Book picks similar to
The Rape Trial by Bidisha Ghosal


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contemporary
indian
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The Sinner


Petra Hammesfahr - 1999
    Why? What would cause this quiet, kind young mother to stab a complete stranger in the throat over and over again, in full view of her family and friends? For the local police, it's an open-and-shut case. Cora quickly confesses and there's no shortage of witnesses, but those questions remain unanswered. Haunted by the case, the police commissioner refuses to close the file and begins his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell. A dark, spellbinding novel, where the truth is to be questioned at every turn, The Sinner has been a bestseller around the world, and is poised to be a summer smash with the coming TV adaptation, already hailed as one of the most anticipated shows of the summer."The Sinner is unnerving and weird and guaranteed to stick with you weeks later." -Sarah Weinman, editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives and Women Crime Writers"Hauntingly insightful and sensitive." -The Guardian

Master Class


Christina Dalcher - 2020
    Score high enough, and attend a top tier school with a golden future. Score too low, and it's off to a federal boarding school with limited prospects afterwards. The purpose? An improved society where education costs drop, teachers focus on the more promising students, and parents are happy.Elena Fairchild is a teacher at one of the state's elite schools. When her nine-year-old daughter bombs a monthly test and her Q score drops to a disastrously low level, she is immediately forced to leave her top school for a federal institution hundreds of miles away. As a teacher, Elena thought she understood the tiered educational system, but as a mother whose child is now gone, Elena's perspective is changed forever. She just wants her daughter back.And she will do the unthinkable to make it happen.

The Apology


Eve Ensler - 2019
    Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father's point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness and compassion and an expansive vision for the future. Remarkable and original, The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal. It is revolutionary, asking everything of each of us: courage, honesty, and forgiveness.

Please See Us


Caitlin Mullen - 2020
    Only one person even knows they’re there. Meanwhile, Clara, a young boardwalk psychic, struggles to attract clients for the tarot readings that pay her rent. When she begins to experience very real and disturbing visions, she suspects they could be related to the recent cases of women gone missing in town. When Clara meets Lily, an ex-Soho art gallery girl who is working at a desolate casino spa and reeling from a personal tragedy, she thinks Lily may be able to help her. But Lily has her own demons to face. If they can put the pieces together in time, they may save another lost girl—so long as their efforts don’t attract perilous attention first. Can they break the ill-fated cycle, or will they join the other victims?

After the Silence


Louise O'Neill - 2020
    When morning broke Nessa Crowley's lifeless body lay in the garden, her last breath silenced by the music and the thunder.The killer couldn't have escaped Inisrun, but no one was charged with the murder. The mystery that surrounded the death of Nessa remained hidden. But the islanders knew who to blame for the crime that changed them forever.Ten years later a documentary crew arrives, there to lift the lid off the Kinsellas' carefully constructed lives, determined to find evidence that will prove Henry's guilt and Keelin's complicity in the murder of beautiful Nessa.In this bold, brilliant, disturbing new novel Louise O'Neill shows that deadly secrets are devastating to those who hold them close.

Flying Without Wings (Ravinder Singh Presents)


Rishabh Puri - 2017
    Fast delivery through DHL/FedEx express.

Skyfire


Aroon Raman - 2016
    India is hit by a series of freak weather disturbances and startling epidemics that threaten to bring the country to its knees. At the same time, children are disappearing from the slums in the capital and nobody seems to care.Stumbling upon these strange and seemingly unrelated incidents, journalist Chandrasekhar, historian Meenakshi Pirzada and intelligence operative Syed Ali Hassan start upon a trail that leads them into the drawing rooms of Delhi's glittering high society before reaching a terrifying climax in Bhutan, where they come face-to-face with a force of unspeakable power and evil.Bestselling author Aroon Raman's third novel, Skyfire, is a heart-stopping thriller that will chill you to the bone.

The Forbidden Daughter


Shobhan Bantwal - 2008
    Not so for Isha Tilak and her husband, Nikhil. They already have a beloved daughter, but Nikhil's parents, hard-wired to favor male children above all, coldly reject little Priya at every turn. Vain and selfish, they see female grandchildren as burdens, and would just as soon never meet the one growing in Isha's belly. Even the obstetrician agrees, going so far as to suggest the unthinkable, throwing Nikhil into a rage--and changing Isha's life forever. . .When Nikhil is discovered brutally murdered, Isha is convinced it had something to do with his reaction to the doctor's hideous "solution" to their problem. Alone, grief-stricken, and relentlessly oppressed by in-laws who believe her baby is a bad omen, Isha sets out on her own. Born into a privileged class, Isha doesn't know the first thing about fending for herself, but to protect her precious daughters, she will learn. And she will cling to the hope given to her by a strange old mystic: that her baby will arrive on the auspicious night of Kojagari Purnima, the full harvest moon, and be a gift from Lakshmi, the goddess of well-being. Isha and her girls will need all the blessings they can get, for the greatest danger of all lies ahead. . .Praise for Shobhan Bantwal and The Dowry Bride"Splendidly depicts passion, brutality, and cultures in conflict." --Dorothy Garlock"Vivid, rich. . .expertly portrays a young woman caught between love and duty, hope and despair." --Anjali Banerjee

