
World Bollywood Day is September 24
While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!
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Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief
by
Stephen Alter
Bollywood movies are glorious, colorful spectacles of romance, action, drama, song, and dance. The biggest film industry in the world, Bollywood puts out some nine hundred movies a year, which are watched by passionate fans around the globe. Stephen Alter--a writer who grew up in India and has inside access to Bollywood--acts as translator and tour guide in this firsthand look into the world of Bombay films. Following the making of a Bollywood version of Othello, he explores the enormous popularity of Hindi movies and reveals the actors, directors, musicians, and feats of artifice that make them so compelling and unique. From the blessing ceremony performed each time a movie starts shooting to the secrets behind the song- and-dance extravaganzas, Fantasies of a Bollywood Love-Thief is a beguiling introduction to the rituals and culture of a moviemaking industry so similar to and yet utterly different from our own.
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Bollywood Nights
by
Shobhaa De
Bollywood is no place for a vulnerable, small-town girl like Aasha Rani. But that doesn't stop her mother from pushing her into a world of exploitation and bedroom casting calls. Aasha has no choice but to thrive-despite the vicious circles of starlets, pimps, and celebrities who want to see her meet her end. But the day she meets Bollywood's leading man, everything she's worked so hard for is jeopardized. Because she may be falling for Akshay Arora-and there's no room for love in a business where it's the stranger under your sheets holding the key to your success. With her innocence stolen and nowhere else to turn, Aasha knows her downfall could come as quickly as her rise to fame. And letting herself love might just be the most fatal career move of her life...
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The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star
by
Vaseem Khan
Mumbai is a city that thrives on extravagant spectacles and larger-than-life characters. But as Chopra is about to discover, even in the city of dreams, there is no guarantee of a happy ending. Rising star and incorrigible playboy Vikram Verma has disappeared, leaving his latest film in jeopardy. Hired by Verma's formidable mother to find him, Inspector Chopra and his sidekick, baby elephant Ganesha, embark on a journey deep into the world's most flamboyant movie industry. As they uncover feuding stars, failed investments and death threats, it seems that many people have a motive for wanting Verma out of the picture. And yet, as Chopra has long suspected, in Bollywood the truth is often stranger than fiction. . .
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Bollywood Confidential
by
Sonia Singh
After seven years of slogging through film roles too embarrassing to mention, twenty-eight-year-old struggling L.A. actress Raveena Rai has finally been offered a lead! A potentially career-making turn in a major Hollywood epic, perhaps? A meaty part in a serious drama with Oscarreg; written all over it? Not! To Raveena's great dismay (and her mother's delight) she's flying off to India to star in a new Bollywood extravaganza. Oh well, a lead is a lead, after all. Never mind that it's a million humid degrees in Bombay, the Los Angeles of the East; that she has to live with a wacko distant uncle who sleeps under furniture and is the most stressed-out wannabe swami on the continent; that her director is a lecherous hack and his movie has the potential of being the very worst flick ever made anywhere! At least Raveena's leading man is the supremely sexy Siddharth, Bollywood's biggest star. But while their on-screen chemistry is electric-hot, off-screen the arrogant hunk treats her with total disdain ... or, worse still, ignores her. Raveena's one consolation is that things couldn't possibly get any worse. Oh yeah? Want to bet? Lights, camera, action!
Call Number: eBook
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A Bollywood Affair
by
Sonali Dev; Priya Ayyar (Read by)
In the tradition of Shobhan Bantwal's successful Indian American novels, Sonali Dev's debut captures the colorful spirit and fascinating details of Indian and Bollywood culture--including a lavish wedding--while delivering an emotionally layered and accessible story. Mili Rathod has been bound by marriage since she was four years old. But when her husband shows no sign of claiming her after twenty years of waiting, Mili grabs the chance to leave India and come to America on a scholarship. Playboy filmmaker Samir "Sam" Rathod is Bollywood's favorite bad boy. He'll do anything for his big brother--even travel halfway across the globe to take care of the "wife" who just crawled out of his brother's past. Yet Mili isn't the simple village girl Sam expected. She's a whirlwind who sucks him into her roommate's elaborate elopement and soon has him drowning in her onyx eyes. And though Mili fancies herself in love with his big brother, the husband she has never met, Sam is hoping for a very different ending.
