Book picks similar to
Snakes in the Meadows by Ayaz Kohli


review-copies
contemporary
fiction
reviewed

Kaalkoot: The Lost Himalayan Secret


S. Venkatesh - 2018
    His only hope is a mysterious young man, who goes into hiding hours before Manohar is shot dead in cold blood. June 2018 A forgotten legend from the upper reaches of the Himalayas is rearing its ominous head. The world will be brought to its knees. KaalKoot will strike again. Only three people have a clue about the horrors that are about the unfold. The only hope for survival lies buried deep in the remotest corner of Himalayas. But a terrible fate awaits those who seek it. Is it already too late Is KaalKoot – the primordial plague – unstoppable?

Narcopolis


Jeet Thayil - 2012
    In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

The Trick to Time


Kit de Waal - 2018
    She crafts beautiful, handmade wooden dolls in her workshop in a sleepy seaside town. Every doll is special. Every doll has a name. And every doll has a hidden meaning, from a past Mona has never accepted.Each new doll takes Mona back to a different time entirely - back to Birmingham, in 1972. Back to the thrill of being a young Irish girl in a big city, with a new job and a room of her own in a busy boarding house. Back to her first night out in town, where she meets William, a gentle Irish boy with an easy smile and an open face. Back to their whirlwind marriage, and unexpected pregnancy. And finally, to the tragedy that tore them apart.

Love in the time of Affluenza


Shunali Khullar Shroff - 2019
    The story explores the lives of three women as understood from the eyes of its protagonist Natasha, a happily married mother of three. She begins to ask some difficult questions about her own life after she stumbles upon her closest friend Trisha's affair.'Finally an immensely enjoyable story about Mumbai's rich that, like all good stories, rings so true, with its adorable and suspiciously familiar characters.' - Manu Joseph

A Suitable Boy


Vikram Seth - 1993
    Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find—through love or through exacting maternal appraisal—a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.

The Lives of Others


Neel Mukherjee - 2014
    Each set of family members occupies a floor of the home, in accordance to their standing within the family. Poisonous rivalries between sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the family business threaten to unravel bonds of kinship as social unrest brews in greater Indian society. This is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change: the chasm between the generations, and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider. The eldest grandchild, Supratik, compelled by his idealism, becomes dangerously involved in extremist political activism—an action that further catalyzes the decay of the Ghosh home.Ambitious, rich, and compassionate, The Lives of Others anatomizes the soul of a nation as it unfolds a family history, at the same time as it questions the nature of political action and the limits of empathy. It is a novel of unflinching power and emotional force.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing


Anuradha Roy - 2008
    Here, lives intertwine and unravel. A widower struggles with his love for an unmarried cousin. Bakul, a motherless daughter, runs wild with Mukunda, an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family. Confined in a room at the top of the house, a matriarch goes slowly mad; her husband searches for its cause as he shapes and reshapes his garden. As Mukunda and Bakul grow, their intense closeness matures into something else, and Mukunda is banished to Calcutta. He prospers in the turbulent years after Partition, but his thoughts stay with his home, with Bakul, with all that he has lost—and he knows that he must return.

Mohini: The Enchantress


Anuja Chandramouli - 2020
    These willingly allowed themselves to be bedevilled, consumed by a passion that would not be denied, existing only to serve her will, content to be moulded to suit the purposes of the most enchanting creature in all of creation – Mohini.Distilled from the essence of Vishnu, Mohini, the Enchantress is a part of him and yet she revels in the autonomy and extraordinary powers of beauty, magic and enchantment that are hers to wield. Vivid and ephemeral, she is beloved and desired by all in existence. But she is elusive as the fragment of a forgotten dream, a tantalizing temptress, traipsing her way across the topsy – turvy realms of fable and myth. Her meandering path will see her in the thick of things as the Devas and Asuras churn the ocean of milk to get their hands on the nectar of immortality, blunder into a love triangle that will spark a bloody war, fulfil the last wish of a dead hero, melt into the arms of Mahadeva, the only one capable of enchanting the enchantress and become the mother of Shastha, who will serve as a beacon of hope for all who are considered oddities by a spiteful society that recognizes only two genders amongst the vast multitudes... Set against the tumult and intrigue of a celestial quest for immortality, Anuja Chandramouli brings the extraordinary saga of Mohini to vivid life. Balancing delicately on the tightrope between mythology and reality, she takes the reader on a dizzying ride through the shifting sands of time, gender, love, and desire, deftly intertwining the threads of the past and the present, blurring the lines between fact and fiction while spinning a deliciously entertaining yarn for the ages.

