In My Hands Today…

My Sisters Made of Light – Jacqueline St. Joan

My Sisters Made of Light follows three generations of a Pakistani family as they make their way through life in the political, social, and religious maze that is their motherland.

This novel pulls readers into the compelling, heartbreaking, and often terrifying world of honor crimes against women in Pakistan through the life and family history of Ujala. Ujala decides to follow the path for which her mother has prepared her and pushes aside fears for her own safety to help other women escape from the impossible situations in which they find themselves.

In My Hands Today…

The Girl in the Garden – Kamala Nair

The redemptive journey of a young woman unsure of her engagement, who revisits in memory the events of one scorching childhood summer when her beautiful yet troubled mother spirits her away from her home to an Indian village untouched by time, where she discovers in the jungle behind her ancestral house a spellbinding garden that harbors a terrifying secret.

In My Hands Today…

Someone Else’s Garden – Dipika Rai

The eldest of seven children,born low-caste and female in rural India,Mamta is abused and rejected by a father whocan see no reason to “water someone else’s garden” until ahusband is found for her. Seeking escape in matrimony, Mamta beginsher wedded life with hope—but is soon forced to flee her village and thehorrors of her arranged marriage to the bustle of a small city. Saved from becomingone of the nameless and faceless millions of rejected humanity by thesalvation of sublime love, Mamta struggles to find a precarious state ofacceptance and make peace with her past.

In My Hands Today…

The Blue Bedspread – Raj Kamal Jha

In the middle of a steamy Calcutta night the phone rings. An unnamed man in a city of millions answers to a voice telling him that his long-lost sister is dead. He must go to the hospital to identify the body and claim his sister’s orphaned newborn daughter until she can be adopted the next day.

During the long hot night, the baby sleeps on a bedspread that used to be indigo blue, but has faded to almost white. As the child lies where the man and his sister used to sleep as children, he quietly writes stories for her, telling of his own childhood full of intensity, anguish, and poetry. He doesn’t know his place in the world, but with the help of these stories, the baby someday might.

In My Hands Today…

A Season For The Dead – David Hewson

In a hushed Vatican Reading Room, the scene is shocking: a crazed professor shot dead after brandishing evidence of a grisly crime. Moments later, two bodies are found in a nearby church, each with a gruesome calling card from their killer.

Detective Nic Costa is one of the first on the scene. A cop who barely looks his twenty-seven years, Nic soon meets a woman who will dominate both his thoughts—and his investigation. A cool, beautiful professor of early Christianity, Sara Farnese was in the Vatican Library on that fateful day, a witness to her colleague’s outburst and grotesque death.

And as more bodies are found, her role becomes even more baffling…because each victim had intimately known Sara, a woman whose history becomes more lurid and unfathomable with each revelation. Until the case takes a sudden, strange turn—and the secrets of a woman, a killer, and a city begin to unravel…with devastating consequences….