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Addicted to Fiction? Here’s Your Emergency Read-covery Kit

Ready to unleash your inner bookworm? The one that’s addicted to fiction? Yes?
Well then buckle up for a whirlwind tour of 12 sizzling fiction reads, each one a portal to a world as unique as you are. From chilling thrillers to laugh-out-loud rom-coms, we’ve got something for every mood.

Are you ready to get hooked? 😉

 

The Housemaid's Secret
The Housemaid’s Secret || Freida McFadden

“Don’t go in the guest bedroom.” A shadow falls on Douglas Garrick’s face as he touches the door with his fingertips. “My wife… she’s very ill.” As he continues showing me their incredible penthouse apartment, I have a terrible feeling about the woman behind closed doors. But I can’t risk losing this job-not if I want to keep my darkest secret safe…

This absolutely explosive and shockingly twisty sequel to international bestseller The Housemaid will keep you racing through the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose, The Woman in the Window and Gone Girl will be totally hooked! This book can also be enjoyed as a standalone.

 

Strange Sally Diamond
Strange Sally Diamond || Liz Nugent

Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died.

Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and worried police, but also a sinister voice from a past she has no memory of. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, recluse Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends, finding independence, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say.

But when messages start arriving from a stranger who knows far more about her past than she knows herself, Sally’s life will be thrown into chaos once again…

 

The Last Devil to Die
The Last Devil to Die || Richard Osman

Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club.

An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?

 

None Of This is True
None Of This Is True || Lisa Jewell

Celebrating her 45th birthday at her local pub, podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie is also celebrating her 45th.

A few days later, they bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie says she thinks she would be an interesting subject for Alix’s podcast. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Alix agrees to a trial interview and indeed, Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated. Aix finds her unsettling but can’t quite resist the temptation to keep digging.

Slowly Alix starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it Josie has cajoled her way into Alix’s life – and into her home.

Soon Alix begins to wonder who is Josie Fair really? And what has she done?

 

Happy Place
Happy Place || Emily Henry

Two exes. One pact.
Could this holiday change everything?

Harriet and Wyn are the perfect couple – they go together like bread and butter, gin and tonic, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

Every year, they take a holiday from their lives to drink far too much wine with their favourite people in the world.

Except this year, they are lying through their teeth, because Harriet and Wyn broke up six months ago. And they still haven’t told anyone.

But the cottage is for sale so this is the last time they’ll all be here together. They can’t bear to break their best friends’ hearts so they’ll fake it for one more week.

But how can you pretend to be in love – and get away with it – in front of the people who know you best?

 

Pineapple Street
Pineapple Street || Jenny Jackson

Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights is one of New York City’s most desirable residences, and home to the glamorous and well-connected Stockton family . . .

Darley, the eldest daughter, has never had to worry about money. She followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood – but ended up sacrificing more of herself than she ever intended.

Sasha is marrying into the wealthy Stockton family, who are worlds apart from her own. She feels like the outsider, trying to navigate their impenetrable traditions and please her new mother-in-law – plus her hesitancy to sign a pre-nup has everyone questioning her true intentions.

Georgiana, the youngest, is falling in love with someone she can’t (and really shouldn’t) have – and is forced to confront the kind of person she wants to be.

Witty, escapist and full of heart, with an unmissable cast of loveable – if flawed – characters, Pineapple Street is a beautifully observed novel about the complexities of family dynamics, the miles between the haves and the have-notes, and the all-consuming insanity of first love – while also asking the age-old question, can money really buy you happiness?

 

The Housemaid
The Housemaid || Freida McFadden

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.

 

Romantic Comedy
Romantic Comedy || Curtis Sittenfeld

With a series of heartbreaks under her belt, Sally Milz – successful script writer for a legendary late-night TV comedy show – has long abandoned the search for love.

But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women.

Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this ‘social rule’. The reverse never happens for a woman.

Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn’t a romantic comedy – it’s real life.

Would someone like him ever date someone like her?

 

Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Wrong Place, Wrong Time || Gillian McAllister

It’s late. You’re waiting up for your son.

Then you spot him: he’s with someone. And – you can’t believe what you see – your funny, happy teenage boy stabs this stranger.

