Zero Degree Publishing

Orphaned at birth, little Oliver Twist has no family or friends to care for him. From the workhouse where he is raised, he starts working for a coffin maker, until he is tricked into joining a gang of thieves. Will Oliver's kind-hearted nature help him overcome his dire circumstances and discover the secret of his identity or will he fall prey to the lifestyle he has been trapped in...? Read along Charles Dickens' victorian tale of heartbreak, adventure and intrigue.

The most pitiless in Christendom…
It was a long colonial moment. The Portuguese arrived in Goa with a sword in one hand and a crucifix in the other. They would stay for 450 years.
When god died is set against the dark backdrop of the Inquisition, a religious tribunal set up for the suppression of heresy and the enforcement of Catholic orthodoxy.
In 1662, Maria de Furtado sails to Goa from Lisbon to marry a nobleman selected for her by the Crown. Just a few hours before the wedding, her fiancé dies in the arms of his mulatto slave.
Maria is forced to marry a Goan. The relationship,imbued with toxicity from the start, is poisoned further by her inability to have his child.
A decade later, Maria falls in love. Marco, a successful Portuguese merchant, lives in the shadow of his Jewish lineage.
On discovering their relationship, Maria’s husband unleashes the savagery of the Inquisition on them. As the novel hurtles to its violent end, Maria is offered the chance to avenge her lover’s death.
Exploring religion and race, love and loyalty, identity and survival, When god died is a searing story that asks the reader to reconsider what it means to win in the name of God.

The grim and incisive story of Shanmugam, a rural graduate from Tamil Nadu, who moves to the buzzling city of Mumbai in search of employment. This translation of the acclaimed Tamil novel Midhavai acutely lays bare the arduous life of migrant workers who leave their homes with nothing more than hope and persistence in their pockets to find sustenance in the big cities of India. 

Ahana, a wealthy thirty-three-year-old New Delhi woman, flees the pain of her mother's death, and her dark past, by accepting a huge project in New Orleans, where she'll coordinate an annual conference to raise awareness of violence against women. Her half-Indian, half-Irish colleague and public relations guru, Rohan Brady, who helps Ahana develop her online presence, offends her prim sensibilities with his raunchy humour. She is convinced that he's a womanizer.
Meanwhile, she seeks relief from her pain in an online support group, where she makes a good friend: the mercurial Jay Dubois, who is also grieving the loss of his mother. Louisiana Catch is an emotionally immersive novel about identity, shame, and who we project ourselves to be in the world. It's a book about Ahana's unreliable instincts and her ongoing battle to determine whom to place her trust in as she, Rohan, and Jay shed layers of their identities.

Disarmingly, charmingly simple, this book will give readers much to think about.
- Usha Nagasamy, Further Education teacher, London

When will you die?- an emotion in itself that many of us avoid and fear comes out as a beautiful literary rendition by Jayanthi Sankar and will stay a mystery and an enigma years after its time and haunt our hidden traumas, insecurities in ways we could never imagine.
- Sredhanea Ramkrishnan, Food technologist and upcoming author, India

Zooming in like a camera to explore the aspects of the human psyche at various levels across the vast framework of society at large, the brevity of this postmodern socio psychological novella fascinates me.
- Ethan Wynn, FinTech Analyst, Houston, USA

Jayanthi Sankar skillfully depicts human complexities with quite a few nuanced surprises in store in the epistolary novella When Will You Die? It leaves the reader reflecting on the toll relationships can take on humans, what it is to live after losing your moorings, and what it means to be torn apart by affection and hate.
- Dr. Revathy Sivasubramaniam, UX Researcher, Chennai, India
Another fresh work of fiction and storytelling with profound ideas that will intrigue many readers, as it did me. Left with countless lingering thoughts and debates, I haven’t been able to come out of it.
- Liu Fang, Further Education teacher, Hong Kong

The main characters in the novella for their own reasons do not share significant incidents of their lives and this effectively depicts the shallowness of modern day, contemporary relationships.
- P. Muralidharan, Writer, Chennai, India

I don’t want to blend in, like  some of  the  others, slough away  the  past, adopt this new  place, or  rather  attempt  to be adopted by it,  as an orphan. No place  will  mother or father  me  now.  Countries are not mine and  I am not theirs. I feel  nothing for  them,  they are merely  temporary, political  intrusions into geographic cartography.

Precision and disarray, light and dark, a map that will tame a house, a house one can never know. In this searing debut, Lara Fergus startles the reader at every turn, weaving the politics of gender, race, language and sexuality through a story of war and peace, across geographies and histories. My Sister Chaos remains topical over a decade after it was first published.

