We call someone a stranger when we know nothing about them. But perhaps the more accurate definition is this: A stranger is someone whose story we haven't heard yet. Jay Divyam's None of Us Are Strangers begins with a little girl, an absent mother and a man who never intended to become responsible for either of them. Veer Mehra is at a Mumbai party when a woman asks him to look after her daughter, Aaruhi, for a few minutes. She doesn't return. Those few minutes be

What happens when a place stops producing gold but refuses to stop carrying its history? That question stayed with me while reading Rabi Samuel’s Cold Mine. Set against the history of Kolar Gold Fields, the novel takes us into abandoned mine shafts, forgotten records, unfinished maps and old legends. But beneath the thriller machinery, Samuel is interested in something larger: what happens to people when the place that gave meaning to their lives also takes something from

I have always found something slightly unsettling about telephone calls. Maybe it is because you cannot see the person on the other end. You hear a voice, but you don't know what the face behind it looks like. You cannot tell whether someone is speaking calmly because they are genuinely calm, or because they are trying very hard not to fall apart. Sometimes there is a pause. Sometimes there is silence. And sometimes, you realise that the person on the other end may

We often imagine that the most dangerous secrets in a relationship are the ones someone tells us. Perhaps they aren't. Perhaps the more dangerous ones are the secrets someone successfully keeps from us. That thought stayed with me while reading Anubha Gupta's The Almost Perfect Wife. Because beneath the murder mystery, the twists and the ancestral house in Mashobra, this is really a story about something much more uncomfortable: how little we may actually know about the

There is something deeply unsettling about a dead police officer hanging from a tree at a Delhi crossroads. Not just because it is murder, but because of who the victim is. A person who is supposed to represent the law has now become a message from someone who clearly has no respect for it. And then there is the symbol. The mark of Lady Justice on the dead officer’s neck. That is where Rihan Khalyani’s An Uncaught Criminal grabs your attention. Not with a long explanati

There are books that open like a locked door being gently pushed, and there are books that open like a gunshot in a silent hall. This one begins somewhere in between. A celebrated detective is found murdered while still mid-investigation, and that single rupture in the system is enough to tilt the world of “Murder at the Palace: A Chanaksha Rajpoot Mystery” into motion. His assistant, Chanaksha Rajpoot, is left holding not just unfinished files but the weight of an unfinish

When I closed the book, it felt less like shutting a Kindle and more like slamming shut a courtroom door echoing with unanswered...

There are thrillers that entertain you, and then there are thrillers that grab you by the collar and refuse to let go until the very last...

Do you know that feeling when you pick up a mystery novel expecting the usual whodunit, only to find yourself glued to the pages until...

Imagine wandering through the vibrant streets of Jodhpur, where the aroma of spices fills the air, and the hum of merchants and shoppers...

Knitting in Jamaica: Who Knew Knitting Was So Dangerous? by Gary Edwards is a delightful surprise, defying every stereotype you might...