Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes A Novel [Paperback]

Meet 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, Mr. Ganguly and her loyal housekeeper, Mary, 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 neighborsFeroze 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 assistantandJana Bibi's Excellent Fortunesis born.

Sweet and charming. . . . With its appealing and somewhat exotic setting, and a colorful cast of engaging characters. . . this is a stellar debut bound to charm fans of Alexander McCall Smith. Booklist (starred)

First-time author Betsy Woodman has crafted a charming tale that brings the culture, sights and sounds of 1960s India to life. Drawing on her own experiences from 10 childhood years spent in India, Woodman creates engaging characters and fertile prose make this a treasure not to be missed. Lincoln Journal Star

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 thislC.