Terrorism financing and science discovery(IANS Books This Weekend)

Let's rewrite the history of our universe, look at terrorism financing, read a modern classic and find your true calling. These varied themes make it to IANS bookshelf this week. Take a look.

1. Book: One Hundred Days: Her Quest, My Cure; Author: Shweta Modgil; Publisher: Tara; Pages: 150; Price: Rs. 199

Can one afford to just step off the ladder of success? Probably not. It is not the rat race of nothing. Up in the morning, breakfast on the run, back-to-back meetings, chasing clients, working hard, partying harder. Earning those big bucks to pay the EMIs and yet, feel like there is a gaping hole, that there is something missing, there has to be more to life than that high-flying job or the fat paycheck.

Neel does just that.

She falls of the grid, says bye-bye to her success story and decides to find out what is eating her inside, making her discontent. What follows is a 100-day roller-coaster ride, where her bewildered mama decides that if she is not working, she should be married and her brother that she should be studying or taking the pheras. Or else, she has 100 days to get her act together. But Neel has other ideas and the doggedness of a pit bull, so she decides to chase a butterfly to find herself.

But can she find her calling or what is it that makes her tick before the money runs out and she turns into a social pariah? As her brother's deadline runs out, Neel

knows this is her last shot at freedom and a life on her terms. Will she find her wings, or limp back home broken?

2. Book: The Child of Misfortune; Author: Soumitra Singh; Publisher: Times Group Books; Pages: 327; Price: Rs. 350

Amar and Jonah played chess in childhood before a series of events ripped their friendship apart. Now, they have grown up and find themselves challenging each other again - a dangerous game of chess with extremely high stakes involving their lives and the lives of millions of people - a game that takes them on an audacious journey from the Kashmir Valleys to the corporate houses of London.

Who will survive and who will win?

3. Book: The Cat and Shakespeare; Author: Raja Rao; Publisher: Penguin; Pages: 165; Price: Rs. 299

This is a gentle, almost teasing fable of two friends.

Govindan Nair is an astute, down-to-earth philosopher and clerk, who tackles the problems of routine living with extraordinary common sense and gusto and whose refreshing and unorthodox conclusions continually panic Ramakrishna Pai, his friend, neighbour and narrator of the story.

4. Book: At The Edge if Uncertainty; Author: Michael Brooks; Publisher: Profile Books; Pages: 290; Price: Rs. 399

The atom. The Big Bang. DNA. Natural selection: All ideas that have revolutionised science and that were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped here. The author

investigates the new wave of unexpected insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.

Through 11 radical new perspectives, the author takes us to the extreme frontiers of what we understand about the world. He journeys from the observations that might rewrite our history of the universe, through the novel biology behind our will to live, and on to the physiological root of consciousness.