Kevein Books and Reviews

The Shrine of Death by Divya Kumar is a captivating crime thriller with all essential elements that perfectly define this genre. Like most other famous crime thrillers of Agatha Christie and Colin Dexter, this book too opens up with the name of the victim. Not so directly, but as we read, it becomes clear in couple of chapters as who is at the receiving end. But how it did all happen and who all were behind the curtains, fills up the story. The salient feature of these kinds of novels is that you cannot skip a single page; you never know what clue you may lose in the process. Talking about this book, we see quite a number of characters, well that’s important to cook up the story up to a sizzling point. But we cannot leave behind the characters that are, in a true sense, nudging the story ahead all the time. We see Prabha Sinha as the main character of the book, as it is she who actuates the investigation in all ways. Next, we meet Jai – a simple guy with a very disturbed pa

Safalta Shabdon Ka Khel Hai is self-help book written by Dr. Sudhir Dixit, this book subtly tells us that communication, too, matters in the overall success of any career. Communication is a must-have skill that you cannot ignore if you are planning to have huge success in your field. The very words coming out of your mouth reflect your wisdom, grooming, dogma, and so on. So be careful how you decode others conversation and how you interact with people in your day to day life. Coming to the book, broadly there are six important chapters that have the caliber to define your overall conversational skills. The first chapter of the book put emphasis on as why it is important to have a through expertise in communication. Next chapter delves deep into the crux of finding out meaning or decoding the meanings hidden in any conversation. It basically tells us how to take the cues from the conversation – the author has given very apt examples in a table. If you can understand th

Rarely did we come across where we got to read a novel of two genres blending into one like a smooth confluence. Looking at the title of the book, we expect you to think that it’s based and built around the legendary king Ashok, however, we would like to intervene to inform you there is much more that goes beyond Ashok and his kingdom. Something that you cannot even imagine! Yes, it is true that Ashok and his deeds run throughout the novel like banter in the background. Well, coming to the story, we found out that it is a mixture of history and fantasy genre. After some chapters you may adrift to the fantasy world of Anshul which he conjures up like a champion while cleverly underplaying the king Ashok. The novel opens with the battlefield of Kalinga – it is all about heaps of corpses and the ambience is of death. It is a point of utter shock and realization for the king Ashok. However, in the battlefield all seemed to have died. The king Ashok is repenting his actions, the

Before we proceed with the review of Survival, we would like to introduce Anuj Tikku to you. He is a well-known personality in Bollywood who has worked with many celebrities including Shahrukh Khan. Other than acting, he is also into blogging – his travel blog (www.tikkustravelthon.in) is quite famous for the content which he gathers by travelling across the world. Initially, Survival is a personal story, but later on it, more likely, takes the form of a self-help book which can help you to overcome many problems in life such as depression, unhappiness, etc. Tikku starts this book with his personal story where he talks about the death of his father and how it affected him. Soon after the introduction, Tikku brilliantly covered 'How to Overcome Trauma' in four parts. In these short chapters he has given many points that seem imminent for the people struggling to come out of any sort of trauma that life has given them from time to time. Through these pointers the

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have Rohit – the author of ‘Gift of Confidence’. In this interview, Rohit talks about his writing aspirations, the route to getting his book published, and CA exam preparation for students. Stay on...while we chat with him. You hail from Taxation and CA background, well then what drove you to write a motivational book that too for students? Teaching was my first love as a profession but in India most of the times you have to give up on your love owing to family and society pressures. I couldn’t become a full time teacher but you know love never ends. So I started accepting invitations for guest lecturer in different institutions. I started sharing my story with the students. Later many of them told that it had transformational effect on their lives. So, I took it as my duty to write and share the story with the masses. So far, how’s the response of this book? By God’s grace, people of different age group,

