Showing results by narrator "Reena Dutt" in All Categories

Brand-new stories by: Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.

After the death of her wife, Shelby is suffering from prolonged grief. She’s increasingly isolated, irritated by her family’s stoicism and her friends’ reliance on the toxic positivity of self-help culture. Then, in a grief support group, she meets Cammie, who gives her permission to express her most hopeless, hideous feelings. Cammie is charismatic and unlike anyone Shelby has ever met. She’s also recovering from cancer and going through several other calamities. Shelby puts all her energy into helping Cammie thrive—until her intuition tells her that something isn’t right.

Vampires and merpeople, angels and demons—the stories in this anthology imagine worlds where the only thing more powerful than the supernatural, is love. A girl in a graveyard goes on an unexpected date, a shipwrecked sailor makes a connection on a forbidden island, a piano melody summons a soul mate. Creatures of folktales and legend, of land and sea, of centuries past and life after life, all wrapped into one spellbinding compendium. Once you sink into its story, it’ll never let you go.

Samira thinks of her life as before and after: before the burning and violence in Burma (now Myanmar), when she and her best friend would play in the fields, and after, when her family was forced to flee. There's before the uncertain journey to Bangladesh by river, and after, when the river swallowed her nana and nani whole. And now, months after rebuilding a life in Bangladesh with her mama, baba, and brother, Khaled, there's before Samira saw the surfer girls, and after, when she decides she'll become one.

Zahra Khan is basically Bangladeshi royalty, but being a princess doesn’t pay the bills in Paterson, New Jersey. While Zahra’s plans for financial security this summer involve working long hours at Chai Ho and saving up for college writing courses, Amma is convinced that all Zahra needs is a “good match,” Jane Austen style. Enter Harun Emon, who’s wealthy, devastatingly handsome, and…aloof. As soon as Zahra meets him, she knows it’s a bad match. It’s nothing like the connection she has with Nayim Aktar, the new dishwasher at the tea shop.

Twelve-year-old Indian-American Pandita Paul doesn't like change. She's not ready to start middle school and leave the comforts of childhood behind. Most of all, Pandita doesn't want to feel like she's leaving her mother, who died a few years ago, behind. After a falling out with her best friend, Pandita is planning to spend most of her summer break reading and writing in her favorite secret space: the abandoned but majestic mansion across the street. But then the unthinkable happens.

Ten-year-old Geetanjali doesn’t mind singing, but she knows she’ll never be as good as her mother, Aai, or grandmother, Aaji, famous classical singers from India whose celebrity has followed the family all the way to their small town of Deadwood, Michigan, where Geetanjali lives with her aai and her father, Baba.

In contemporary India, 12-year-old Asha will journey across the dangerous Himalayas to find her missing father and save her family's home. Guided by a mythical bird and a green-eyed tiger who she believes to be the spirits of her ancestors, this is an incredibly unique debut about loss, family, buried treasure, and hope.

The United States has long been touted as a place where anyone with a little grit and determination could come to pursue the American Dream. But as more walls are erected and borders are closed, is that dream still alive today?

Mehar hasn't been back to India since she and her mother moved away when she was only four. Hasn't visited her father, her grandmother, her family, or the home where she grew up. Why would she? Her father made it clear that she's not his priority when he chose not to come to the US with them. But when her father announces his engagement to socialite Naz, Mehar reluctantly agrees to return for the wedding. Maybe she and her father can heal their broken relationship. And after all, her father is Indian royalty, and his home is a palace--the wedding is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime affair.

Madhuri Iyer is doomed. Doomed for her upcoming senior year to be a total failure, according to her astrology-obsessed mother, and doomed to a happily ever after with her first boyfriend, according to her family curse. Determined to prove the existence of her free will, Madhuri devises an experimental relationship with the one boy she knows she’ll never fall for: her childhood best friend, Arjun Mehta. But Arjun’s feelings for her are a variable she didn’t account for.

Eleven-year-olds Tripti Kapoor, a feisty "word nerd" from Massachusetts, and Sam Cohen, a shy, imaginative, budding geologist from California, are both miserable at Camp Dilloway, a summer camp in upstate New York. On the last night of camp, they follow a shooting star to a quiet creek. There they find two silvery rocks glowing in the night. They each take one home, and their long-distance friendship begins. It's soon clear that these are no ordinary rocks. They seem to move on their own, get strangely hot, and even take over Tripti and Sam's thoughts!

If you wonder how to help your children understand today’s racial dynamics and respond in God-honoring ways, you’re not alone. Practical and engaging, The Race-Wise Family offers immediately applicable action steps to help you raise kingdom-minded kids who will stand against racial injustice as an outpouring of their relationship with God.

From first crushes to first heartbreaks, complicated family dynamics to community relationships, this powerful collection of stories explores race, class, culture, language, and the very idea of home as both a place and a feeling. Edited by Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra and featuring some of the most acclaimed, bestselling South Asian authors writing for teens today—this is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it means to be South Asian.

A community of rock quarry miners in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India, gave their tiny cluster of thatched roofed houses the name Azad Nagar. Freedomville. But it hasn't always been identified by that auspicious moniker. The miners renamed their village in 2000, after they staged a revolt that overthrew the profit-driven landowners who held their families in debt bondage for generations. But the complex story of Freedomville, the murder that these revolutionaries nearly got away with, and the short-lived freedom its inhabitants created has never before been told until now.

On the cusp of her eighteenth birthday, Heera and her best friends, siblings Marie and Marco, tease the fun out of life in Raleigh, North Carolina, with acts of rebellion and delinquency. They paint the town’s water towers with red anarchy symbols and hang out at the local bus station to pickpocket money for their Great Escape to New York. But no matter how much Heera defies her strict upbringing, she’s always avoided any real danger—until one devastating night changes everything.

After the death of her wife, Shelby is suffering from prolonged grief. She’s increasingly isolated, irritated by her family’s stoicism and her friends’ reliance on the toxic positivity of self-help culture. Then, in a grief support group, she meets Cammie, who gives Shelby permission to express her most hopeless, hideous feelings. Cammie is charismatic and unlike anyone Shelby has ever met. She’s also recovering from cancer and going through several other calamities.

Maya is the pragmatic twin, but her secret anxiety threatens to overwhelm her. Chaya is the outgoing twin. When she sees her beloved sister suffering, she wants to tell their parents—which makes Maya feel completely betrayed.

All This Could be Different introduces us to Sneha. A recent college graduate freshly arrived in Milwaukee, she occupies her days with rote, stressful work as a young consultant for a battery production corporation. She is, as her boss reminds her, a 'contractor, no benefits'. Her nights are spent ordering furniture off the internet, trying out the newfangled invention of dating apps and avoiding confrontation with the terrifying property manager who lives below her. But the rewards are bountiful.

Bee wanted to spend the summer reading Betsy Chillers books and exploring the new spooky theme park with her best friend. Instead, she’s spending the summer trapped at Storm Lake with her too loud, too thrifty, and too Indian family. Luckily, Bee finds a place to escape her embarrassment—a magical house across the lake that transforms her into the cool girl she always wanted to be. Maybe cottage life isn’t so bad after all! But strange dreams are haunting Bee, and there’s a chill in her bones she just can’t shake.