Call Number: Book on CD
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New Kings of the World
by
Fatima Bhutto
An important dispatch from a new, multipolar order that is taking form before our eyes A vast cultural movement is emerging from outside the Western world. Truly global in its range and allure, it is the biggest challenge yet to Hollywood, McDonald's, blue jeans, and other aspects of American mass-produced popular culture. This is a book about the new arbiters of mass culture--India's Bollywood films, Turkey's soap operas, or dizi, and South Korea's pop music. Carefully packaging not always secular modernity, combined with traditional values, in urbanized settings, they have created a new global pop culture that strikes a deeper chord than the American version, especially with the many millions who are only just arriving in the modern world and still negotiating its overwhelming changes. Fatima Bhutto, an indefatigable reporter and vivid writer, profiles Shah Rukh Khan, by many measures the most popular star in the world; goes behind the scenes of Magnificent Century, Turkey's biggest dizi, watched by more than 200 million people across 43 countries; and travels to South Korea to see how K-Pop started. Bhutto's book is an important dispatch from a new, multipolar order that is taking form before our eyes. "Bhutto's razor sharp, intriguing introduction to the various pop phenomena emerging from Asia." --Tash Aw, Financial Times
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Such Big Dreams
by
Reema Patel
A savvy former street child working at a law office in Mumbai fights for redemption and a chance to live life on her own terms in this "smart, haunting, and compulsively readable" (Amy Jones, author of We're All in This Together)debut novel about fortune and survival. "A page-turner of a story that doesn't shy away from exploring hard and painful truths about the way people navigate the systemic conditions of society."-Zalika Reid-Benta, author of Frying Plantain Rakhi is a twenty-three-year-old haunted by the grisly aftermath of an incident that led to the loss of her best friend eleven years ago. Constantly reminded she doesn't belong, Rakhi lives alone in a Mumbai slum, working as a lowly office assistant at Justice For All, a struggling human-rights law organization headed by the renowned lawyer who gave her a fresh start. Fiercely intelligent and in possession of a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, Rakhi is nobody's fool, even if she is underestimated by everyone around her. Rakhi's life isn't much, but she's managing. That is, until Rubina Mansoor, a fading former Bollywood starlet, tries to edge her way back into the spotlight by becoming a celebrity ambassador for Justice For All. Steering the organization into uncharted territories, she demands an internship for Alex, a young family friend from Canada and Harvard-bound graduate student. Ambitious, persistent, and naive, Alex persuades Rakhi to show him "the real" India. In exchange, he'll do something to further Rakhi's dreams in a transaction that seems harmless, at first. As old guilt and new aspirations collide, everything Rakhi once knew to be true is set ablaze. And as the stakes mount, she will come face-to-face with the difficult choices and moral compromises that people make in order to survive, no matter the cost. Reema Patel's transportive debut novel offers a moving, smart, and arrestingly clever look at the cost of ambition and power in reclaiming one's story.
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First Comes Like
by
Alisha Rai
The author of The Right Swipe and Girl Gone Viral returns with a story about finding love in all the wrong inboxes... Beauty expert and influencer Jia Ahmed has her eye on the prize: conquering the internet today, the entire makeup industry tomorrow, and finally, finally proving herself to her big opinionated family. She has little time for love, and even less time for the men in her private messages--until the day a certain international superstar slides into her DMs, and she falls hard and fast. There's just one wrinkle: he has no idea who she is. The son of a powerful Bollywood family, soap opera star Dev Dixit is used to drama, but a strange woman who accuses him of wooing her online, well, that's a new one. As much as he'd like to focus on his Hollywood fresh start, he can't get Jia out of his head. Especially once he starts to suspect who might have used his famous name to catfish her... When paparazzi blast their private business into the public eye, Dev is happy to engage in some friendly fake dating to calm the gossips and to dazzle her family. But as the whole world swoons over their relationship, Jia can't help but wonder: Can an online romance-turned-offline-fauxmance ever become love in real life?
