The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern 
Price: Rs 638

The Night Circus is a sprawling historical novel about magic and the circus. Highly whimsical, it is a narrative so willfully contrived that contrivance is its raison d’être. It is intensely visual, so much so that what remains in its wake are almost exclusively images – more so than plot, or character, or even the prose itself. Morgenstern paints precise, evocative and visually lush scenes within the tents of her fictional circus. Reading the novel is, in this respect, more like watching a film in the making – not an ordinary film, however, but an imaginative collaboration between writer and reader. Morgenstern’s patient, lucid construction of her circus – of its creators and performers and followers – makes for a world of illusion more real than that of many a realist fiction. 

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins 
Price: Rs 958

In one of the two parallel plot-lines here, Robbins juggles the separate attempts of various parfumiers around the world to come up with a perfume that will out-enchant any previous concoction: Madame Devalier in New Orleans is feverishly experimenting; so is her adopted daughter Priscilla in Seattle; and the megs-company Le Fever is also hard at work in Paris. Meanwhile, in the other main plot, we follow King Alobar—a Dark Ages hero—through his global wanderings: he eventually reaches India, meeting a widow named Kudra; both of them are in flight from Death; and both eventually, through the direct intervention of the decrepit god Pan, actually achieve immortality—even learning how to capture the immortality-essence in bottled-liquid form. 

Every Time It Rains by Nikita Singh 
Price: Rs 318

Laila is yet to recover from her painful past. Hurt, and untrusting of love, she is fully immersed in work, her only source of cheer. Her bakery franchise is very popular and she just might be able to go national, if she can pull off that big deal. Just when things are looking up, along comes JD, an impetuous, free-spirited creature to stir up the calm. He’s her exact opposite. But here’s the thing: he makes her feel the very things she wanted to forget. Stirring a familiar passion she longed for but had lost the courage to pursue. They are irrepressibly drawn to each other but will she ever be able to trust him? Every Time It Rains is the story of every girl who has ever had her heart broken. And fallen in love again. A light read, you can and will want to finish it in a day.

 
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