A Cage of Desire


Shuchi Singh Kalra - 2018
    You don't need the latter, because no matter what you do, you cannot make anyone love you back.'Renu had always craved for love and security, and her boring marriage, mundane existence somehow leads her to believe that, maybe, this is what love is all about. Maya, on the other hand, is a successful author who is infamous for her bold, erotic books.What do these two women have in common? How are their lives intertwined?Renu's thirst for love and longing takes her on a poignant journey of self-exploration. The answers come to her when she finds the courage to stand up for herself, to fight her inner demons and free herself from the cage of desires . . .

The Night Olivia Fell


Christina McDonald - 2019
    And pregnant.A search for the truth. A lifetime of lies.In the small hours of the morning, Abi Knight is startled awake by the phone call no mother ever wants to get: her teenage daughter Olivia has fallen off a bridge. Not only is Olivia brain dead, she’s pregnant and must remain on life support to keep her baby alive. And then Abi sees the angry bruises circling Olivia’s wrists.When the police unexpectedly rule Olivia’s fall an accident, Abi decides to find out what really happened that night. Heartbroken and grieving, she unravels the threads of her daughter’s life. Was Olivia’s fall an accident? Or something far more sinister?Christina McDonald weaves a suspenseful and heartwrenching tale of hidden relationships, devastating lies, and the power of a mother’s love. With flashbacks of Olivia’s own resolve to uncover family secrets, this taut and emotional novel asks: how well do you know your children? And how well do they know you?

Dare To Live!


Himanshu Bhatia - 2021
    Only the next moment, though, your laptop appears out of thin air and the pristine view is replaced by an excel sheet. Welcome to Atharv’s life!A free-spirited soul, Atharv is an IIT-IIM graduate who has had an accomplished career, till he lands up with Mandira, a difficult, bordering-on-insane boss who makes her team dance to her tunes. Atharv grapples with the mounting work and the daily pressures of an urban Indian man, as Mandira finds new ways to shatter his confidence and determination. While he battles it out with this virus of a boss and her insane ways of managing work, another virus strikes the world and enters his life.At times hilarious, at times dramatic, witness this corporate slave’s roller-coaster ride as he plans his retribution from the two viruses and Dares to LIVE!

Members Only


Sameer Pandya - 2020
    Then his life falls apart. Along the way, he wonders: where does he, a brown man, belong in America? Raj Bhatt is often unsure of where he belongs. Having moved to America from Bombay as a child, he knew few Indian kids. Now middle-aged, he lives mostly happily in California, with a job at a university.  Still, his white wife seems to fit in better than he does at times, especially at their tennis club, a place he’s cautiously come to love.    But it’s there that, in one week, his life unravels. It begins at a meeting for potential new members: Raj thrills to find an African American couple on the list; he dreams of a more diverse club. But in an effort to connect, he makes a racist joke. The committee turns on him, no matter the years of prejudice he’s put up with.  And worse still, he soon finds his job is in jeopardy after a group of students report him as a reverse racist, thanks to his alleged “anti-Western bias.”   Heartfelt, humorous, and hard-hitting, Members Only explores what membership and belonging mean, as Raj navigates the complicated space between black and white America.

Tips for Living


Renee Shafransky - 2018
    With the help of her best friend, she fled New York City for a small resort town, snagged a job as the advice columnist for the local paper, and is cautiously letting a new man into her life. But when Hugh and his perfect new family move into a summer house nearby, Nora backslides. Coping with jealousy, humiliation, and resentment again is as hard as she feared. It’s harder still when Hugh and his wife are shot to death in their home.If only Nora could account for the night of the murders. Unfortunately, her memories have gone as dark as her fantasies of revenge. But Nora’s not the only one with a reason to kill—and as prime suspect in the crime, she’d better be able to prove it.

My Dark Vanessa


Kate Elizabeth Russell - 2020
    Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Aarushi


Avirook Sen - 2015
    The body of the prime suspect—the family servant, Hemraj—was discovered a day later. Who had committed the double murders, and why? Within weeks, Aarushi’s parents, the Talwars, were accused; four years later, they went on trial and were convicted. But did they do it?Avirook Sen attended the trial, accessed important documents and interviewed all the players—from Aarushi’s friends to Hemraj’s old boss, from the investigators to the forensic scientists—to write a meticulous and chilling book that reads like a thriller but also tells a story that is horrifyingly true. Aarushi is the definitive account of a sensational crime, and the investigation and trial that followed.