Catagory: Fiction

The dashing grey-eyed policeman, poster boy of the Calcutta Police Station, Inspector Bikram, has landed a case that refuses to solve itself out.
CT correspondent
The police are still fumbling with the murder of the small-time film producer, Piloo Adhikary, found dead with his two dogs on Diwali night. Assumed to be a simple crime of passion, the so-called wife being the prime suspect, the case grew murkier when her body was found floating in a pond.
The clues point to a larger racket of money laundering, shady business deals and small-time illegal arms deals, the involvement of Gaur Mohan Lal, a wheeler dealer of some clout in the film industry, and Morari Koyal, the owner of a fishing trawler.
Will Bikram be able to expose the murky underbelly of the city’s most affluent and influential?

Childhood sweethearts, good-looking Jimmy Cooper and plain Jane Mehroo Nasarwanji are now ‘grown up’ twenty-somethings. While Mehroo is loyal and crazy about Jimmy, Jimmy is anything but loyal and crazy about everything else but Mehroo. So while Jimmy charms his way through life naïve Mehroo tries every trick in Pizzazz magazine to seduce her man. Will Mehroo come out of her shell and discover her true self? Will Jimmy look beyond himself? Packed with colourful characters and a racy plot, He Loves Me Not is about two very different people who grow up together, learn about love, and discover who they really are.

When single working mother, Ira, enrolls her son, Abhi, at Bumblebees, a posh playschool in Lutyens’ Delhi, little does she know what she is getting into. The other moms are everything she is not—impeccably groomed, couture-sporting fashionistas who ‘do coffee’ at trendy joints, throw lavish birthday parties for their children, and holiday in exotic locales. In her eagerness to befriend these hip moms, Ira inadvertently lets slip a lie about her marriage that could lead to her being ostracized from this clique.

When the dashing Vasu comes back into her life, Ira asks him to pose as her ‘fake’ husband to help her save face before these women. But will her lie be found out? Will Ira and Vasu part ways or embark on a new beginning together?

Replete with memorable characters, Mom in the City is an intimate, humorous, and poignant story about contemporary motherhood, love, and life in India. The first-of-its kind in the Indian mom-lit genre.

A prince once gave up everything to attain inner peace, creating the world’s most treasured and well-known coming-of-age story: Siddhartha’s journey to Enlightenment; his transformation from a mere mortal to an enlightened soul. Join Siddhartha, the ‘brooding dove’, as he wins Yashodhara’s hand in marriage, challenges his father-in-law, celebrates with wine and festivities and then, to everyone’s surprise and consternation, renounces it all. Seeking the path of the wise, he lay the noble path for us. This is the story of how an ordinary mortal came to see the light.

Aged ninety-two, Shiv K. Kumar injects the wisdom of a lifetime of writing into this immortal tale, fashioning the Buddha’s story into, possibly, each of our own.

Six friends at university are pursuing the coveted MBA. Viraat, Sandy, Karan, Mallika, Vandana, and Preeto are a gang who hang out together and get into trouble together. And when the boys are not in their classrooms, they’re indulging in some high octane fun—from experimenting with dope, riding bikes semi-naked to even sneaking into cabarets. To add to their complicity, they are all vying for the attention of the same girl­—Mallika.

As their term ends, a disillusioned Viraat discovers that his gang that was once inseparable has disintegrated and his wild, carefree days are now history. His past catches up with him faster than he excepts and he is left in the biggest rut of his life.

Will Viraat get past the hurdles to pave a path of his own? Will he finally get Mallika, the girl of his dreams? Most importantly, are his dreams even worth chasing? The Dream Chasers is a hysterical and candid story about fate, love, and the follies of youth.­­

Arjan Banga is forced to leave London to help his lonely mother run Bains Stores, their family’s provincial corner shop. But, it’s also a return to all that he tried to leave behind: narrow worldviews and post-industrial decline—and Singhfellows, a desi pub that defines itself by a religion that officially rejects drinking. But, his mother is adamant to keep the store open, forcing Arjan to work with her, reassess his relationship with his gori fiancé and discover his family’s silent history: his aunt’s elopement, his mother’s marriage to a lower-caste man, and his family’s strange relationship with their desi neighbours, the Dhandas, whose macho heir can’t stop listening to Malkit Singh and declaring: ‘Am just gonna bun dis spliff.’

The story of modern Britain as seen through the windows of an English shop with a big Punjabi heart, Marriage Material is the humorous chronicle of finding love as a desi in England—and of English desis forging and celebrating a betwixt identity that is neither here nor there.

In the newest Jana Bibi adventure, Hamara Nagar is rocked by an espionage scandal. Now that the dust has settled and the town is safe from the threat of being flooded by a planned government dam, all eyes are on Jana and her feisty parrot, now the target of a potential kidnapping—‘birdnapping’—that puts Jana and her household on edge.

Meanwhile, love is in the air and thanks to the appearance of an old flame and the intoxicating elixir Love Potion Number 10, Jana is giddy-headed with the possibilities. She sees love and connection all around her. Everyone in her bustling home, however, from her long-time ayah, Mary, to her 11-year-old errand boy Tilku, think that what’s missing from her life is a husband. A visit from Jana’s friends Lily and Cyrus, accompanied by Cyrus’s recently widowed cousin and business partner Max King, lead to hopes that Max might fit the bill. But the trio’s indulgence and hedonistic lifestyle clash with Jana’s simple existence.

Set in the 1960s, Love Potion is the second book in the series which debuted with Jana’s Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes. With its eclectic cast of loveable characters, gentle wisdom and good cheer, this charming tale of love, adventure and intrigue is sure to lift the most cynical of spirits.

When booze smugglers Jai and Mike reconsider their options after another close brush with the law, their friend Aziz, a corporate lawyer comes up with a plan for all of them to rake in even more money with less risk. Setting up an undetectable, foolproof scam, the boys who grew up together in the same London neighbourhood are now going to grow rich together, and quick. As with the best laid plans, they’d not counted on a few bumps along the way in the form of the intrepid fraud investigator who picks up on their trail, and Pam, the femme fatale whose sari blouses leave less to the imagination than bikinis, who has her eye set firmly on Jai. Knowing you have to risk it big to make it big, the boys put everything on the line in this high-speed thrill ride of a novel. But will they come out laughing or are they walking into a trap?