Louise Brown

The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it. Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.

Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District

The Dancing Girls of Lahore

Erfahrungen einer Trauerrednerin

Was bleibt, wenn wir sterben

Eden Gardens

THE HIMALAYAN SUMMER is a spellbinding novel of the British Raj period, the quest to find a child, and a love story beyond boundaries - for all fans of Dinah Jefferies 'THE TEA PLANTER'S WIFE and of Louise Brown's earlier novel, EDEN GARDENS. 'Beautifully written, you can smell the spices, feel the heat, and your heart will break. You will laugh, cry and you will want a sequel' Lovereading.com Ellie Jeffreys arrives in Darjeeling with her British husband, en route to Kathmandu. They have ten-month-old, golden-haired twins, and despite appearing to be a happy family, Ellie's relationship with the overbearing, philandering Francis is disintegrating. At a cocktail party, Ellie meets Hugh Douglas, a maverick explorer and botanist. Despite the rumours surrounding Hugh, Ellie is drawn to him. A year later, Nepal is devastated by a catastrophic earthquake and in a falling building, Ellie is forced to make an instant, and terrible, decision: she has time to save only one of her children. When she returns for her son's body the next day, it has gone. Ellie knows he cannot have disappeared; someone, somewhere has her child, and it is to Hugh that she turns for help.

The heartbreaking story of a missing child and a true love

The Himalayan Summer

Denis Bell

"Denis Bell's stories are short only in length; in insight, vision, humor and style they have a farseeing distance and depth that will keep you wedded to the page, either laughing, marveling, or scratching your head." -- David L. Robbins, author, War of the Rats "A thought-provoking collection of flashes and longer stories: poignant, strange, humorous and humane. A Box of Dreams should be opened by all." -- Peter Blair and Ashley Chantler. Editors for Flash: The International Short: Short Story Magazine "In A Box of Dreams, nothing is as it seems. For the characters caught up in Denis Bell's intricately interconnected world of flash fictions, up is down. Black is white. Indeed, only one thing is certain: by the time you're done with A Box of Dreams, you'll find yourself looking over your shoulder... These stories are cool as hell. -- Andrew Geyer, Fiction Editor for Concho River Review, author, Lesser Mountains and Whispers in Dust and Bone "Denis Bell and flash fiction represent a marriage made in Heaven. The two dozen short works in his collection, A Box of Dreams, show him working at the top of his game. In each, the reader's mind is taken for a weird, wonderful walk that's by turns wryly humorous and darkly intriguing. Louise Brown's illustrations lend just the right atmosphere for an absorbing read." -- Paul Blaney, Writer in Residence, Rutgers University, author, The Anchoress Denis Bell's collection of short fiction A Box of Dreams, 2nd edition, centers itself in the tradition of Spoon River Anthology (minus the tombstones) and Winesburg, Ohio. A Box of Dreams is dark without a trace of cynicism: it invites empathy for even the least attractive of the characters; these protagonists commonly suffer from mangled memories, rightful guilt, and an inability to distinguish between delusion and reality, between past and present. The stories tease and tantalize: truth glimmers between the lines. Louise Freshman Brown's gorgeous images are haunting illuminations. -- Miriam N. Kotzin, author, Country Music, Spuyten Duyvil Press Each piece in Denis Bell's A Box of Dreams is a work of magic that moves steadily along, pulling you in, and not letting you go... The stories are by turns haunting, heartbreaking and funny, and they never fail to surprise... Blending the real with the surreal, these stories, more than anything else, get to the heart of our humanity, our vulnerabilities, and they do so in a way that represents the best in flash fiction. -- Dennis Pahl, Long Island University, Editor for Confrontation Magazine

A Box of Dreams

A luscious, enthralling and colourful novel of India, sure to appeal to readers of Dinah Jefferies' THE TEA PLANTER'S WIFE. 'Beautifully written, you can smell the spices, feel the heat, and your heart will break, you will laugh at some of the things Mam says, and cry at others, you will want a sequel' Lovereading Shortlisted for the HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown Eden Gardens, Calcutta, the 1940s. In a ramshackle house, streets away from the grand colonial mansions of the British, live Maisy, her Mam and their ayah, Pushpa. Whiskey-fuelled and poverty-stricken, Mam entertains officers in the night - a disgrace to British India. All hopes are on beautiful Maisy to restore their good fortune. But Maisy's more at home in the city's forbidden alleyways, eating bazaar food and speaking Bengali with Pushpa, than dancing in glittering ballrooms with potential husbands. Then one day Maisy's tutor falls ill. His son stands in. Poetic, handsome and ambitious for an independent India, Sunil Banerjee promises Maisy the world. So begins a love affair that will cast her future, for better and for worse. Just as the Second World War strikes and the empire begins to crumble... This is the other side of British India. A dizzying, scandalous, dangerous world, where race, class and gender divide and rule.

The unputdownable story of love in an Indian summer

Stephen P. Osborne

Innovation is a core issue for public services and is a key element of public services reform – particularly in this age of austerity where policymakers urge the need to 'innovate to do more with less'. This comprehensive and accessible Handbook explores the potential for creating efficient and effective public services. Leading researchers from across the globe review the state of the art in research on innovation in public services, providing an overview of key issues from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Topics explored include: context for innovation in public services and public service reform; managerial change challenges; ICT and e-government; and collaboration and networks. The theory is underpinned by seven wide-ranging case studies of innovation in practice. Taking the field forward and providing a baseline for future research, this highly unique and original Handbook will prove essential reading for academics, researchers, students, policymakers and practitioners across the fields of innovation, public policy, social policy and public management.

Louise Brown

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