“Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway.
Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like.
Every day I clean the Winchesters’ beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.
I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how Andrew, her husband, seems more broken every day.
But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.
I soon learn that the Winchesters’ secrets are far more dangerous than my own…
I try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon found out…and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.
I reassure myself though: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.
They don’t know what I’m capable of…
An unbelievably twisty read that will have you glued to the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Woman in the Window, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train won’t be able to put this down!
Most expectant mothers talk to their unborn. But what if the unborn starts to respond?
Mahika is hoping that a baby will breathe new life into her dead marriage. But all her pregnancies meet the same fate, because no baby is perfect for Shivam, her genius geneticist husband. Until there is one. Rudra, the world’s first genetically altered foetus, is Shivam’s perfect creation and Mahika’s last hope.
The six-week-pregnant Mahika has just walked into her fertility clinic when she discovers an anonymous note that discloses the ugly truth behind her pregnancy. Before Mahika can come to terms with the fact that her husband’s quest for perfection has marked its territory in her womb, she finds herself locked in her own house. But then she discovers that her unborn son has extraordinary powers. As weeks pass by, Rudra calibrates and recalibrates his powers with one aim-Mahika’s freedom.
But Rudra needs more than his newly acquired powers to free his mother. He needs to betray his creator, his father. And he must do it before it’s too late.
The political stature of the Pallava crown prince, Narasimha Varmar, has grown considerably after defeating the king of Ganga Nadu at the historic Pullalur battle. But he has more obstacles to overcome. Emperor Mahendra Pallavar, after restraining the Chalukya forces for nine months at the northern border of the Pallava kingdom, is on his way back to Kanchi and continues to oppose the crown prince’s relationship with the dancer, Sivakami.
Meanwhile, the Machiavellian Naganandi adigal has convinced Sivakami and Aayanar to leave their home in the forest against Narasimha Varmar wishes. And the Chalukya army marches towards Kanchi, causing destruction and damage across the countryside. Yet, the emperor remains unwilling to cross swords with them. Expecting the enemy to lay siege to the Kanchi fort, Mamallar must find a way to balance his duties as crown prince and his love for Sivakami.
Expertly weaving suspense, romance and drama, Kalki’s gripping narrative describes the tremendous efforts of the Pallavas to counter the Chalukya invasion and the growing intimacy between Mamallar and Sivakami in the action-packed second volume of Sivakami’s Vow: The Siege of Kanchi.
Who is Devdhwaja: Nagendra or Om? Parimal and LSD struggle to trust each other while Nagendra is resurrected from the dead, unharmed and more powerful than ever before. Parashurama and Kripacharya are trapped in the collapsed Om’s past while Vrishkapi is fighting against certain death, which has already consumed Milarepa. Leaving the mighty Ashwatthama clueless, the other immortals are dismantled from all fronts. Where are the remaining words hidden? Will Nagendra find them all and complete the verse, or will the immortals be able to stop him? Unravel the unexpected mystery of the doomed immortals, running out of time.
As India’s chief of intelligence, Amitabh has spent a lifetime battling India’s enemies, domestic and foreign. But in the winter of his career, he receives a chilling message from his top mole inside the ISI: a nuclear strike against India is imminent. Nothing is known—except that it’s coming.
At the same time, senior IAS officer Kamal investigates the theft of two priceless paintings from a government research facility. What appears to be an inside job soon reveals a terrifying connection to the looming terror strike.
Racing against time, Amitabh and Kamal must uncover a conspiracy that stretches from the blood-soaked borders of Partition to a forgotten chapter of Indian cinema and into the vaults of international art smugglers—where a long-forgotten betrayal holds the key to modern-day devastation.
From the corridors of New Delhi to the shadow games of Langley and Islamabad, Indian intelligence must outmanoeuvre both the ISI and the CIA in a battle for control over a secret that could shift the balance of global power.
In the end, only one man can decide whether the truth is revealed—or buried forever.
The Portrait of a Secret is a gripping geopolitical thriller that blends espionage, art and Partition-era history into a pulse-pounding narrative. Inspired by true events.
A young man trudges from a tiny Chola village to Kanchi, the great city of art and learning, hoping to discover his destiny. A bikshu wanders around the Pallava empire, befriending lonely souls. Spies lurk in the shadows, and even statues of the Lord Buddha conceal secrets. Emperor Mahendra Pallava, connoisseur beyond compare, rules with compassion and justice, while his son, Kumara Chakravarthy Narasimhar, falls deeply in love with the greatest dancer of the empire, Sivakami.
Somewhere in the distance can be heard the drums of war. The fearsome Chalukyas are planning an invasion: their war elephants, horses and infantry sweep towards the Pallava empire. Emperor Pulikesi eyes Kanchi as the crowning glory to his martial achievements.
Paranjyothi’s Journey, the first in the four-volume Sivakami’s Vow series, is a riveting tale of war, betrayal, secret passages, guarded forts, passions and a Pallava emperor who will do anything to save his kingdom. It was written by Kalki, a master storyteller who raised Tamil literature and history to new heights almost single-handedly.
When the dead body of a famous fund manager, Anant Kapoor, is found in his house, it isn’t hard for the police to pin the murder on his wife. She has no alibi, and she is the direct beneficiary of his death. But when the police look deeper, they discover two more suspects just as likely to commit the crime.
With no sound motive and contradictory statements from the three suspects, the police must dig deeper into their history, and what they find is rather chilling and perplexing at the same time.
Who killed Anant, and more importantly, why?
Naishee Kamaraj has a special bond with her younger brother, Shravan. One day when he suddenly goes missing, everyone tells her perhaps he left of his own volition, but Naishee knew her brother better than anyone else. She fears there has been foul play. And her fears come true when she receives a second-hand phone with a video of her brother being held captive. She needs to perform some horrific activities to save her brother. As time ticks by, Naishee knows she will come out a totally different being by the end of it all . . .
One sultry Mumbai night, business tycoon Mihir Kothari takes a bite of a soufflé and drops dead. According to the CCTV footage, celebrity chef Rajiv Mehra is the killer. It seems like an open-and-shut case.
Or is it?
A catastrophic accident on the day the chef is to be hanged allows him to escape and, driven by an inner calling, pursue a new life. Chased by shadows he thought he had left behind, torn by spurned love, the chef
returns in search of the real killer so that he can prove his innocence. But there is a problem. Unknown to him, the killer has chosen his next target: the chef himself!
Soufflé is a rich, layered thriller that explores life, love and the passions that motivate people to do unexpected and impossible things.
‘If this psychological, compelling and unpredictable novel doesn’t keep you hooked, give up reading’
ASHWIN SANGHI
Introducing Sewaram Manjhi in this explosive novel that combines a tight mystery and an anti-hero who refuses to back down.
Sewaram Manjhi works as a security guard outside a posh Bombay café. On the surface, he’s not unlike millions of invisible Indians who make the city tick, but there is a difference: he holds rage in his heart, and he will go to any length to snatch a chunk of the good life. Enter Santosh, hostess at the restaurant across the street. A damsel in distress, Santosh has a strange request for Manjhi, and far be it from him to say no. What follows is tabaahi – mayhem – as Manjhi finds himself caught in a web of lies and deceit, and on the trail of a bag full of money that will lead to broken noses, bloody heads, sex, seduction, and murder. If he succeeds, Manjhi might finally discover what it means to be in control of one’s destiny in a land where birth determines fate.