You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is charged with murder. His future is lost.

That night you fall asleep in despair. But when you wake . . . it is yesterday. The day before the murder.

Somewhere in the past lie the answers – a reason for this crime.

And your only chance to stop it . . .

 

The Woman Who Lied
The Woman Who Lied || Claire Douglas

Emilia Ward lives quietly in suburban London with her husband and two children.
Just an ordinary wife and mother. But also a bestselling crime writer.
When she starts writing her tenth Detective Miranda Moody novel, however, life takes a frightening turn: an incident straight out of one of her novels occurs in real life.
Just an unsettling coincidence, she thinks. Until it happens again.
Then someone she knows dies exactly like a victim in the book she’s still writing . . .

Why is someone doing this?
How do they know what she is writing?
And how long before Emilia and her family are next?

 

 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow || Gabrielle Zevin

 

Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world — of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view.

When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love – making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.

This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest as it examines the nature of identity, creativity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

 

Assistant To The Villain
Assistant To The Villain || Maehrer, Hannah Nicole

ASSISTANT WANTED: Notorious, high-ranking villain seeks loyal, level-headed assistant for unspecified office duties, supporting staff for random mayhem, terror, and other Dark Things in General. Discretion a must. Excellent benefits.

With ailing family to support, Evie Sage’s employment status isn’t just important, it’s vital. So when a mishap with Rennedawn’s most infamous Villain results in a job offer-naturally, she says yes. No job is perfect, of course, but even less so when you develop a teeny crush on your terrifying, temperamental, and undeniably hot boss. Don’t find evil so attractive, Evie.

But just when she’s getting used to severed heads suspended from the ceiling and the odd squish of an errant eyeball beneath her heel, Evie suspects this dungeon has a huge rat…and not just the literal kind. Because something rotten is growing in the kingdom of Rennedawn, and someone wants to take the Villain-and his entire nefarious empire-out.

Now Evie must not only resist drooling over her boss but also figure out exactly who is sabotaging his work… and ensure he makes them pay.

After all, a good job is hard to find….

Meet Simone Singh: The Girl with Broken Dreams!

Ever wondered what it’s like to chase down a killer in the blistering Delhi heat while wrestling with your own inner demons? Meet Simone Singh, the fearless CBI investigator from The Girl with Broken Dreams by Devashish Sardana.

As she battles the sweltering sun and mandatory therapy sessions, her journey unfolds in a gripping tale where justice and personal struggles collide.

Read this excerpt to know more, but be sure to grab an icy glass of water or a comforting pillow—you might just need it for the thrilling ride ahead.

The Girl with Broken Dreams
The Girl with Broken Dreams || Devashish Sardana

 

***

Assistant Superintendent (ASP) Simone Singh flicks away beads of sweat streaming down her bald, squishy scalp, watching the clock on the Jeep’s dashboard flip over to 10:10. She is now ten minutes late for her appointment with the therapist.

 

Simone had arrived five minutes before her scheduled appointment, but she has been sitting in the crumbling, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)-issued Jeep without air conditioning since. A dry, sultry breeze rushes in through the fully open window, smacking her sweat-speckled face. She detests the summers in Delhi. Even more, she detests the heat crawling up her back and the sweat seeping down her spine.

 

Simone is parked in front of a plush red-brick bungalow in Delhi’s posh Lutyens Zone. The bungalow stands well back from the pavement behind lush jamun trees. Probably explains the sweetness in the searing breeze.

 

Her hands grip the steering wheel, knuckles white. Simone is thinking, wondering if she wants to keep her job with the Indian Police Service (IPS). Her boss, Superintendent of Police (SP) Vijesh Jaiswal, had given her a simple choice after the ‘incident’ last month: meet the CBI-appointed therapist or get suspended. Simone would have happily gotten suspended—it wouldn’t be the first time anyway—rather than lie on a sofa and discuss her private affairs with a sham doctor, a stranger. But she knows it isn’t a choice. It is a direct order from a superior. And she isn’t one to break the chain of command. Orders ought to be followed. Period.

