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Just why do people keep going back to classics? There are so many novels with storlylines like: girl meets boy, they fell in love, separated by friend/family/themselves and then a friend/family/themselves gets them together again and they live happily ever after. Well, maybe classics’ characters seem to be more realistic, believable and sweet. They have more conflicts to think about and it takes several months even years, before it can finally be resolved and you can follow their characters’ growth. You rejoice in their triumphs with them. This fact is exemplified none better than by the novels from the Victorian and Pre-Victorian era. Here’s a short list favoured by many (including yours truly!) available from Tolmol Books.

• David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) Sisters
• Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans actually, she took a male pen name just to make sure her works were taken seriously at that time!)
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Scalet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Well, there are many, many more and if you’ve not read any of them yet just explore these classics. Did I hear some of you say that you’ve already read them over? Then I ought to reproduce Cliff Fadiman’s remark, “When you re-read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before”.
Ready for introspection or you’re still reading those chic lits or novels of that ilk! I would love to hear from you.

A good mystery novel propels us into another world, engaging our minds to the extent that we forget ourselves and the time passing by. A good mystery stokes our imagination and fuels our memories. Since early school days children start reading The Secret Seven and Famous Five by Enid Blyton. On progressing to middle school, its the Hardy Boys (by Franklin W Dixon) and Nancy Drew (by Carolyn Keene) who capture their imagination. In fact many have idolized them as their heroes in that impressionable age. However, its the grown-ups whom mysteries enthrall the most.
Right from the time that Edgar Allen Poe created the eccentric and brilliant C. Auguste Dupin in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841, the plot formula has been successful, give or take a few shifting variables. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, is perhaps the inspiration for the stories about the most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Then there are the Queens of Crime Agatha Christie with her detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and Dorothy L. Sayers’s aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.
More recently John Grisham and Fredrick Forsyth have taken mystery novels towards the thriller genre.
So, whatever age group you belong to you can find the mystery of choice on Tolmol Books.

Recently came across a remark from a British literary agent which emphasized the need for having warehouses for publishers to store unread manuscripts from Indian authors written in English! A certain exaggeration, no doubt, however it does indicate that more Indians than ever before are tapping at computer keyboards to sell stories. Recently, leading publisher Penguin celebrated two decades of business in India, the country with the world’s largest population of people who can speak English. Penguin opened shop in India with seven titles in 1987, but currently has more than 2,000 titles. Penguin India, Asia’s largest English-language publisher, declared that it is targeting US$50 million sales this year.
Having grown up reading honest and delightful novels set in the fictitious southern Indian town of Malgudi and narrated in simple English spiced with his special sardonic brand of humor, R K Narayan has been an eternal favourite of most Indians. He is probably the only Indian author in English whose novels were translated into a hit Hindi movie (Guide) and a prime-time television serial (Malgudi Days). Works from Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and Vikram Seth have been read over and over again by generations. More recently Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra have managed to sustain interest in writings from Indian authors across the World.
On Tolmol, you can find works from all these great Indian authors. Take your pick, find the best price available online and simply order from your favourite seller.
As big-bucks book deal signings fire hopes among India’s English-fiction writing hopefuls, you can be sure that you’ll find the latest on Tolmol. Also imminent are new novels by Amit Chaudhuri and Amitav Ghosh, along with Arundhati Roy’s second novel.