OFF THE SHELF
Kisha Sen arrives in Fairmont High International School, Noida, from London as part of a student exchange programme. An achiever and allrounder, she immediately catches everyone’s eye, including that of the school’s rugby star, Tavish Mathur. But unbeknownst to those around her, Kisha is on a mission of her own. Her elder sister, Anara, went missing from the school a few months ago, and Kisha has a tip that the notorious Heartbreak Club may have something to do with it. But how to find and contact them?
In this dark romantic thriller, Novoneel Chakraborty creates a world of passion, lies and revenge where no legacy, however strong, can stand up to a sister’s steely determination.
In his retirement at the Vatican City, emeritus pope Benedict XVI is hard at work on his magnum opus: a high-school comedy screenplay.
At a grimy pub in North London, a doctoral researcher is abducted by gangsters peddling William Wordsworth’s handwritten account of drugfuelled sex orgies.
In the West African state of Benin, a politician’s daughter inherits a large cash sum which she can only launder with the help of a random Englishman sourced on the internet.
With 21 deliciously observed, gloriously mischievous short stories — some previously narrated on BBC Radio 4 or published in literary magazines, others completely new — Peter Bradshaw explores the boundary between the plausible and the absurd, often with a laugh-out-loud gag up his sleeve.
Amid the playfulness, he has an enduring warmth and sympathy for every character, however hapless. He offers pinpricks of light in a dark sky of confusion and pain.
There are two remarkable phenomena that are unfolding almost simultaneously. The first is the emergence of a datafirst world, where data has become a central driving force, shaping industries and fueling innovation. The second is the dawn of the AI age, propelled by the advent of Generative AI, that has created the possibility to leverage the data of the world for the first time. The convergence of these two, with data as the common denominator, holds immense promise and the opportunities are boundless.
This book provides us with opportunities to push our thinking, to innovate, to transform and to create a better future at all levels — individual, enterprise and the world.