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A lively, sexy, and thought-provoking East-meets-West story about community, friendship, and women's lives at all ages--a spicy and alluring mix of Together Tea and Calendar Girls.

Every woman has a secret life . . .

Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she's spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father's death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki, a law school dropout, impulsively takes a job teaching a creative writing course at the community center in the beating heart of London's close-knit Punjabi community.

Because of a miscommunication, the proper Sikh widows who show up are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that beneath their white dupattas, her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories. Eager to liberate these modest women, she teaches them how to express their untold stories, unleashing creativity of the most unexpected--and exciting--kind.

As more women are drawn to the class, Nikki warns her students to keep their work secret from the Brotherhood, a group of highly conservative young men who have appointed themselves the community's moral police. But when the widows' gossip offers shocking insights into the death of a young wife--a modern woman like Nikki--and some of the class erotica is shared among friends, it sparks a scandal that threatens them all.

Meera Syal is an actress and writer, known for her performances in the films Beautiful Thing and Scoop, as well as the television show, The Kumars at No. 42. She was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1997 for her services to the performing arts.

Balli Kaur Jaswal was born in Singapore and grew up in Japan, Russia, and the Philippines. She studied creative writing at Hollins University in Virginia and was the National Writer-in-Residence at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, where she taught creative writing while working on Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. She lives in Singapore.