November fiction: The festive season continues in full swing with these recently published books

The Fast and the Dead, Anuja Chauhan

All of Habba Galli, Shivajinagar, is disturbed when eccentric Dondi Pais empties her double-barrelled shotgun to scatter a pack of noisy mongrels on the night of Karwa Chauth. But their distress turns to shock the next morning when it is discovered that one stray bullet has ploughed into the skull of a sour, spiteful jeweller, leaving him quite definitely dead.

The more devout residents immediately recall how, the previous afternoon, the jeweller’s wife of 30 years had broken her fast well before the appearance of the sacred Karwa Chauth moon. But several others have motives too – including rising Bollywood star Haider Sait, back in Shivajinagar to visit his widowed mother and still eager to charm Habba Galli hottie Jhoomar Rao, now newly poor, newly single and a veterinary surgeon.

By a happy coincidence, ACP Bhavani Singh is on hand to investigate. But as corpses start piling up in the bustling bazaar, will the canny old policeman be able to prove his powerful hunch – that these deaths are not accidents, or by the hand of the goddess, but a sinister case of murders-most-meticulous?

The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told, edited and translated by AJ Thomas

The Greatest Malayalam Stories Ever Told is a collection of fifty short stories selected and translated by poet, editor, and translator AJ Thomas. This collection includes well-known masters such as Karoor Neelakanta Pillai, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Lalithambika Antharjanam, Ponkunnam Varkey, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, SK Pottekkatt, Uroob, OV Vijayan, MT Vasudevan Nair, and Paul Zacharia, as well as accomplished new voices such as N Prabhakaran, CV Balakrishnan, Aymanam John, Chandramathi, and others.

Rescuing a River Breeze, Mrinalini Harchandrai

It is 1961 and Goa is under Portuguese rule. In the heart of Panjim, life is as usual on the banks of the river Mandovi. Thirteen-year-old Shirly Quarachim’s idyllic days include outings to her father’s mines, convent school shenanigans and prep for an upcoming musical. She is also falling in love for the first time.

But the drums of war are being readied. Indian forces gather across the border, while the Portuguese dictator António Salazar is determined to burn everything down before giving up Goa. When Shirly’s beloved father is arrested on charges of treason, she must put her teenage reveries aside and face off against intimidating showmen, resistance fighters and a sadistic police officer who loves a bit of torture.

The Secret City, Robin Gupta

Rupert – Yuvraj Rupinder Singh – is heir to the throne of the princely state of Mubarakpur in Punjab. Except that there is no throne to inherit, now that India is a democracy. So he moves to the palatial Mubarakpur House in the heart of New Delhi, where he throws lavish parties to ward off loneliness and boredom.

The parties sparkle with alcohol, gossip and music – with stars like the great Begum Akhtar making them magical. They draw Delhi’s rich and powerful – politicians, judges and senior bureaucrats – and idle royalty, many of them gay men forced to hide their sexual identity for fear of persecution and ridicule, and because homosexuality is a crime in the Indian republic. There are also a variety of young men who come to the parties – handsome, adventurous men whom Prince Rupert first picked up in the famous cruising spot, Central Park, Connaught Circus, or in the streets of Central Delhi past midnight.

The narrator, a near invalid whom no one desires, and who is happy to be a voyeur, watches the people who come and go in this secret world. He watches Prince Rupert love, lust and self-destruct. Some four decades later, he tells the story of the Prince and the secret world of others like him – some happy men, some sad, some good people and some villains and chancers.

Troubled Waters (Ponniyin Selvan: Book 2), Kalki, translated from the Tamil by Nandini Krishnan

As the winds of political intrigue and dynastic upheavals blow through the Chozha Empire, it all comes down to one woman – the powerful Pazhuvoor Ilaiya Rani, Nandini. What is the strange power she wields over her influential husband, Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar? Why does the mere mention of her name torment Crown Prince Aditya Karikalan?

And what about the fearless hero, Vallavarayan Vandiyadevan? Does he complete the mission to deliver Karikalan’s message to Kundavai Piraatti? Does Azhvarkadiyaan Nambi succeed in his quest to meet Nandini? And what fate awaits those who are conspiring against Emperor Sundara Chozhar?

Whisper in the Wind, Venita Coelho

“All the stories in the world are whispered in the wind. Listen! And the wind will blow one into your head.” These words, whispered by a madman, haunt Jamshed Fali Irani. The young heir to a business empire in Bombay, he is in Goa to try and pursue his dream of being a writer. Locked away in a crumbling, decrepit mansion, struggling to write as the monsoon rains down, the wind brings to him the cries of a little girl wandering the ruins nearby. Alice is trying to find her sister, Sara, who went missing years ago.

Jamshed makes a reluctant promise to help her and finds himself drawn into a story that is darker and more intriguing than any he could have imagined. With his new friend, Tania, to whom he is increasingly drawn, Jamshed attempts to unravel the mystery behind Sara’s disappearance.
Jamshed’s search leads him into a tangled tale of loyalty and deceit, at the heart of which lies murder. He has to find his way through a bewildering maze of contradictions as he tries to thread together answers to a mystery that involves a girl with the voice of an angel, a violin that plays the sorrows of the heart, and the bond between two friends who swear that not even death will do them part.