The Function of Evil Across Disciplinary Contexts explores answers to two important questions about the age-old theme of evil: is there any use in using the concept of evil in cultural, psychological, or other secular evaluations of the world and its productions? Most importantly, if there is, what might these functions be? By looking across several disciplines and analyzing evil as it is referenced across a broad spectrum of phenomena, this work demonstrates the varying ways that...

Pillay, a trailblazer in Human Rights Law, was born in 1941 to a humble Indian family in apartheid South Africa. She faced enormous obstacles to her aspirations for further education and a meaningful career. However, in 1967 she was the first black woman in South Africa to set up a law practice which she used to defend many anti-apartheid activists. She also used her skills to protect the rights of political prisoners and remarkably, in 1973, she succeeded in obtaining legal representation...

This book of interdisciplinary essays serves to situate the original Sherlock Holmes, and his various adaptations, in a contemporary cultural context. This collection is prompted by three main and related questions: firstly, why is Sherlock Holmes such an enduring and ubiquitous cultural icon; secondly, why is it that Sherlock Holmes, nearly 130 years after his birth, is enjoying such a spectacular renaissance; and, thirdly, what sort of communities, imagined or otherwise, have arisen arou...

This anthology of essays, deliberates chiefly on the notion of locating home through the lens of the mythical idea of Trishanku, implying in-between space and homing, in diaspora women’s narratives, associated with the South Asian region. The idea of in-between space has been used differently in various cultures but gesture prominently on the connotation of ‘hanging’ between worlds. Historically, imperialism and the indentured/ ‘grimit’ system, triggered dispersal of labourers to the vario...

In Delhi a small baby lies alone and abandoned. The product of IVF and surrogacy, she had been so coveted - until she was born with a fatal illness. Thousands of miles away in London, Kate and Ben are desperate for a baby. As Kate suffers another miscarriage, she knows something has to change. But will her desire for a baby stop at nothing...?'Desai's Simran Singh novels are endowed with something else: the sense that she is delving not just into mysteries but into subjects that ma...

The thrilling new adventure starring Kishwar Desai’s enthralling heroine, Simran SinghSimran Singh is desperate for a break and so the idyll of Goa seems perfect - white beaches, blue seas and no crime. But when a video appears on her phone, featuring a girl being attacked by a group of men, she realises that darkness festers in this supposed paradise. And when she discovers out that the girl is Liza Kay, a British teenager who has gone missing, she knows she must act.

'It's our son, Sam... someone took him. Please help us'Emma hoped that she and her family would return from their year abroad closer, with memories to last a lifetime.Instead, they returned minus one child.A year on, Emma is haunted by the image of an empty cot, and feels further than ever from her husband.Is their son still out there somewhere? Will the mystery about what happened that night ever be unravelled?And, if the truth does...

Before Ellen, things were easier and less complicated. They were either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white and I understood the difference. Since Ellen, everything has been coloured in shades of grey.From the author of THE SECRETS BETWEEN US, part of the 2012 Richard and Judy Summer Reads, comes this dark, thrilling novel that is perfect for your book group.It's set twenty years ago against a backdrop of dreamy Cornish summers, a place where childhood frie...

When Janine and Dougie fell in love they thought it would be for ever. Fifteen years later their daughter Stevie is their one remaining connection. At sixteen, Stevie’s not quite a child, not quite grown up: a dangerous age. But it's only during a birthday celebration in Spain, when she gets too close to one of Dougie's best friends, that her parents realise just how dangerous.

Jane Logan is six months pregnant and has moved to Berlin to live with her long-term lover, rich banker, Petra. The women's chic new apartment is in a trendy part of the city but Jane finds herself increasingly uneasy there. She conceives a dread of the derelict backhouse across the courtyard and begins to suspect something sinister is happening in the flat next door, where gynaecologist Alban Mann lives with his teenage daughter Anna. Petra believes her lover's pregnancy is affecting her ...

New love. Exotic destinations. A once-in-a-lifetime adventure. What could go wrong?City girl Torre DeRoche isn’t looking for love, but a chance encounter in a San Francisco bar sparks an instant connection with a soulful Argentinean man who unexpectedly sweeps her off her feet. The problem? He’s just about to cast the dock lines and voyage around the world on his small sailboat, and Torre is terrified of deep water. However, lovesick Torre determines that to keep the man of her dre...

Frances is a thirty-something sub-editor, an invisible production, drone on the books pages of the Questioner. Her routine and colourless existence is disrupted one winter evening when she happens upon the aftermath of a car crash and hears the last words of the driver, Alys Kyte.When Alys's family makes contact in an attempt to find closure, Frances is given a tantalising glimpse of a very different world: one of privilege and possibility. The relationships she builds with the Kyt...