Rebecca's Children: A saga of love & betrayal in 19th Century Wales


Kate Dunn - 2016
    For fans of Nadine Dorries, Maeve Binchy, Freda Lightfoot and Dilly Court. Lives are on the line as the workers fight back in the Welsh countryside… 1829, Wales For centuries. generations of the Jenkins family have eked out a living from their Carmarthenshire hill farm. But when a fire destroys virtually all of their possessions the children witness their lives crumbling around them. Mary and William find they have barely enough land left to provide for their basic needs. Their only option is to take on more work, but William longs for action, and Mary begins to suspect that he has become embroiled with the Rebecca-ites, a shadowy group of nationalists pitted against the English landowners whose tolls have bankrupted so many Welshman. As tensions mount, Mary becomes ever more torn between her mistrust of the rebels’ violence and her growing attraction to Jac Tŷ Isha, one of their leaders. And when the British government decides to put a stop to the revolt, the danger to the men she loves increases a hundredfold… REBECCA’S CHILDREN is a poignant, beautifully crafted saga of love and betrayal, set against the background of Wales in mid-1800s – a country aflame with political and social unrest. "An accomplished first novel." - The Times "A well-handled tale of passion, social injustice and nationalist fervour in nineteenth century Wales." - The Liverpool Post “Kate Dunn is a fine storyteller.” - Ben Elton

Milk Teeth


Amrita Mahale - 2018
    A meeting is in progress to decide the fate of the establishment and its residents. And the zeitgeist of the 1990s appears to have touched everyone and everything around them.Ira is now a journalist on the civic beat, unearthing stories of corruption and indolence, and trying to push back memories of a lost love. Kartik works a corporate job with an MNC, and leads a secret, agonising, exhilarating second life. Between and around them throbs the living, beating heart of Mumbai, city of heaving inequities and limitless dreams.Milk Teeth is subtle, incisive, unputdownable.

Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous


Manu Joseph - 2017
    The rescue operation finds a single survivor in the debris. The only person able to reach him is Akhila Iyer, a medical student who is also a notorious social media prankster. She finds him mumbling in delirium that two people are on their way to carry out a terror attack. Elsewhere, a young intelligence agent, Mukundan, is assigned to shadow the two terror suspects.

The White Tiger


Aravind Adiga - 2008
    Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life—having nothing but his own wits to help him along. Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive. Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations. The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation —and a startling, provocative debut.

Bitten By Love


Vijaya S - 2020
    ONCE BITTEN BY LOVE, YOU WILL BE FOREVER SMITTEN BY ITS SWEET PAIN.”ANU is young, simple and carefree, gearing up for her first job at Oasis Ltd. She gets paired with ABHI, a mature and an unassuming boy, in her first assignment with the Indian IT giant. Little does she know that the pairing is not a mere coincidence, but a plan by destiny. Abhi does not have any inkling that the beautiful girl he was smitten by at a traffic signal, would end up as his pair programmer for whom he would eventually be ready to give up everything in life.What will happen when Anu’s protective family gets to know about their love?Will Abhi keep up the promise he makes to Anu’s family?How will Anu cope with this drastic change in Abhi’s priorities?Come, fall and rise in love as Bitten by Love takes you through an exhilarating and heart touching journey of friendships and love, driven by destiny, hope and determination.

Trail of Broken Wings


Sejal Badani - 2015
    Since she left home, Sonya has lived on the run, free of any ties, while her soft-spoken sister, Trisha, has created a perfect suburban life, and her ambitious sister, Marin, has built her own successful career. But as these women come together, their various methods of coping with a terrifying history can no longer hold their memories at bay.Buried secrets rise to the surface as their father—the victim of humiliating racism and perpetrator of horrible violence—remains unconscious. As his condition worsens, the daughters and their mother wrestle with private hopes for his survival or death, as well as their own demons and buried secrets. Told with forceful honesty, Trail of Broken Wings reveals the burden of shame and secrets, the toxicity of cruelty and aggression, and the exquisite, liberating power of speaking and owning truth.

Now You Know: A Novel


Susan Kelly - 2013
    It ends with a promise. On her deathbed Frances extracts it from her three daughters—the utterly capable homemaker Alice; the recalcitrant Allegra, a recovering alcoholic; and bohemian Edie, who shrinks in the face of any commitment: their promise to “look after Libba.” As if the formidable, tough-minded Libba Charles, author of ten books, a literary celebrity, needed looking after. Yet when they are summoned by Libba to Creek Cabin, their mother’s summer hideaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, they go. None of them is prepared, though, for what they will discover there—about their mother, about Libba, about themselves—in this poignant, adroit rendering of reunions and farewells.