Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes

[If] you enjoyed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Jana Bibi''s Excellent Fortunes will appeal to you with its international charms. —Concord MonitorMeet Jana Bibi a Scottish woman helping to save the small town in India she has grown to call home and the oddball characters she considers family . . . Janet Laird''s life changed the day she inherited her grandfather''s house in a faraway Indian hill station. Ignoring her son''s arguments to come grow old in their family castle in Scotland she moves with her chatty parrot and her loyal housekeeper to Hamara Nagar where local merchants are philosophers the chief of police is a tyrant and a bagpipe-playing Gurkha keeps the wild monkeys at bay. Settling in Jana Bibi (as she comes to be known) meets her colorful local neighbors—Feroze Ali Khan of Royal Tailors who struggles with his business and family V. K. Ramachandran whose Treasure Emporium is bursting at the seams with objects of unknown provenance and Rambir editor of the local newspaper who burns the midnight oil at his printing press. When word gets out that the town is in danger of being drowned by a government dam Jana is enlisted to help put it on the map. Hoping to attract tourists with promises of good things to come she stacks her deck of cards readies her fine-feathered assistant—and Jana Bibi''s Excellent Fortunes is born.What a charming engaging and utterly delightful novel! It takes a writer of enormous talent and heart to say nothing of spiritual depth to give us a life-affirming story such as this. —Elizabeth Berg New York Times-bestselling author