novella

Pink Lines on a Dark Sky – A Clean Contemporary Romance

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Rati, September 2001
“I do not want to go out today. I look at the pink paper that I have carefully folded and kept in the upper drawer of my study table. The paper has a poem, I think it is about me. It is about a girl whose smile is out of the world. Is that guy a weirdo? Who writes poems at the age of eleven? Who even writes poems nowadays? But he is cute, and super serious.”
Samay, January 2008
“I know she is lying. I do not mind. I know she wants to be seen as a strong person. And strong people do not cry. But we writers know. The real strong person does not mind crying. In fact, the real strong person cries often, shares the pain of the other people, making it their own. But I let her lie, because she is being honest, as she always is.”

Rati, July 2009
“That’s what everyone thinks when they are young. You need money, it is a reality. Everyone starts with a very optimistic view of the world, but then disillusionment hits fast, and it is too late by then. In my opinion, even being a plumber is better than being a writer. Besides, you will have to spend your life alone. No sane girl would marry an author.”

Samay, August 2010
“She is like that. Impulsive, dominating, endearing, talkative, beautiful – adjectives end when you start describing her. Descriptions are not meant for people like Rati. They are what they are, ethereal and otherworldly.”
He is a writer.
She is an engineer.
He writes poems to her.
She teaches maths to him at lunch.
They know each other since they are eleven.
They think they have problems. They just don’t know what’s coming.

In September 2010, their world turns upside down. Will they survive the biggest crisis of their lives?
A part of the World of Whiskey and Suicide, a world populated with the characters that you met first in “Whiskey and Suicide”, a world of middle class Indians, who lead a mundane life, till something makes them do something heroic, or villainous. The world contains romances, heartbreaks, mid life frustrations and joy, friendships, ambitions and heartburns, and a vast kaleidoscope of emotions that are pastel color.”

Meet Samay and Rati, the ordinary extra-ordinary couple.

Meet Manik Bal

Manik Bal is a bestselling multi-genre author of “Whiskey and Suicide” and “Brothers Sen Gogh”. Manik writes emotionally rich and thoughtful stories about Indian middle class, their dreams and their struggle. Reviewers and other authors have compared Manik’s work with Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, Kodavatiganti Kutumba Rao and Raymond Carver. His characters explore life in situations that are not heroic or exceptional but are mundane and ordinary. They show their uniqueness by facing life as it is. 
Website : http://www.manikbal.com

Sand Dollar Cottage

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Coming out feels like an impossible task to sixteen-year-old Harper Green, who’s about to spend an entire week squished together with her big family at the beach in Heron’s Point. All Harper has ever wanted was love and acceptance, but fear of rejection forces her biggest secret deeper inside until one day she can’t hold it in any longer.

With encouragement from her new friend Heather, Harper confronts her true feelings and shares a part of her she thought would remain in the dark forever. Will Harper be accepted for who she is or will her fears come to light? Return to your favorite faces and places in this fifth novella in the Heron’s Point series.

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Playing Mum

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Young widow, Pamela Jones pulled up outside her wonderful new home – this was going to be a fresh start. Well, that’s how she had described it to her two young sons. Without the rose tinted specs it was a dilapidated grey cottage, in the middle of nowhere, it seemed. Nestling away in its overgrown grass and bedraggled rosebushes, desperately in need of a good paint.

“It’s going to be an adventure boys, the biggest one yet!” She had told them, excitedly.

But, what had started out as an adventure very quickly became a nightmare. No-one could ever have guessed what was about to happen to them – and worse than that, what terrifying things they would have to do, to dig themselves out of the shocking scenario that fate had cruelly dealt them…

Family Wounds

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The chief of a small village in Africa was taken and thrown into the world of slavery. Weak, hungry and dehydrated; he was forced to continue walking until they met up with a buyer that was in the slave business. Beaten and frail, the chief only had a little bit left to live for, which was slowly being taken away from him. Among his only possessions left was a small wooden pendant beautifully crafted with intricate designs, which was stolen from him by the man who purchased him. He performed one last incantation, offering his spirit to his god, before he collapsed to the ground – dead.

All of those who had a hand in his business would be haunted by his spirit for as long as they lived.

Around a decade or so later, after his parents died, a young man named Richard discovered his mother’s box of personal belongings. Feeling like everything in it was junk and would be tossed out along with the house, he noticed a small antique necklace within the box that he preceded to try on. Richard never planned or could guess what would happen next!