut novel For Matrimonial Purposes returns with a romantic comedy about a new bride leading a secret double life. After an arranged marriage in her native India, Priya moves with her husband to California, where they share a house with his parents. Playing the traditional daughter-in-law role, she’s expected to clean, cook, and—because she doesn’t immediately get pregnant—find a job as well! But the job, at a glossy Hollywood gossip magazine, isn’t at all what Priya’s in-laws had in mind for a traditional Indian wife. She soon finds herself with a secret life that she must hide from her disapproving new family. All the while, she is growing into a marriage with a man whose loyalty is decidedly torn between his parents and his bride. This is hardly surprising, given that he met his wife only a week before their wedding. The question is, can this fragile new love survive the pull between tradition and ambition?

The Village Bride of Beverly Hills

Pengantin Dusun di Beverly Hills

Propositi matrimoniali

Tanaya Shah longs for the wonderful world of Paris, the world that she fell in love with while watching Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina—so when a proposal comes along for an arranged marriage with a man who is living in Paris, Tanaya seizes the chance. But once she lands in the city, she shuns the match. A stroke of luck turns Tanaya into a supermodel, and soon the traditional girl is cavorting with rock stars and is disowned by her family. In her new whirlwind life, she is reintroduced to the man she was supposed to marry, the man she now realizes she should have never walked away from, the man who is her only connection to the family she longs to reconcile with, if only it’s not too late.

A witty, wry look at contemporary marriage and relationships, from the author of For Matrimonial Purposes.

Everything Happens for a Reason

Where do middle-class, Tamil Brahmin girls go when they turn eighteen? Meet Janaki Venkatakrishnan, a musical prodigy sublimely gifted on the veena, and her younger sister, Mallika. Janaki escapes her father`s plan for an arranged marriage, fleeing her village home for the bright lights of Bombay, scandalizing her father and the chatterbox, gossip-mongering women of the neighbourhood. She also leaves behind Mallika, who is forced to take care of their increasingly unhinged father. But ten years later, when Janaki announces her return and demands a meeting with Mallika, the buried past is once again excavated, and this time there is no escape from the old ghosts of loyalty and betrayal. In a span of seven days, memories and misgivings, innocence and wisdom, everyday truths and familial secrets are laid bare as the two sisters prepare to face each other and everything about their childhood once and for all. In their shared memories, we meet Thathappa, their cinema-owner grandfather, a man of spiritual extremes; Gayatri Chitti, the girls` cosmetics-addict aunt, who is scheming to take their dead mother`s place; Asgar, the Bollywood megastar, and Zubeida, his wheelchair-bound wife; Salima Sikri, a feminist editor, poised and ready for the scoop of the year& The Silent Raga is a moving and ambitious debut novel. In prose that resembles the rhythms and progression of a raga, Ameen Merchant weaves a finely wrought story about the traditions that bind us and the sacrifices we must make along the road to our own individual destinies. Intensely imagined, the novel shines an honest and unsparing light on family matters, only to reveal the tug and pull of bloodlines and the infinite power of one healing word: Love.

Dear sixteen-year-olds of the world . . . . . . I'm in a crisis right now and need your help. So, I was engaged to the love of my life. You know how it is in small towns: you meet a nice boy, especially if he's from a known family, and get fixed for life. You are waiting to be together and . . . Bam! Your father finds his dream job and you're forced to move with your family to the US. No questions asked. It was quite awkward at first, my clothes, my hair, my accent . . . even my scent. I stood out friendless, weird. But things didn't stay the same for very long. I was suddenly drawn into a charity organization and then to the cutest and sweetest boy in the entire school! Tell me, can you possibly be in love and out of love at the same time? Especially when the guy you are engaged to; is certain you're coming back. Waiting for your response, Yours, Lovetorn

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD INDIE KONKIPUDDI HAS ALWAYS DREAMED OF BECOMING A FASHION REPORTER. She'd do anything to land an internship with glamorous Celebrity Style magazine -- even babysit publisher Aaralyn Taylor's two-year-old son. Indie's neurosurgeon dad can't understand why Indie would want to spend her weekends picking Play-Doh off of someone else's Persian carpets, and pretty soon she starts asking herself the same thing. Then Indie finds out that (1) Celebrity Style is in trouble, and (2) Hollywood's hottest star is having her wedding dress made in a village in India. Indie's sure she's scored the juiciest gossip in town -- the kind of story that will put the magazine back on the map and finally land her the internship! But when things don't pan out exactly as planned, Indie wonders -- will Aaralyn ever see her as anything more than just the hired help?

Kavita Daswani

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