SHORTLISTED FOR THE TATA LITERATURE LIVE! AWARD FOR FICTION 2020
Preparations for King George the Third’s fiftieth birthday gala are in full swing in Lucknow. As poets and performers vie to be part of the show, Chapla Bai, a dazzling courtesan from Kashi, briefly enters this competitive world, and sweeps the poet Nafis Bai off her feet. An irresistible passion takes root, expanding and contracting like a wave of light. Over two summers, aided by Nafis’s friends, the poets Insha and Rangin, and Sharad, himself in love with a man, they exchange letters and verses, feeding each other the heady fruit of desire. When Chapla leaves for home, they part with the dream of building a life together. Can their relationship survive the distances?
Narrated in the voice of Nafis, Memory of Light weaves an exquisite web of conversations, songs, reminiscences around a life-changing love.
Can food lead Tara Taneja to love?
Tara Taneja lives in the small town of Siyaka; she runs a Mathematics Tuition Centre and works at her grandfather’s sweets shop, Lallan Sweets.
Nikku Sabharwal, her long lost best friend and crush, returns to Siyaka after many years. Sparks fly between them, as an adventure awaits.
The laddoos at Lallan Sweets are made from a secret magic ingredient. Lalaji, Tara’s grandfather, retires and decides that Lallan Sweets will not be inherited, but must be earned. So he devises a quest for his three grandchildren, Tara, Rohit and Mohit to find the magic ingredient. Whoever discovers it first will run the shop.
Nikku joins Tara in her pursuit to outsmart her cousins. The quest takes them from Mathura to Ludhiana, and together they battle old Family secrets, family legacies and unexpected dangers. Will the journey bring them together or lead to a bittersweet end?
Lallan Sweets is a heartwarming tale about love, family, food and the little things that matter in life.
Sometimes when you’re desperate to leave the past behind, the past is eager to catch up!
Anuradha leaves Gurgaon when Dhruv chooses his family over her. She thinks that chapter of her life has ended, and starts afresh in Mumbai. But strangely, it seems her past is trying to catch up. Dhruv suddenly comes back into her life. Even as they try to figure out their relationship, horrible things start happening to people they know. Together, Anuradha and Dhruv need to find out who it is that cannot bear to see them together. Who is carrying out these shocking crimes? Are they really soulmates cursed to stay apart, or is there some karmic debt they have to repay? Taut and thrilling, Only the Good Die Young is unputdownable.
The best thing happened to her . . . but in the worst way possible . . .
Prisha Srivastav turned eighteen two months back. Hailing from Faridabad, she studies mass communication in Bengaluru. She meets a mysterious man, double her age, who goes by the name ‘the mean monster’ in the Bengaluru party circuit. Intrigued, she pursues him and falls for him. However, there’s a problem. Prisha doesn’t know he kills the one who loves him. Literally.
From the master of twists, Novoneel Chakraborty, comes another beguiling tale of dark romance and thrill that won’t let you put the book down till the last page.
Six months have passed since Prisha was pushed to her death by the person she loved the most, Saveer. But she doesn’t believe that it was him until she stumbles upon the first clue to the mystery that Saveer is, which leads her to his twisted past: He is not who he says he is.
Forever Is True is a riveting thriller exposing the deadly limits that a person can go to because of a ruined childhood.
Cheaters tells nine short stories, each discussing a different shade of infidelity in today’s times, when societal norms are still the same-archaic. However, the urge to explore and experiment amongst the youth is at an all-time high. This friction, if not handled well, could lead to unexpected roads. Each story, though high on emotion, unfolds in a thrilling narrative.
Baali and Sugreeva of the Vana Nara tribe were orphan brothers who were born in abject poverty and grew up as slaves like most of their fellow tribesmen. They were often mocked as the vanaras, the monkey men. Sandwiched between the never-ending war between the Deva tribes in the north and the Asura tribes in the south, the Vana Naras seemed to have lost all hope. But Baali was determined not to die a slave. Aided by his beloved brother, Sugreeva, Baali built a country for his people. The capital city, Kishkindha, became a beacon of hope for emancipated slaves from across the world. It was a city of the people, by the people, for the people, where there was no discrimination based on caste, creed, language or the colour of skin. For a brief period in history, it seemed as if mankind had found its ideal hero in Baali. But then fate intervened through the beautiful Tara, the daughter of a tribal physician. Loved by Baali and lusted after by Sugreeva, Tara became the cause of a fraternal war that would change history for ever.
The love triangle between Baali, Tara and Sugreeva is arguably the world’s first. Written by Anand Neelakantan who gave a voice to Ravana in Asura, Duryodhana in the Ajaya series and Sivagami in the Baahubali series, Vanara is a classic tale of love, lust and betrayal. Shakespearean in its tragic depth and epic in its sweep, Vanara gives voice to the greatest warrior in the Ramayana-Baali.
Shanay Bansal, a young and successful entrepreneur, is looking forward to his engagement with Afsana Agarwal. But a few weeks before the engagement, he receives a mysterious voice message from someone from Afsana’s past. Curious, Shanay plays the voice message and through those many other such messages, a different world from the past opens up about a beautiful relationship that got broken due to a terrible lie.
Half Torn Hearts is a coming-of-age tale of three layered individuals coming to terms with their first loss, which bares the devil that we all possess but are scared of encountering and which eventually becomes the cause of our own ruin.
If your past could be erased, would you erase it? Sadly, you have no choice in this matter because I, your past, am invincible. If you think you can escape me, you’re already doomed.
Rahul, an intelligence officer on a secret mission, is undercover at a major’s house. In the process, he falls in love with the major’s daughter, Akriti, unknowingly putting her in danger. To protect her, Rahul decides to hide her at his parents’ house. However, estranged from his family for years, he must first make amends with them.
Just when he thinks he has found a haven for Akriti, she goes missing. That’s when a research wing officer is put on the job, and Rahul realizes she is someone who seems all too familiar. Or is she really?
As Rahul comes closer to the truth, he is faced with the biggest shock of his life.
When they drink a cup of ‘magic’ coffee, Rahul and Neha are entrusted with a quest that promises to lead to great treasure. As they race from the plantations of Coorg to Japanese graveyards, they are trailed by the Yamamoto brothers-bearing grudges and carrying swords.
Accompanied by a friendly ghost and armed with an extreme love of coffee, Rahul and Neha discover their passion for warm frothy concoctions and each other.
But will they manage to evade their Japanese assailants and find the treasure they first set out for?