‘I started reading this book with very little interest and hope. But, just reading the first chapter, two things impressed me. One: The narrative was very natural. Two:  Nivedita knew how to craft a convincing story’- Charu Nivedita.

Arjun: Living with too good people is sometimes hard.
Concern and anger, their regular weapons to subdue me.
To make me a safe bet. Which I am not.
I salute them. But that’s where my respect ends.
If they think I am going to fail, then they hadn’t done their math right.
I am here to lead not to fall back and take orders.
And of all, I don’t wear fear so well. And that scares a few.
My ambition, dreams and my LIFE take the center stage.
And of course, my two friends, who are kind enough to ruin my sanity, most of the time.
Call me arrogant or conceited? I don’t care. But I promise you something…
Tomorrow is going to be just spectacular because it is mine you are going to witness.

Jaanavi: Packed my bags to place me far away from my home. To let go of my chained past.
And this new place is a safe bet.
I am just the one who takes whatever comes on the way.
And I succeed at every hoop fire. Because like it or not, I try to fit myself in, even in a cage.
Though my soul wants to creep out of me and cry out loud to someone close, it just couldn’t.
Call me a loser or coward? Well, I am sorry.
This is Jaanavi, hopeful of a simple tomorrow.

What if they realize they are not the one they think they are once their lives collide?

I am in complete awe of the in-depth research that may have gone into writing the war scenes. Kudos to the author for this perfect blend of relationships, emotions, and stoutness of characters.
- Chirasree Bose, Amazon Best-selling Author, Pune.
Breaking the preset norms and trends, a fresh promising voice of the millennium emerges uniquely and gently through ‘The Cord’.
- Jayanthi Sankar, multiple award-winning Author,
Singapore.
As the Colonial Indian land mass is divided amongst two groups, unawares are forced to choose sides as they undertake journeys with least hope and long bearings. But will the
consequences they face and the trials they withstand for the sake of the nation win over human emotions?
- Gautam Sasidharan, Author and Book reviewer,
Hyderabad.
Action, drama, romance, emotions, the ethical dilemma all in one fiction. The Cord is a page turner and is sure to win the thriller readers and history fiction lovers all over the world.
- Muralidharan Parthasarthy, Author, Chennai.
Crisp conversations and subtle notes have successfully
presented us with a lot of army life related facts in a very interesting but indirect way. A judicious blend of research and non-taxing storyline makes ‘The Cord’ stand out in its clarity and ease of narration, leaving the reader’s heart full with multifaceted emotions and nostalgia.
- Usha Nagasamy, Further Education College Lecturer, London.

THE TOWERS GUARD THEIR SECRETS IN SILENCE

Over 140 years, a Parsi clan from the ancient town of Navsari, meanders through plagues and curses, adulterous wives of cockless husbands, limerick reciting priests and conscientious black magicians, corpses desperately awaiting vultures, scorpion bite curers and fornicating first cousins, Sufi mystics, and poignant lovers; and, of course, the crusade to save the sacrosanct Towers of Silence; a story where not even the most perceptive can tell what is magic and what is real.

It’s the calm before the storm.

Crown Prince Aditha Karikalan is riding hell-for-leather towards Kadambur to honour Ilaiya Rani Nandhini’s kind invitation—while Vandhiyathevan is hurrying in the same direction, hell-bent on thwarting their meeting. Mandhakini Devi is abducted by ruffianly unknowns towards Thanjavur—while Poonguzhali, her niece, is hastening thither, to rescue her aunt. Peril threatens Sundara Chozhar, confined to his sickbed and at the mercy of Pandiya assassins—while Ilaiya Piratti strains every nerve to protect her father.

Will all three succeed in their quests? Will Arulmozhi Varmar recover from his ague? Will Aniruddhar’s schemes and stratagems save the royal family? Will Azhwarkkadiyaan’s efforts bear fruit? And lastly … will Chozha Nadu be free of the tangled web of conspiracies?

With new possibilities in storytelling, The Final Solitude exposes the injustice that prevailed during Emperor Aurangzeb’s rule in a fictional small kingdom in Eastern India, called Satgarh.
Interspersed with fantastical tales, this allegorical novel brings to light the torment and the trouble people faced during the lunatic king Pishada’s fascist regime.

Author: S. Ramakrishnan
Genre: Literature and Fiction
Publishing House: Zero Degree Publishing
No. Of Pages: 292
Language: English

With its mad patchwork of phone sex conversations, nightmarish torture scenes, tender love poems, numerology, and mythology, Charu Nivedita's novel 'ZERO DEGREE' is a startling work of South Indian transgressive fiction that unflinchingly probes the deepest psychic wounds of Humanity.