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The Portrait of a Secret

"What can a patriot do when he has to make the choice between self-preservation and love for his country? As India’s Chief of Intelligence, Amitabh has spent a career battling India’s enemies, domestic and foreign. Now, in the winter of his illustrious career, he is faced with his most daunting challenge yet - averting a nuclear strike against his homeland that he knows very little about - except that it is coming. As Indian intelligence works feverishly to uncover the truth, Amitabh’s path crosses Kamal’s, a senior IAS officer, who is investigating the theft of two priceless paintings from India. Even as they work together to accomplish their missions, the paintings reveal a secret thought to have been lost in the fires of partition. The discovery unleashes a global battle between the RAW, the ISI and the CIA, as each scrambles for control over a secret that would permanently swing global geopolitical power towards them. Innocent lives and intelligence assets built over decades are ruthlessly sacrificed for something far more valuable - control over the Indian sub-continent. Everything is at stake till one man is forced to make an impossible choice - one that will decide the fate of the world."

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Hospital

By Sanya Rushdi

A strong and courageous novel that deftly tackles psychosis. In Melbourne, Australia, a woman in her late thirties is diagnosed with her third episode of psychosis, amounting to schizophrenia. What follows is a frenzied journey from home to a community house to a hospital and out again. Sanya, the protagonist, finds herself questioning the diagnosis of her sanity or insanity, as determined and defined by a medical model which seems less than convincing to her. Having studied psychology herself, she wonders whether, even if the diagnosis is correct to some extent, the treatment should be different. Sanya tells her story in a deceptively calm, first-person voice, using conversations as the primary narrative mode, as she ponders if and when the next psychotic episode will materialize. Based on real-life events and originally written in Bengali, Hospital is a daring first novel that unflinchingly depicts the precarity of a woman living with psychosis and her struggles with the definition of sanity in our society.

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Accidents Happen

By F H Batacan

A short story collection as relentlessly intense and darkly compelling as Batacan’s debut, the Filipino crime landmark Smaller and Smaller Circles F.H. Batacan’s first novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles, was an instant classic when it was published in 1999, a masterpiece of Filipino crime that won the Philippine Book Award. In this, her second work of fiction, she gives us a far-ranging collection that explores the darkest corners of human experience, depicting with pitch black humor the systems of class and politics that her characters are trapped in, and the moments violence—accidental or otherwise—that can, at any moment, shatter their lives. The driver for a wealthy family witnesses the aftermath of the disappearance of the family’s twelve-year-old son. A field investigator for the World Health Organization travels the world giving presentations about a biomedical enzyme that will lead to the extinction of the human race. And Father Augusto Saenz, the Jesuit priest and forensic anthropologist from Smaller and Smaller Circles, returns to investigate the murder of a woman whose secretive life holds the key to her death. Sure to cement Batacan’s status as a crime writer of global status, Accidents Happen is a probing and relentless series of dark excursions into worlds where the smallest moments are infused with life and vibrating with menace, and death is always close at hand.

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Never Meant to Stay

By Trisha Das

A bighearted romantic comedy about family and finding the perfect match set against the exuberant backdrop of contemporary Delhi. Home has always been a temporary arrangement for Samara Mansingh, a wayfaring wedding photographer and the daughter of a diplomat. When her father is uprooted once again, Samara needs a place to stay in Delhi. Next stop: the Khanna family. Samara’s memories of the Khannas are vague at best, but she doesn’t remember their home feeling so much like a war zone. And the last thing their surly eldest son, Sharav, wants is a houseguest eavesdropping on the chaos. Sharav has a melodramatic sister pushing back on an arranged marriage, a withdrawn lead-singer brother who won’t sing, and a widowed mother hiding her grief in the garden. Sweeping into the household like a tornado, irrepressible Samara is a practically perfect distraction. She has a mind to help a girl find true love, push a young man to find his voice, and bring a lonely and loving widow out of mourning. Maybe Samara can even get on Sharav’s ruggedly handsome good side. The only sure thing is that the Khanna family will never be the same again. Neither will Samara, who may finally find what she’s been missing her entire life: a home.

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