 

She pulls out her phone and flicks through her photos. Simone stops at a photo of her grandma, where she is beaming at the camera, waving a knife, about to blow out the candles on her eightieth birthday.

 

You see what I have to do because of you, Grams,’ she says aloud. ‘You had one job. One. To stay . . . alive.’ Her voice breaks.
Simone waits, hoping grandma would answer back, calling Simone ‘bachchu’ again in her sing-song voice. Sigh. If only photos could talk.

 

Let’s get this over with. Simone pockets the phone, puts on an N95 mask, tucks her police cap underneath her arm, and jumps out of the Jeep. She marches to the front gate of the bungalow.

 

A constable on sentry duty watches her approach, his gaze jammed on her shaved head. Her gleaming baldness has always invited glares. But she is used to the stares and the furtive glances. This is a choice. She had cut her locks two years ago when she had a run-in with the chief minister’s son in Bhopal and was wrongfully suspended. She has shaved her head ever since. Initially, as an act of defiance, now as a proud battle scar.

 

The constable sees the IPS insignia on her shoulder flash and salutes her immediately. ‘Good morning, madam ji!’

 

‘What’s the point of wearing a face mask that covers your mouth, but not your nose?’ Simone admonishes the constable, whose face mask has conveniently slipped to his chin. The pandemic might have fizzled out, but good hygiene shouldn’t. And neither should common sense.

 

The constable flashes a broad grin, his tobacco-stained teeth on full display. ‘Sorry, sorry.’ He hastily pulls up his mask, covering his hideous teeth. ‘How are you, madam ji?’

 

Simone recoils. She doesn’t have the patience for greetings or small talk. Simone has never understood why people do it. She comes to the point. ‘I have an appointment with Dr Dia Sengupta.’

 

‘Oh, minister sahab’s daughter?’ Simone narrows her eyes. Granted that the bungalow belongs to one of the cabinet ministers. But how does being the daughter of that minister define a grown, accomplished woman’s identity?

 

‘No, I’m not here to meet the minister’s daughter. I’m here to meet Dr Dia Sengupta, one of the leading therapists in Delhi,’ Simone corrects him.

 

The constable scrunches his forehead, confused. ‘Yes, madam ji. They are the same person. Same to same.’ She wants to thump the constable on the head because they are not the same.

 

But it’ll mean prolonging a conversation that she didn’t want in the first place. Abruptly, she turns away from the constable and strides to the unbolted front gate.

 

‘Wait, madam ji, you must sign the entry register,’ he calls after her.

 

Simone stops. Like it or not, she believes that rules must always be followed unless they contradict her values and ethics. She sighs. Turns around. The constable runs to her with an open register and a pen. She scribbles briskly and hands back the register.
The constable squints at what Simone has written. ‘Vijay Singh’s daughter?’ he reads aloud and looks up, confused. ‘Who is Vijay Singh? Your father?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

He chuckles. ‘Madam ji, you had to write your name, not your father’s name.’

 

Simone nods in agreement. ‘As you said, they are the same person. Same to same, right?’ Simone swivels on her feet and marches to the front gate without another word.

 

***

Get your copy of The Girl with Broken Dreams by Devashish Sardana wherever books are sold.

Thrilled in 240 pages

Bilal Siddiqi’s The Phoenix is a classic roller coaster of intrigue, vengeance and excitement. Read an extract here.

Mumbai

The Gateway of India was beautifully illuminated in honour of the victims of that fateful night of 26 November 2008. It had now been over a decade since the day those ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists swarmed in and carried out a series of attacks that brought the city to its knees. The coordinated massacre had lasted about four days, taking at least 170 lives and leaving some 300 injured. The city had been under siege, but the residents began to pick up the broken pieces soon after, resuming their everyday lives with their indomitable spirit.

The city was now paying homage to the martyrs of 26/11. Around 200 people had gathered at the Gateway of India, and the number was increasing with every passing minute. A popular actor had just taken to the stage and was addressing the crowd. It was a sombre moment for everyone present—some were reduced to tears as they lit their candles and uttered their prayers. Little did they know that there were plans for an unprecedented attack to be carried out that very night by a patriot who had repeatedly put his life on the line for his country.

