Tim Weaver took 10 years to write his debut novel "Chasing the Dead" but less than six months to shoot off his latest "The Dead Tracks" .

The epistolary novel, which consists of letters exchanged between two or more people, is one of the earliest novel forms and is successful for two main reasons.

Tom Clancy rode the wave for nearly two decades with stunning success because he mastered the balancing act between the believable and the outlandish.

Famous fictitious characters have been made and marketed by thrillers.

Enthralling , engrossing, enticing . Unsurprising for a book whose subject is the supremely beautiful Madhubala. This biography is a good read for those who know little about this gifted actress. Written in an easy, fluid style, with captivating black and white photographs, "I Want to Live" is almost plaintive in its title.

This is probably the book that twihards have been waiting for.

Pellerin was head of astrophysics at NASA for a decade. He was held responsible for launching the $1.7 billion Hubble telescope with a flawed mirror.

V S Naipaul makes up with Paul Theroux even as he falls out with women at the literary festival.

Imagine Oscar Wilde, the famed playwright and poet, in the mold of a Sherlock Holmes or a Hercules Poirot. That’s precisely what author Gyles Brandreth does - make a convincing detective out of Wilde even as he remains faithful in his portrayal of him as an aesthete and a bohemian with his flamboyant style and acerbic wit.

Grandnephew Sugata Bose tracks Netaji’s life in a brilliant biography

Why is it that in the historical art galleries of painting - or of sculpture, for that matter - only a very few women are represented?

Masterji followed the men through glass doors on to a rectangular balustrade terrace, where the sea breeze blew into his hair.

Biting — yet sensitive. He’s a study in contrasts. Just like his books. Writer Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker Prize in 2008 with his novel “White Tiger”. In the first interview given globally over his new book “Last Man in Tower”, Adiga now tells Srijana Mitra Das about being a small-town boy, falling in love with Mumbai, capturing the people and philosophies rich India overlooks, writing being his fate, generating controversy — and why he might just step away now.

Overshadowing a large chunk of the 15th century, The War of the Roses raged in England for a shade over 30 years as the descendants of Edward III divided themselves into Yorkists (white rose) who traced their line back to Edward's youngest son, Edmund Duke of York, and Lancastrians (red rose) who traced their line back to Edward's second son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

Amitav Ghosh digs out a hidden part of the Raj history in a compelling story

Low-performers usually look for a boss who will treat every employee equally. A boss who doesn’t know who is doing what, where, why, when or how, a boss who doesn’t keep track and ignores performance problems.

When an IIT graduate wrote a bestseller that also became an award-winning movie, he inspired a legion of young authors. The result?

Sahil Tabassum once said to me, ‘I like a book to have a beginning, a middle and an end.’ I thought to myself...mine cannot be that kind of book. The gaps in my life were too many, the threads too few.

He's one of the subcontinent's most exciting literary talents. His new book 'Noon' explores violence in South Asia. Son of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer, assassinated after defying Islamist groups, Aatish Taseer speaks with Srijana Mitra Das about nations, truth, lies and ties that bind - or break - people.

A Taser is an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt voluntary control of muscles.

A hot water spring, also known as a thermal spring, is a natural discharge of hot water from the earth.

In football, a banana kick causes the ball to curve or bend in flight. When hit, the ball curves away from the kicker and then bends back in.

The Merlin award is the highest award given, internationally, in the field of magic and illusion. The award is presented by the International Magician Society.

The festival has its origins in the combination of two different medieval events. Commercial secular fairs were held at the beginning of the summer.

A hippie, especially one advocating universal peace and love as antidotes to social or political ills, is called a flower child.

Gross spread refers to the difference between the underwriting price received by a stocks-issuing company, and the real price at which the stock is placed on the market.

Many Asian martial arts trace their origins to the fifth century and the supposed arrival of an Indian Buddhist monk, Bodhidarma, at the Shoalin temple in southern China.

There exists no evidence to support the popular view that pirates wore a black patch over one eye.

Singlism is a term used to describe discrimination against employees who are single.

Simply known as Paleo, the Paleo Festival de Nyon started out small in 1976. It was known as the Nyon Folk Festival then.

Syndicalism is a form of trade unionism and has its origins in France. It aims at the abolition of the capitalist owners and the appropriation - by the workers - of all the methods used in an industry, and the products resulting therefrom.

A non-profit, open source initiative, FOSS stands for Free and Open Source Software. It is an alternative model of software development, one the non-profit sector is beginning to embrace.

The helicopter shot is an unorthodox cricket shot, reportedly invented by Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

A gene gun or a biolistic particle delivery system, originally designed for plant transformation, is a device used to inject cells with genetic information.

The SoHo effect is a term used to describe artist-led gentrification. Homes occupied by artists turn an area into a safe residential neighbourhood for affluent people to move into.

When 'Beta', the movie, was released in 1992, it catapulted Madhuri Dixit to fame as the 'dhak-dhak' girl. But it also raised an old and important question about why men appear to be blind to the fact that their mothers can ever be wrong.

If you really think about it, it all boils down to money. Twenty- seven-year-old Sheena Jog, a product designer based in New Delhi, says at least two of the last three fights she had with her husband were over their "hard-earned" money.

Women in India are expected to look like Miss India and behave like Mother India. That is serious business for sure. But could it be that a 'lightness of being' is just not in their DNA?

Rakesh Gauria, 21, and his wife Saroj, 21, are living happily ever after. It could easily have been otherwise. Both of them belong to Chautala village, in the badlands of Haryana, where khaps or self-styled courts hound and kill couples that dare to marry within the same village.