THE GUNPOWDER GARDENSBy Jason GoodwinPenguinPrice: £7.99 It doesn’t really matter if you don’t have tea or like it very much. Jason Goodwin’s The Gunpowder Gardens — a travelogue where he traces the history of tea and the various tea drinking practises prevalent all over the world — is a book any good reader will enjoy. Goodwin has a way of telling tales. He holds your attention and sits you down until you have read his book cover to cover. What makes it more interesting are the anecdotes Goodwin intersperses in his little notes about the drink itself.Goodwin writes about the origins of tea, tracing it right from the Canton factories to those in London. He also weaves in details on history as it happened in these places and tucks in his own observations.— Prarthana GahiloteDERAILEDBy James SiegelTime Warner BooksPrice: £9.99 James Siegel’s Derailed is a perfect Friday evening read. The 339-page thriller begins with the protagonist Charles Schein boarding the New York metro — to have his life turned upside down. Scandal, sex, violence, embezzlement and intrigue, the author weaves all the elements and cliffhangers into the narrative.Siegel has tried innovations in his narrative style using a dual author mode which eventually collapses into a single author. And although the attempts seem quite unnecessary to the plot and may even confuse the reader, like most Hollywood movies, the triumph of good over evil does eventually take place. just when you start thinking the novel may have a different ending after all.— Esha Roy
