Her name means "miracle" in Sanskrit: Kimaya was the first baby to survive after several miscarriages, and grew up in a mansion at the top of Mumbai's Pali Hill, surrounded by love and privilege. But at eleven years old, she develops a rare illness that requires her to be confined to a germ-free ivory tower in her home. Rahul Savant shows up to wash Kimi's windows, and as years pass he becomes her eyes to the outside world, and she becomes his inspiration...

Captures the delicate balance of class and gender in contemporary India as witnessed through the lives of two women-- Sera Dubash, an upper middle-class housewife, and Bhima, an illiterate domestic hardened by a life of loss and despair.

Preparing to fight China's nineteenth-century Opium Wars, a motley assortment of sailors and passengers establish family-like ties that eventually span continents, races, and generations.

"The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered raja who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her home­ land with her lover, Kalua. The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment...