There is a saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest aircraft, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of: mechanical failure; human error; the CIA's impatience; a blind woman's curse; generals not happy with their pension plans; the mango season? Or could it be your narrator,...

"One night. Four friends. Countless secrets. 1964. Karachi, Pakistan.Rozeena is running out of time. She'll lose her home -- her parents' safe haven since fleeing India and the terrors of Partition -- if her medical career doesn't take off soon. But success may come with an unexpected price. Meanwhile the interwoven lives of her childhood best friends -- Haaris, Aalya, and Zohair -- seem to be unraveling with each passing day. The once small and inconsequential...

"Twelve-year-old Amal's dream of becoming a teacher one day is dashed in an instant when she accidentally insults a member of her Pakistani village's ruling family. As punishment for her behavior, she is forced to leave her heartbroken family behind and go work at their estate. Amal is distraught but has faced setbacks before. So she summons her courage and begins navigating the complex rules of life as a servant, with all its attendant jealousies...

Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan's cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin's linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land. In the spirit of Joyce's Dubliners and Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, these stories comprehensively illuminate a world, describing members of parliament and...

Former government operative Cotton Malone teams with old heartthrob Cassiopeia Vitt on a dangerous mission to retrieve a priceless Chinese lamp from the third century B.C.E.

Someone in Pakistan is killing the members of a new CIA intelligence unit that is trying to buy peace with America's enemies. It falls to Sophie Marx, a young CIA officer with a big chip on her shoulder, to figure out who's doing the killing and why.

After a deadly bomb blast at the Karachi train station, the lives of ordinary people--an old communist poet; his wealthy, middle-aged son; a young man; a heartbroken girl; and a grief-stricken writer--become entwined as they try to make sense of this devastating tragedy.

Jeo and Mikal are foster brothers from a small town in Pakistan. Though they were inseparable as children, their adult lives have diverged: Jeo is a dedicated medical student, married a year; Mikal has been a vagabond since he was fifteen, in love with a woman he can't have. But when Jeo decides to sneak across the border into Afghanistan -- not to fight with the Taliban against the Americans, rather to help care for wounded civilians -- Mikal determines...