Of all the passions quietly smoldering between the covers of Manil Suri's second novel, The Age of Shiva (Norton), mother love is the most incendiary. It transforms the life of Meera, the narrator—an Indian woman who straddles two cultures, modern and traditional—in a way that her marriage to Dev, a failed singer and flawed husband, never could. As in his first novel, The Death of Vishnu, Suri uses tales of Hindu gods and goddesses to illuminate mortal hearts. A rich and multilayered read.