No one can resist a rags-to-riches story. It is every common mans dream.

But Rajinikanths story is irresistible. He continues to be an enigma to both his fans and contemporaries.

He is simple Shivaji Rao Gaekwad who, by way of luck and hard work became a superstar, and continues to remain on top notwithstanding the vagaries of time. The book, written in cinematic style, painstakingly seeks to record every nuance of Rajinikanths life: the joys and sorrows, the pains and ecstasies, loves and betrayals.

It also does not shy away from underlining the two extremes that have remained an intrinsic part of his highly eventful career: the human and the divine. The book tells the essential truth about Rajinikanth that has thus far remained unknown to his vast fan following (less)

About the Author : Gary Hamel has contributed to The Future of Management as an author. GARY HAMEL is founder and chairman of Strategos.

He is also a visiting professor of strategic and international management at the London Business School, and the Thomas S. Murphy distinguished research follow at Harvard Business School.

He lives in Woodside, California (less)

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.GIVE FRIEND TO SOMEONE SPECIAL (less)

" About the Author : Walt Whitman has contributed to Selected Poems as an author. Walt Whitman (1819-1892), arguably one of America's most influential and innovative poets, was born into a working-class family in West Hills, New York, and grew up in Brooklyn.

His "Leaves of Grass, " from which "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" comes, is considered one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed a highly structured, classical education at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum, and his brief stint at teaching suggests that Whitman employed what were then progressive techniqu (less)

" About the Author : Walt Whitman has contributed to Selected Poems as an author. Walt Whitman (1819-1892), arguably one of America's most influential and innovative poets, was born into a working-class family in West Hills, New York, and grew up in Brooklyn.

His "Leaves of Grass, " from which "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" comes, is considered one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. While most other major writers of his time enjoyed a highly structured, classical education at private institutions, Whitman forged his own rough and informal curriculum, and his brief stint at teaching suggests that Whitman employed what were then progressive techniqu (less)

Margo Lanagan's electrifying stories take place in worlds not quite our own, and yet each one illuminates what it is to be human. They are stories of yearning for more, and learning to live with what you have.

Stories that show the imprint love leaves on us all. If you think you don't like short fiction, that a story can't have the depth or impact of a novel, then you haven't read Margo Lanagan.

A writer this startling and this original doesn't come along very often. So for anyone who likes to be surprised, touched, unsettled, intrigued, or scared senseless, prepare to be dazzled by what a master storyteller can do in a few short pages.

About the Author : Margo Lanagan has contributed to Red Spikes as an author. Margo Lanagana (TM)s story collection, Red Spikes, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book and a Horn Book Fanfare, and Black Juice was a Printz Honor Book.

She lives in Sydney, Australia (less)

Publication will be supported by a high-profile sales, marketing and publicity campaign, as this is Canongate's Lead Fiction for Summer 2010. }Life Of Pi{ has sold over 7 million copies and is the bestselling Booker Prize winner in history (less)

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specializing in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously "The Hobbit" (1937) and "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth (less)

Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator. Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him.

Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader's deepest protective instinct. Serialized in "The New Yorker and published in book form in 1957, PNIN" brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, "Pnin" features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s.

Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunder-standings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator. Initially an almost grotesquely comic figure, Pnin gradually grows in stature by contrast with those who laugh at him.

Whether taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has not mastered or throwing a faculty party during which he learns he is losing his job, the gently preposterous hero of this enchanting novel evokes the reader's deepest protective instinct. Serialized in "The New Yorker" and published in book form in 1957, "Pnin" brought Nabokov both his first National Book Award nomination and hitherto unprecedented popularity.

About the Author : Vladimir Nabokov has contributed to Pnin as an author. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), one of the 20th century's greatest writers in both Russian and English, was born in St.

Petersburg, Russia, and spent his adult life in Germany, France, the United States, and Switzerland. In addition to his literary work, he was a passionate lepidopterist and chess player.

His books include "Lolita, Pale Fire, The Real Light of Sebastian Knight, Laughter in the Dark", and many more (less)

R. Tolkien with fifty gorgeous paintings full of beauty and mystery, specially commissioned from the noted English artist Alan Lee.

In this one volume the three parts of The Lord of the Rings are enhanced by the work of a dedicated artist whose vision matches Tolkien's own. 50 color paintings.

Celebrating the birth of J.R.

R. Tolkien, this centenary edition of the classic volume is illustrated with fifty specially commissioned paintings by an artist whose vision matches Tolkien's own.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others.

But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell, by chance, into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins.

From his fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, Sauron's power spread far and wide. He gathered all the Great Rings to him, but ever he searched far and wide for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.

On his eleventy-first birthday Bilbo disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest --- to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom. The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard, Merry, Pippin, and Sam, Gimli the Dwarf, Legolas the Elf, Boromir of Gondor, and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.

About the Author : J R R Tolkien has contributed to The Lord of the Rings as an author. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specializing in Old and Middle English.

Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously "The Hobbit" (1937) and "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth (less)

R. Tolkien, written while Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford during the 1920s and '30s, before he wrote" The Hobbit" and" The Lord of the Rings.

" It makes available for the first time Tolkien's extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Volsung and The Fall of the Niflungs." "It includes an introduction by J.

R.R.

Tolkien, drawn from one of his own lectures on Norse literature, with commentary and notes on the poems by Christopher Tolkien. About the Author : J R R Tolkien has contributed to The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun as an author.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specializing in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously "The Hobbit" (1937) and "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth (less)

Julie Buxbaum is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. The Opposite of Love is her first novel (less)

Except that this stranger seems to know much more than he should about Jack. Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway.

But when he's called to investigate a student murder--connected to an elusive Mr. K--he remembers the man from the airport.

Is the stranger really who he says he is? With the help of the Jameson, Jack struggles to make sense of it all. After several more murders and too many coincidental encounters, Jack believes he may have met his nemesis.

But why has he been chosen? And could he really have taken on the devil himself? Suspenseful, haunting, and totally unique, "The Devil" is Bruen at his very best. About the Author : Ken Bruen has contributed to The Devil as an author.

Ken Bruen was born in Galway, Ireland in 1951. The author of sixteen novels, he spent twenty-five years as an English teacher in Africa, Japan, SE Asia and South America.

He now lives in Galway City with his wife and daughter (less)

Wodehouse. In Picadilly Jim (soon to be a major motion picture), Jimmy Crocker has a scandalous reputation on both sides of the Atlantic and must do an about-face to win back the woman of his dreams.

Uneasy Money sees the hard-up Lord Dawlish off to America to make a fortune, while in Cocktail Time events turn on the fate of a filmscript. Spring Fever is a light-hearted comedy involving love and various complications.

About the Author : P G Wodehouse has contributed to Cocktail Time as an author. P.

G. Wodehouse was born in England in 1881 and in 1955 became an American citizen.

He published more than ninety books and had a successful career writing lyrics and musicals in collaboration with Jerome Kern, Guy Bolton, and Cole Porter, among others (less)