Book picks similar to
Kohinoor Express by Rensil D'Silva


historical-fiction
thriller
india
suspense

Abyss


Sabarna Roy - 2011
    It is essentially a racy crime thriller full of gritty suspense. Act one builds up slowly to result in a crescendo of conflicts between personalities and ideas finally to end with an unnatural death before the interval. Is it a suicide or a murder? Act two evolves through a series of incisive interrogations to unravel the truth, which is deeply disturbing and affecting. As the play unfolds into a very well crafted situational thriller, underneath is the debate about using land for agriculture or for industry, the ethics of a working author and the nexus of a modern state all wonderfully enmeshed into its storyline and the personal lives of its subtly etched out characters. The highpoints of the play are its central conflict between a mother and her daughter and its female sleuth – Renuka.

The Neighbors in Apartment 3D


C.G. Twiles - 2020
    After she tells her teenage son a despicable lie, her husband asks for a trial separation. She must go six months without a single fib. That’s harder than it sounds for a compulsive liar.Cintra moves in with an old college pal, and befriends the sociable couple next door, who have a young boy staying with them while his mother is “in Europe.” Then she spots a note on their door: “I’m being held” written in a childish scrawl, with a drawing of a boy with a gun to his head. Add in the eerie sounds she hears through their shared wall, and Cintra suspects they’ve kidnapped the boy.To unravel the truth of what’s happening in apartment 3D, Cintra must return to her lying ways.What she discovers proves the most dangerous people can be the ones living right next door.Fans of The Couple Next Door and Behind Closed Doors won’t see this stunning twist coming.

Empress Gold


Jeffrey Whittam - 2013
    Both keys slid in unopposed. Both locks operated first time – lifting the heavy lid took all of Lee’s strength.From inside the box the accumulated wealth of twenty years stared up at him. Though he had seen it a hundred times before, under that yellow glare from his cap lamp the buttery glint of raw metal took his breath away.For over two decades, the Goddards have struggled through the uncertainties of war, political upheaval and now, faced with mounting pressure from a corrupt government, they are forced to make decisions that will change their lives forever. As Managing Director of the Empress Deep gold mine, Lee Goddard rolls into play the final ball of an already dangerous game.Fostered by rampant avarice and political uncertainty, life in Zimbabwe is worthless – only the elite survive. For a fortune in gold and tribal treasures, some are willing to sell the very soul of an emergent country.

Odds Against Tomorrow


Joseph T. Nutter
    Her father, a former territorial governor, must now make the hard decision to recruit a former friend and gunfighter, whom he tried to hang in the past, to join in pursuit of his strong-willed daughter and the violent men she seeks. The energetic and exciting story is told from both perspectives as they must fight their way through the still untamed towns and locations of New Mexico Territory and Texas of 1884. And blended into the backdrop of their journey are the final days of the spirited campaign to elect a new President—Grover Cleveland. Behind this story lies the dynamics of two former friends who grew up together and fought alongside one another as members of the Texas Brigade in the Civil War and later as Texas Rangers. But they would be driven apart later by the sides of the law they would hold to. They now come together once again in an epic tale and must reach beyond their strained relationship to the strong bonds of friendship of their youth.

False Flags: Betrayal in London


Noel Hynd - 1979
     This is a newly re-formatted edition (as of January 23, 2014) to address quirks in previous editions. "Noel Hynd knows the ins and outs of Washington's institutions, public and private." Publishers Weekly (on 'The Enemy Within") From the author of FLOWERS FROM BERLIN, CONSPIRACY IN KIEV and two dozen other best selling thrillers, comes a newly revised 'endgame' spy story, based on the events of 1983 that were all too real. It is 1983, the freezing point of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Behind the headlines, unknown to most private citizens, the two super powers bumble toward nuclear confrontation....and in the back streets and back alleys of world capitals, spies and recalled spies fight for a part of a missile guidance system that could tip the balance during nuclear confrontation. And at the center is a woman with a terrible secret. Noel Hynd takes you on a journey into the world of espionage in both the 1960's and 1980s. Based on fascinating real life detail, some of it autobiographical, the story teams with real life characters from Andropov to Profumo and spawls across CIA stations in London and Paris as well as Parisian night spots and journalistic/spy haunts such as Harry's New York Bar in Paris. The times were deadly, but riveting, the mood intoxicating but frightening. For spy fans, this is a trip into the real world. You will never feel the same about the year 1983. "The novels of Noel Hynd stand out like emeralds." - NY Times Book Review. "A few notches above the Ludlums and Clancys of the world - Booklist "(False Flags is)...readable and highly complex....written with intelligence and style....a REAL PAGE TURNER. - Publishers Weekly.