The Indian flag fluttered proudly in the wind. People bowed their heads in respect. The actor’s voice from the stage broke the two-minute silence…

 

Aryaman’s eyes met those of a policeman. They nodded to each other, and Aryaman put on his hoodie. The policeman stepped back and turned off the metal detector as Aryaman went through. Aryaman read the policeman’s name as he moved past: Sanjay Rane.

Although he had switched off the security system to allow Aryaman to pass, Rane went slightly against Eymen’s plan and frisked Aryaman when he saw that a fellow constable was casually looking over at him. Aryaman felt Rane’s hand go over the concealed vest. The frisking done, Rane cleared Aryaman and gently pushed him in towards the venue.

Aryaman moved past the crowd, reluctantly walking towards the centre… His unsure steps were being watched through a sniper scope by Eymen, who had perched himself atop a nearby terrace.

Eymen’s instructions could be clearly heard through the earpiece that Aryaman was wearing: ‘Any funny business and a bullet ends you on the spot. And I don’t have to tell you what happens to your family after that.’

Aryaman didn’t bother responding. He was going to do it. There were no two ways about that. He stepped on a poster that had the faces of the deceased printed on it with the words ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’, and he pushed past a group of children as he reached the centre.

A middle-aged woman looked at him disapprovingly. She saw his bruised face, his glassy eyes, his salt-and-pepper stubble and his dishevelled, greying hair. And then she witnessed something she couldn’t decipher until it was too late…

 

There was mayhem—the kind Aryaman had rarely witnessed. People began to scream and run haphazardly. The actor, who until a few moments ago had been talking about how Mumbai had risen like a phoenix from the ashes after the 26/11 attacks, was now being whisked away by security personnel into an armoured car. Aryaman was jostled and pushed to the ground by the frenzied crowd.

A security team of four, all in hazmat suits, rushed towards him. They handcuffed and dragged him along the ground towards an armoured vehicle.

[The Phoenix is out now. Get your copy today!]

The Phoenix|| Bilal Siddiqi

5 Quotes that will Make You Pick ‘A Rising Man’ As Your Next Read

Abir Mukherjee, an accountant turned writer, is the author of the bestselling book A Rising Man. His debut novel was inspired by a desire to recover a crucial period in Anglo-Indian history that seems to have been almost forgotten.  It won the Harvill Secker/Daily Telegraph crime writing competition and became the first in a series starring Captain Sam Wyndham and ‘Surrender-not’ Banerjee.
The story follows Sam Wyndham, an English detective who comes to Calcutta after the Great War in search of a new start. He’s immediately thrown into his first case, the murder of a British burra sahib who’s been found with his throat cut in an alley. Sam, aided by his Indian assistant Sergeant Banerjee, investigate and soon find that things are a bit more complicated than they thought
Here are 5 quotes that will make you pick A Rising Man as your next book.
Murder as entertainment? Hmm…
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Intriguing!
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Ambivalence as a source of shock!
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Captain Wyndham was no fan of the war!
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British and their alternate channels
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Sounds interesting? Pick up your copy of A Rising Man now.
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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Abir Mukherjee

Abir Mukherjee is the author of the bestselling crime fiction novel A Rising Man. He is the child of Indian immigrants from Calcutta and grew up in West Scotland. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he currently works in finance in London.
He is back with another enthralling crime fiction called A Necessary Evil.
Here are five things you probably didn’t know about him.
That’s how it started!
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Wow!
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He didn’t even expect it!
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He was born in London.
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This time Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee are in Sambalpore, investigating the assassination of the Maharajah’s son.
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Indulge in suspense and thrills with the Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee’s latest adventures in A Necessary Evil.
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Six Quotes by Paula Hawkins that’ll Enthrall Any Reader

A former journalist, Paula Hawkins started writing romcom fiction under the name Amy Silver, writing four novels including Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista.
After the bestseller The Girl on the Train, Hawkins returns with Into the Water, a twisting read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory.
Here are a few quotes from The Girl on the Train and Into the Water, that’ll enthrall any reader.
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Enthralled yet? Let us know what you think of Paula Hawkins’ works in the comments below.
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