Indian Preview: Our Top New Releases from January

We hope all our readers have had a great start to 2018.  At HarperCollins India are happy to report that our first bumper crop of spectacular books is here! So, whether you’re a bibliophile looking for your next read, or an enthusiast who’s undertaken a reading challenge, or a first-time reader; we’ve got you covered.

1. The Himalayan Arc by Namita Gokhale

This book is everyone who’s ever felt #Wanderlust. A travel book with a difference, The Himalayan Arc gives insider and outside perspectives on a crucial yet often under-reported part of the world. Covering the entire region from Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, north-east India to Thailand and Myanmar, it looks at both the cultural continuities and political disconnects and tries to evoke the flavour and texture of this region through essays, short stories, poetry, narratives and photographs.

2. Victims for Sale by Nischinta Amarnath

Dark, gory and disturbing, Victims for Sale is not for the fainthearted.

Sandy Raman, stringer for the BBC, lives as a paying guest with the Sawants, a regular Indian family. Or so she thought. Until she woke up to a woman with a knife,  and a dark secret.

It is only after she runs a sting operation on a home for the differently abled that Sandy makes a connection between an institute acting as a front for something sinister and the strange family she lives with. Chasing the truth up a trail of brutal murders, Sandy must evade the grasping clutches of a thriving sex racket and expose the predators before her time runs out.

3. The Guiding light by Farheen Ahmed

Bhanumathi Narasimhan, fondly known as Bhanu Didi, is a special woman.

She has been instrumental in her mission to carry the eternal message of peace, love, light and human values. As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s sister, she has carried forward the rich tradition of excellence in human spirit. Her vision and mission is simple – a stress-free world. In The Guiding Light, Farheen Ahmed shows, through Bhanu Didi’s extraordinary life, how things beautiful and meaningful may start small, yet magically add up to something very significant.

4. The Ms India Murders by Gauri Sinh

It’s 1995. The finale of the Ms India Pageant is only days away. In the running are twenty beautiful contestants, including India’s sweetheart and the reigning model, Akruti Rai. Then, the final dress rehearsal ends on a nightmarish note as the sensuous and ambitious model ‘Lajjo’ is murdered – right on the ramp.

Akruti and her fellow contestants soon become prime suspects in a case that becomes increasingly macabre as bodies pile up. Amidst massive public outcry, Akruti is convinced by an enigmatic fellow contestant to somehow help in the investigation and try to find the murderer. But who really is Parvati? And can Akruti help unearth the sinister truth, clear her own name and also keep an eye on the prize?

5. Nude by Vishal Bhardwaj

A gentle sense of wonder and a subtle intrigue pull one into the poems in Nude by Vishal Bhardwaj in the original Hindustani alongside their English translation by Sukrita Paul Kumar. His poems pulsate with an intense passion for a yearning for love.

Unusual imagery, an evocative style and an idiom that is contemporary and yet reminiscent of the old-world charm of the Hindi and Urdu poetic traditions, each poem in this bilingual edition is wrapped in mystique. The Internet and Mirza Ghalib happily coexist in these poems, offering an insight into how contradictions can be reconciled simply and ingeniously.

6. The Wounds of the Dead by Vikram Paralkar

A surgeon working in a dilapidated clinic in the hinterland is visited in the dead of night by a family – a man, his pregnant wife and their eight-year-old son. Victims of a senseless attack, they reveal to the surgeon wounds that they could not possibly have survived. In a narrative that blends medicine and metaphysics, the surgeon is then issued a preposterous task: to mend the wounds of the dead before sunrise so that the family can return to life.

Weaving surgical detail with philosophy and absurdism, The Wounds of the Dead is a novel that’s at once grittily realistic and magically unreal, and which will remain with you long after you have read the final page.

7. Sacked! by Deepa Agarwal

Wily old women, a clever nanny goat, a helpful snake, a boy who becomes invisible, a sorcerer king … Peopled with extraordinary beings – both real and magical, human and divine, animal and demon – this is a charming collection of folktales that has humour, fantasy and adventure in equal measure.

Retold in a lively, contemporary style, there’s humour, adventure and amazing flights of fantasy in these stories. The quirky illustrations add to the charm of this collection.

8. Shivaji by Ranjit Desai and Vikrant Pande

Young Shivaji reaches Pune, a dying fort city, with his mother Jijabai and lights the first lamp within its ruins. While his father Shahaji Bhosle is away on deputation by the Adil Shah sultanate after having failed in a revolt against it, Shivaji learns how an empire is built from the ground up. Thus begins the life of the Great Maratha. Written by one of the most loved Marathi writers of our times, Ranjit Desai brings to life Shivaji’s story in this book translated by Vikrant Pande.

9. The Trickster by Vinaya Bhagat

This one is a must-read for fans of Stephen King.

Diya Mathur’s world collapses around her when her parents die. She think she’s all alone in the world till a mysterious letter arrives from India. Suddenly, Diya has a chance at being part of a family again.

But moving from Boston to India also brings Diya closer to the place where the horror of the Chakwa – the Master Trickster – first started. As bodies and tragedies pile up around her, Diya’s belief in the urban myth of the Chakwa increases. With the help of her newly discovered friends and family, Diya must fight not just the monster from her nightmares, but also make sense of a fast-unravelling web of lies that makes up her life.

10. One-Minute Super Dad by Dr Prashant Jindal

One-Minute Super Dad gives you – the new dad – simple techniques that can be put into action in just a minute a day. Repeated consistently, they will help you forge a strong bond with your kids that will hold them in good stead for a lifetime.

This book is an outcome of five years of passionate work, research, interviews and real-life experiences. Inspire your kids to a whole new level – lack of time no longer being a factor – and raise amazing children!