Birth is a short story taken from the novel ‘The Citadel’. In this story, we see that Andrew Manson has come out of the medical school recently and working as an assistant to Dr. Edward Page. The story takes place in Blaenelly, a small Welsh mining town. Around midnight Andrew meets Joe Morgan at Bryngower, where the latter was waiting for him for over an hour. Joe Morgan and his wife Susan Morgan are childless for over twenty years. Tonight Susan Morgan is expected to deliver a child and Andrew has to perform the task. They both begin walking homewards. When they reach, Joe Morgan refuses to come inside and says that he trusts him that things inside will be fine. Andrew goes inside the small apartment in which other than basic furniture nothing is of substantial value. He goes upstairs and finds Susan on a bed, beside her bed standing midwife and her seventy-year-old mother. Andrew realizes that there is still time for the procedure to start. Mrs. Morgan’s mother fears

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have Sattam – the author of ‘Parting of the Strangers and Other Stories’. In this interview, Sattam talks about his writing aspirations, and the route to getting his book published. Stay on...while we chat with him. What inspired you to write this book? Any tales to tell… I love observing people. Every now and then I used to post anecdotes on Facebook based on my experiences during the three-hour-long commute to and from the workplace. It was fun and went on for a couple of years. Then a few amongst my friends and family suggested that I should try my hand at more serious writing. It sounded daunting, but I gathered enough courage to post short stories for another couple of years. It gave me confidence and also helped learn the art of writing a bit more. Soon after, a few suggested that I should write a book. Surprisingly, the idea was encouraged by a lot more people than I had expected. It was critical to my jou

The Happy Prince is a story of a statue and a Swallow bird. The Swallow bird is flying to reach Egypt where his friends are awaiting him on the Nile River. While flying continuously for much time, the Swallow feels tired and reaches a city where he thinks of taking some rest. He finds out one tall statue and goes there to sit between the legs. Drop after drop falls on him from above, he looks up in the sky but finds no cloud. The drops of water were the tears of the statue. Upon asking, the bird comes to know that the statue is of a happy prince who never saw sorrow in his life and when he died his people built a statue of him. It is a fine statue with gold leafs, sapphires in his eyes, and ruby in the hilt of the sword. The prince says that when he was alive he was kept away from sadness and worries and miseries of the world. He died without seeing any sorrow in his life. Well, now when he is standing in the middle of the city, he can see the pain of the people. The pr

We are back with another author interview. Today, we have with us Priyanka Agarwal—the author of PiKu & ViRu. Priyanka talks about her writing aspirations, the route to getting her book published, and her inclination towards contemporary fiction. Stay on while we chat with her. Image Credit: Sonika Agarwal Though you come from content-writing background, what motivates you to write fiction? To be honest, I had no idea I’d ever write fiction. In fact, I remember the day eight years ago when I was updating my LinkedIn profile and I wondered how the likes of J.K. Rowling had such a vivid imagination. I still expressed a dream in my profile to write fiction, though I had no clue how that would happen. But gradually, I learned that fiction comes out of our own experiences, thoughts and feelings, which every author expresses artistically and imaginatively. Most importantly, you need to have a good story to bind all this in. When that happened with me, I didn’t think twice

It is a story about courage, loss, adventure and tragedy. Prashant is a nineteen-year-old boy, who one day goes to Ersama – a coastal town 18 kilometers away from his village Kalikuda – to meet his friend. In the evening torrential rain and storm surrounds the town, the rain is so heavy, along with strong gales of wind, that water enters the homes of people and trees begin uprooting. Overall, life becomes tough; people are scared to the hell. To avoid water in the home Prashant and his friend’s family move on the roof of the home, as it was a brick and mortar home. In rain and wind and storm, they spend almost two days there, struggling for warmth and food, thanks to one coconut tree that is lying on their roof, which provided them food. From the roof Prashant sees the streets flooded and corpses of humans and animals and trees being afloat. The super cyclone has caused havoc all around. He is worried about his family members, though his mother had died seven years ago. The

Piku & Viru is the debut novel of Priyanka Agarwal. As the tagline says, ‘A Fan-Actor Drama’, indeed the story of the novel revolves around a fan and her celebrity crush. We often come across romance novels where either one-sided or two-sided affairs take place. However, a common ‘somebody’ going after a celebrity and forming interesting conflict of interests is something rarity. By all means, it is a romance novel in which one of the partner struggles way harder than the other. The story is staged against the charming hubbub of Mumbai. It is a long story, so you need to settle down comfortably while getting moved along with the brisk pace of the novel. In our opinion, the author has deliberately given low weightage to female protagonist Piyanjali aka Piku as compared to Vian Rustom aka Viru. Probably, she had in mind that the story is between two very uncommon people. A simple girl trying to snatch a piece of pie from the glamorous world. We heard people falling and ch