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A Burning
by
Megha Majumdar
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK! * A "gripping thriller with compassionate social commentary" (USA Today) about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise--to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies--and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India. Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan's fall. Lovely--an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor--has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear. Taut, symphonic, propulsive, and riveting from its opening lines, A Burning is an electrifying debut.
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Incarnations
by
Sunil Khilnani
An entertaining and provocative account of India's past, written by one of the country's leading thinkers For all India's myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, bringing to life fifty extraordinary men and women who changed both India and the world. Journeying across India in pursuit of their stories--visiting slum temples, ayurvedic call centers, Bollywood studios, textile mills, and Mughal fortresses--Khilnani offers trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, artists, iconoclasts, and entrepreneurs. Some of these historical figures are famous. Some are unjustly forgotten. And all, Khilnani convinces us, are deeply relevant today. As their rich and surprising lives take the reader through twenty-five hundred winding years of Indian and world history, Khilnani brings wit, feeling, historical rigor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own. We encounter the Buddha not as the usual beatific icon but as a radical young social critic. We meet the ancient Sanskrit linguist who inspires computer programmers today. We hear the medieval poets, ribald and profound, who mocked rituals and caste and whose voices resonate in contemporary poetry. And we see giants of the twentieth-century Independence movement--among them Mohandas Gandhi; Ambedkar, the Untouchable lawyer turned constitution maker; and the legendary singer M. S. Subbulakshmi--not as cardboard cutouts but as complex and striving human beings. At once a provocative and sophisticated reinterpretation of India's history and an incisive commentary on its present-day conflicts and struggles, Incarnations is an authoritative, sweeping, and often moving account of a nation coming into its own.
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The Marriage Clock
by
Zara Raheem; Ariana Delawari (Read by)
Perfect for fans of Sonali Dev and Soniah Kamal. A young woman must find herself a husband in three months...otherwise, her parents will matchmake one for her! To Leila Abid's traditional Indian parents, finding a husband is as easy as match, meet, marry. Yes, she wants to marry, but after 26 years of singledom, even Leila is starting to get nervous. And to make matters worse, her parents are panicking, the neighbors are talking, and she's wondering, are her expectations just too high? But for Leila, a marriage of arrangement clashes with her lifelong dreams of a Bollywood romance, where real love happens before marriage, not the other way around. And after 26 years of singledom, even Leila is getting nervous. So she decides it's time to stop dreaming and start dating. It's an impossible mission of satisfying her parents' expectations, while also fulfilling her own western ideals of love. But after a series of speed dates, blind dates, online dates and even ambush dates, the sparks just don't fly! Now, with the marriage clock ticking, and her 3-month deadline looming in the horizon, Leila must face the consequences of what might happen if she doesn't find "the one..."
Call Number: eAudiobook
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The Last Taxi Ride
by
A. X. Ahmad
New York City taxi driver Ranjit Singh, hero of A.X. Ahmad's heralded debutThe Caretaker, has 10 days to prove his innocence... Bollywood film icon Shabana Shah has been murdered, her body found in the apartment where Ranjit ate dinner mere hours before. Ranjit's fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, a statue of the elephant god Ganesh used to grotesquely smash the actress' beautiful face. Caught on film leaving the apartment alone, Ranjit is accused by the NYPD as an accessory to murder. Ranjit's only credible alibi is Shabana's Indian doorman, but he has vanished. With a Grand Jury arraignment looming in 10 days, and Ranjit's teenage daughter about to arrive from India, he must find the doorman. His search through the underbelly of New York leads to the world of high-end nightclub owners, back-alley Mumbai gangsters and to Jay Patel, a shady businessman who imports human hair. As his investigation for the true killer reveals layers of Shabana Shah's hidden past, Ranjit doesnot know whom to trust. He can rely only on his army training, his taxi-driver knowledge of New York, and his cabbie friends. With time quickly running out, can Ranjit clear his name before his fare is up?The Last Taxi Ride is the second novel in the Ranjit Singh trilogy.
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Six Suspects
by
Vikas Swarup
There’s a caste system--even in murder From the author of the international bestseller Slumdog Millionaire comes a richly-textured tale of murder, corruption, and opportunity. Seven years ago, Vivek “Vicky” Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered bartender Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi, simply because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai has been killed at the party he was throwing to celebrate his acquittal. The police recover six guests with guns in their possession: a corrupt bureaucrat who claims to have become Mahatma Gandhi overnight; an American tourist infatuated with an Indian actress; a stone-age tribesman on a quest to recover a sacred sto≠ a Bollywood sex-symbol with a guilty secret; a mobile-phone thief who dreams big; and an ambitious politician prepared to stoop low. Swarup unravels the lives and motives of the six suspects, offering both a riveting page-turner and an insightful peek into the heart of contemporary India. Audaciously and astutely plotted, with a panoramic imaginative sweep, Six Suspects is the work of a master storyteller.
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Unfinished
by
Priyanka Chopra Jonas
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In this thoughtful and revealing memoir, readers will accompany one of the world's most recognizable women on her journey of self-discovery. "I have always felt that life is a solitary journey, that we are each on a train, riding through our hours, our days, our years. We get on alone, we leave alone, and the decisions we make as we travel on the train are our responsibility alone." A remarkable life story rooted in two different worlds, Unfinished offers insights into Priyanka Chopra Jonas's childhood in India; her formative teenage years in the United States; and her return to India, where against all odds as a newcomer to the pageant world, she won the national and international beauty competitions that launched her global acting career. Whether reflecting on her nomadic early years or the challenges she has faced as she has doggedly pursued her calling, Priyanka shares her challenges and triumphs with warmth and honesty. The result is a book that is philosophical, sassy, inspiring, bold, and rebellious. Just like the author herself. From her dual-continent twenty-year-long career as an actor and producer to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, from losing her beloved father to cancer to marrying Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra Jonas's story will inspire a generation around the world to gather their courage, embrace their ambition, and commit to the hard work of following their dreams.
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Worlds Elsewhere
by
Andrew Dickson
A book about how Shakespeare became fascinated with the world, and how the world became fascinated with Shakespeare Ranging ambitiously across four continents and four hundred years,Worlds Elsewhereis an eye-opening account of how Shakespeare went global. Seizing inspiration from the playwright's own fascination with travel, foreignness, and distant worlds--worlds Shakespeare never himself explored--Andrew Dickson takes us on an extraordinary journey: fromHamletperformed by English actors tramping through the Baltic states in the early sixteen hundreds to the skyscrapers of twenty-first-century Beijing and Shanghai, where "Shashibiya" survived Mao's Cultural Revolution to become a revered Chinese author. En route, Dickson traces Nazi Germany's strange love affair with, and attempted nationalization of, the Bard, and delves deep into the history of Bollywood, where Shakespearean stories helped give birth to Indian cinema. In Johannesburg, we discover how Shakespeare was enlisted in the fight to end apartheid. In nineteenth-century California, we encounter shoestring performances ofRichard IIIandOthelloin the dusty mining camps and saloon bars of the Gold Rush. No other writer's work has been performed, translated, adapted, and altered in such a remarkable variety of cultures and languages. Both a cultural history and a literary travelogue,Worlds Elsewhereis an attempt to understand how Shakespeare has become the international phenomenon he is--and why.