Maggie: A Journey of Love, Loss and Survival


Vicki Tapia - 2018
    This is a #MeToo story that has waited over a century to be told. Mt. Clemens, Michigan, 1887. Seventeen and headstrong, with marriage on her mind, Maggie is sure she has found her one true love. But when she collides head-on with betrayal, overwhelming loss and ill-treatment, her life unravels. Maggie rises above adversity through rare determination and grit, becoming an independent woman ahead of her time. Yet before she can truly find peace, one heartbreaking, life-altering decision remains. Inspired by her great-grandmother's life, the author weaves a timeless story of survival and courage set against the backdrop of Mt. Clemens, Michigan and the prairies of eastern Montana at the turn of the twentieth century.

Samaritan


Estelle Ryan - 2022
    That is until she opens her front door to find the corrupt woman who publicly outed Bree as transgender—the same woman now begging for Bree’s help.Petra Keller is a despicable person, uncaring whose reputation she tramples on her way to the top of the corporate ladder. Or is she? Could she be telling the truth that she’s changed? The more Bree looks into Petra’s shocking claims, the more she uncovers facts leading her to a chilling connection between highly respected companies, their owners and an unthinkable crime.Her investigation becomes even more muddied by cryptic emails, her overprotective brother convincing his enigmatic friend to keep an eye on her and a bombing that lands her in hospital. Instead of being intimidated, Bree’s resolve is strengthened. These powerful men can’t continue to get away with profiting from actions that already resulted in the loss of countless innocent lives—actions that would cost more lives unless Bree gets to the truth. And exposes it.Samaritan is the first book in The Duchess Report trilogy, continuing with Sentinel and concluding with Maecenas.

The Dressmaker's Son


Abbi Sherman Schaefer - 2013
    Rachael's family comes to America to start a new life after fleeing the pogroms in Russia. Rebekah comes to America with her son, Samuel, fleeing his father, Misha, a Russian soldier with whom she had an affair and has threatened to take him away from her so he will not grow up as a Jew and the son of a cobbler. Set in the Lower East Side of New York and pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia, both women adjust to life in America until Misha kidnaps Samuel and returns with him to Russia. How Rebekah rises to the challenge of earning enough money as a designer of women's gowns to return to St. Petersburg to find her son, and the difficulties she encounters while there, including murder and prison, show the reader the full extent of a mother's ingenuity and determination when it comes to her child. Rachael also faces the possibility of losing a child to war when her son Solomon enlists in the army as America's entry into World War I approaches.

Theft of Fire


Michael Edelson - 2017
    The mission to destroy a domestic terrorist cell in possession of a nuclear bomb sounds like the opportunity he is looking for, until he realizes that his targets are not terrorists, and that what they have is something infinitely more dangerous than a bomb. On the run with Dr. Grace Llewellyn and the device she calls Prometheus, Markus finds himself pitted against the full might of US intelligence and military forces as they mount the biggest manhunt ever conducted on American soil. He quickly learns that Prometheus represents a technological advancement so profound that it can alter the course of history. But there is another such device already in play, and he, Grace and Prometheus are all that stand between it and the end of human civilization as we know it.