To many this book may sound another warts and all self-help book for boosting confidence in life. Well, you need to think again. As the title suggests, it is aptly right to say that once you gain confidence, well then no miracle is impossible for you. To take the things further, let us clear that this is a fiction book based on a student’s plight to study fruitfully to clear the world’s toughest exam CA. Our protagonist Pancham is a CA final year student. The story starts with a failure. He, much contrary to his parents and self-expectations, has failed in the CA exams. It was his first attempt. He feels the heat of the pressure all the more as everyone in his family had cleared the exam in first attempt. He is depressed. What should he do now? Try harder or commit suicide. On a depressing side, he thinks of suicide. For a change of mind and heart, his mother sends him to a nearby Gurudwara. In Gurudwara , he stumbles upon a smiling man, who sounded strange and weird to

The Accidental Tourist by Bill Bryson is a short story that highlights the importance of having suave and elegant manners at the time of travelling. In this story, we see that the narrator almost flies over 100,000 miles every year because of his job’s nature. So, we can say that the narrator is an accidental tourist, though he doesn’t enjoy travelling but still he has to because of his job. However in his own words he says that he is sort of a confused man who often forgets the roads and gets into wrong alleys or gets trapped into self-locking doors. In this story, he takes us to some of his awry travel experiences where he did some crazy things, though unwittingly. Most of his experiences are based around airports or inside the flights. On one instant, while flying to England from Boston with family for Christmas, he forcibly opened the zip of his bag, as a result it broke down and all the stuff littered on the ground. This made him embarrassed and the people around him.

Blogging for Gold by Anuj Tikku is an e-book in which you will get A to Z knowledge about blogging. Though the main aspect of this book is to dole out blogging knowledge to new or aspiring bloggers, however Anuj has also brought in social media, self-publishing, writing a book, and many other helpful topics with commendable confidence. As the title goes, ‘Blogging for Gold’, he means to say that blogging means digging gold but only a handful of people knows that to get gold one has to work hard while having a good amount of patience. Blogging can give you money and fame and an office-free life, but the route to that glory isn’t that easy you might have thought-out. Anuj Tikku hails from Bollywood, in fact a popular face, and apart from this, he is also a prolific travel blogger for over two years with his blog: www.tikkustravelthon.in . Inquisitive enough, you can Google him. From a travel blogger’s point of view, this e-book is a treasure trove, Anuj has shared about his w

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have Prakriti– the author of ‘A Voyage through the Echoes’. In this interview, Prakriti talks about her writing aspirations, the route to getting her book published, and her inclination towards travelogues. Stay on...while we chat with her. What motivates you to write? The passion of narrating my story, telling my perspective of life and persons always motivate me to write. Also, I like to create stories and pictures from a circumstance which can provide other persons very important life lessons. Writing with a purpose gives me strong inspiration to work upon my writing. What were your feelings after publishing this book? I was very satisfied. Publishing a book was always in my mind and I know many like minds who wanted to be an author. But our daily jobs and lifestyle always push us back and make us put our dream of publishing in a suitcase deep inside a secluded store. I finally, picked up my dream out

In this post, we are going to discuss the summary of this poem which is based on love for mother. Before you get your hands on the summary, it is advised to read the poem given below. Poem: Driving from my parent’s home to Cochin last Friday morning, I saw my mother, beside me, doze, open mouthed, her face ashen like that of a corpse and realized with pain that she was as old as she looked but soon put that thought away, and looked out at Young Trees sprinting, the merry children spilling out of their homes, but after the airport’s security check, standing a few yards away, I looked again at her, wan, pale as a late winter’s moon and felt that old familiar ache, my childhood’s fear, but all I said was, see you soon, Amma, all I did was smile and smile and smile...... Poem Summary: This poem is actually a thought. When the poet is travelling to airport from her mother’s home, she sees her mother is sleeping beside her in a car.