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My So-Called Bollywood Life
by
Nisha Sharma
The romance of Stephanie Perkins meets the quirk of Maureen Johnson, then gets a Bollywood twist in this fate-filled debut that takes the future into its own hands. Winnie Mehta was never really convinced that Raj was her soul mate, but their love was written in the stars. Literally, a pandit predicted Winnie would find the love of her life before her eighteenth birthday, and Raj meets all the qualifications. Which is why Winnie is shocked when she returns from her summer at film camp to find her boyfriend of three years hooking up with Jenny Dickens. As a self-proclaimed Bollywood expert, Winnie knows this is not how her perfect ending is scripted. Then there's Dev, a fellow film geek and one of the few people Winnie can count on. Dev is smart and charming, and he challenges Winnie to look beyond her horoscope and find someone she'd pick for herself. But does falling for Dev mean giving up on her prophecy and her chance to live happily ever after? To find her perfect ending, Winnie will need a little bit of help from fate, family, and of course, a Bollywood movie star. AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "A delightful and humorous debut."--Kirkus Reviews, Starred review "The perfect timepass for both the Bollywood-obsessed and filmi (melodrama) novices."-Teen Vogue
Call Number: Young Adult
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That Thing about Bollywood
by
Supriya Kelkar
Bollywood takes over in this "effervescent" (Booklist) and magical middle grade novel about an Indian American girl whose world turns upside down when she involuntarily starts bursting into glamorous song-and-dance routines during everyday life. You know how in Bollywood when people are in love, they sing and dance from the mountaintops? Eleven-year-old Sonali wonders if they do the same when they're breaking up. The truth is, Sonali's parents don't get along, and it looks like they might be separating. Sonali's little brother, Ronak, is not taking the news well, constantly crying. Sonali would never do that. It's embarrassing to let out so many feelings, to show the world how not okay you are. But then something strange happens, something magical, maybe. When Sonali gets upset during a field trip, she can't bury her feelings like usual--instead, she suddenly bursts into a Bollywood song-and-dance routine about why she's upset! The next morning, much to her dismay, Sonali's reality has shifted. Things seem brighter, almost too bright. Her parents have had Bollywood makeovers. Her friends are also breaking out into song and dance. And somehow, everyone is acting as if this is totally normal. Sonali knows something has gone wrong, and she suspects it has something to do with her own mismanaged emotions. Can she figure it out before it's too late?
Call Number: J Fiction
Watch a Bollywood movie based on a book!
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Saawariya
Based on the story "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
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2 States
Based on the novel 2 States by Chetan Bhagat.
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Devdas
Based on the novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.
Listen to some Bollywood tunes!
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Rough Guide to Bollywood
by
Various Artists
CD. ance music (I) (R.D. Burman) (2:15) -- Dum Maro Dum Mit Jaye Gham (Asha Bhosle) (2:34) -- Raina Beeti Jaye (Lata Mangeshkar) (4:15) -- Ek Ladki Ko Dekha (Kumar Sanu) (4:33) -- Tere Bina Jiya (Lata Mangeshkar) (5:44) -- Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu (Geeta Dutt) (4:24) -- Yari Hai Imaan Mera (Manna Dey) (6:15) -- Dilbar Dil Se Pyare (Lata Mangeshkar) (4:41) -- Aaya Hoon Main Tujhko Le Jaoonga (Asha Bhosle & Kishore Kumar) (7:55) -- Pyar Hua Chupke Se (Kavita Krishnamurthy) (5:12) -- Dukh Bhare Din Beete Re Bhaiya (Shamshad Begum, Mohd. Rafi, Manna Dey & Asha Bhosle) (3:06) -- Dance music (II) (R.D. Burman) (1:27) -- Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte (Sonu Nigam) (6:31).
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Rough Guide to Bollywood Disco
by
Various Artists
Disc 1. The rough guide to Bollywood disco. Auva auva koi yahan nache / (Usha Uthup & Bappi Lahiri) (5:29) -- Chand mera dil chandni ho tum / (Mohammed Rafi) (2:56) -- Boom boom / (Nazia Hassan) (5:13) -- Disco deewane / (Nazia Hassan) (4:01) -- Hari om hari / (Usha Uthup) (6:36) -- Sansein behki / (Asha Bhosle & Dilip Sen) (4:57) -- Ishq da rog bura / (Lata Mangeshkar & Vinod Rathod) (5:40) -- Aao twist karen / (Manna Dey) (4:10) -- Dance dance / (Salma Agha) (5:35) -- Omn shanti om (Meri umar ke naujawano) / (Kishore Kumar) (8:58) -- Jooma chumma de de / (Sudesh Bhosle & Kavita Krishnamurthy) (8:21) -- Sanam mere sanam / (Amit Kumar & Alka Yagnik) (6:49) -- I am a disco dancer / (Vijay Benedict) (7:44) -- Bonus CD. The rough guide to Kishore Kumar -- Roop tera mastana -- Zindagi ek safar hai suhana -- Pyar diwana hota hai -- Khaike paan banaraswala -- Yeh kya hua -- Mere sapnon ki rani -- Yeh sham mastani -- Phoolon ka taron ka -- Jeevan ke safar mein rahi -- Tum bin jaoon kahan -- Yeh dard bhara afsana -- Main hoon jhumroo : (live) -- Naam amar / (Kishore Kumar Ganguly).