Past the Headlands


Garry Disher - 2001
    The fall of Malaya and Singapore and the bombing of Darwin—what looked like the invasion of Australia—ebb and crash over a man’s long search to find a home and a woman’s determination to keep hers, connected by old memories and new betrayals. It is a thriller and a romance, a story of earth and water, air and metal—an unforgettable ride through the most precarious time in our region's recent history. Garry Disher writes: ‘Past the Headlands came from the same World War 2 research as The Stencil Man. I was struck by the power of two documents. The first was a letter written by a woman alone on a cattle station near Broome in 1942, at the time the Japanese were overrunning Malaya and Singapore and bombing areas of northern Australia. One day she found herself giving shelter to Dutch colonial officers and their families, who were fleeing Sumatra and Java ahead of the Japanese advance (many people like them lost their lives when Japanese planes shot up their waiting seaplanes in Broome Harbour in March, 1942). This woman stuck in my head (the isolation, the danger, the efforts to communicate, her bravery, etc). The second document was a war diary written by an Australian army surgeon who escaped Singapore ahead of the Japanese and was stuck in Sumatra, trying to get out. Here he treated many of the civilians (and Australian Army deserters) fleeing from Singapore. He was captured by the Japanese, but survived the war. But his last few diary entries detail how he and a mate were waiting for a plane or a ship to take them out, then one day he wrote, “Davis [his mate] left last night without telling me”. So much for mateship. I spent years trying to find my way into their stories. At one stage I spent a year writing 40,000 words before realising it wouldn’t work. I put it aside, then realised one subplot didn’t belong, so extracted it and turned it into a separate novel The Divine Wind, which has sold 100,000 copies around the world, won a major award and been published as both a young adult and a general market novel. But cutting it out like that freed me up to write about the woman and the man betrayed by his mate, in Past the Headlands.’

Deja Karma


Vish Dhamija - 2015
    But Jay Singh is a closet alcoholic; he has a dark and ominous past. His mother has been accused and convicted of killing his father..something he doesn't accept even after twenty years.Flamboyant, wicket, lethal, Jay Singh never loses a case, though his methods might not always be within the law. If the law is after you - guilty or not - there is only one man who can save you. If Jay Singh takes your case, witnesses for the prosecution disappear or turn hostile, evidence evaporates, technology and science fail to provide any cogent support. What's more - Jay Singh can even provide you with an ironclad alibi.And then he gets a case that can completely destroy him.If he loses the high-profile he can kiss his career goodbye ; if he wins the case he better keep his obituary ready.

FARTHER: A Fabulous Tale of a Troubled Father


Chaitanya Desale - 2021
    Fortunate’?Or will you keep blaming your insecurities & failures and choose to be a fiasco?"A sweet couple, Manbir & Nivia, were living with their toddler, Ruhi. They stayed farther from their respective families, cursed by both their parents for having an inter-caste marriage. Manbir was a robotics engineer and while working hard on his dream project to make India’s first AI robot, he failed in his family responsibilities, which was followed by his wife, Nivia’s demise. And when all options were lost, Manbir had to struggle to look after his daughter Ruhi, while continuing to work on his company projects.Will he ever be able to be a great father for his motherless child? Will he ever be able to make India’s first AI robot? And how will he find a way to look after his child during his office hours? To know more, read ‘FARTHER - A Fabulous Tale of a Troubled Father.’

City of Dark Hearts


James Conan - 2008
    With the support of a young man who is just venturing into the burgeoning trade of news photography, Emily soon finds herself in a race against time to save Anna's life and to bring her story back to New York before Pulitzer's tough deadline expires.Chicago is a place of dangerous contrasts. Among all the glitz and razzmatazz of the Fair itself and the spectacular wealth and influence of a new middle class elite, Emily comes face to face with rival ethnic groups, the sinister underworld of pornography and prostitution, as well as the ruthless meatpacking giants of the Union Stock Yard, who control the lives and destinies of so many of Chicago's immigrant poor.

The Best of Tagore


Rabindranath Tagore - 2004
    Kabuliwala2. The Parrot's Training3. The Rat's Feast4. Atonement5. The Nuisance6. Wish Fulfilment7. The Runaway8. Shiburam9. The Scientist10. The Invention of Shoes11. A 'Good' Man12. Return of the Little Master

Depth Charge


Jason Heaton - 2021
    The tragedy sets in motion a dangerous quest for truth that pulls Tusker into a sinister plot spanning 75 years, from World War II Ceylon to modern day Sri Lanka. Along the way, he matches wits with a psychopathic mercenary, discovers a long lost ship with an explosive secret, and falls for a beautiful marine biologist who is at least as strong as he is. In the end, Tusker finds that the truth may lie at the bottom of the sea, with only one way back to the surface. Depth Charge is an old school thriller in the tradition of Fleming, Maclean, and Cussler, with an eye for detail, cunning villains, and narrow escapes. The story is full of wartime secrets, the intersection of religion and politics, and the arcane world of deep technical diving. It takes readers from the smoky halls of 1940s London to the volatile, seductive heat of Sri Lanka and sixty fathoms under the Indian Ocean.