On The Shelf

Bulbul Sharma
Love and Learning Under the Magnolia | Westland

A romance between nouveau riche and noblesse d’épée—a widowed maharani, no less—set amid the unspoilt beauty of the remote, real-life mountain village of Shaya, which the author has called home for the past three decades, this novel portrays a clash of cultures that goes on until snootiness is shaken off in a surprisingly literal manner.

Surender Mohan Pathak
Conman | Westland

The 122nd book of the ‘Sunil series’, translated from Hindi, is about a WhatsApp conman—later the murderee—and his hapless female victim, later the suspect. Plenty of stern questioning of the sleuth pins interest down, for there’s something to be said for ‘Sunilian sense’. Plus, a hotel room numbered 506, while ‘an overcoat-clad figure’, his ‘collar turned up’, flits by!

Trisha Das
Kama’s Last Sutra | HarperCollins

An archaeologist digging in Khajuraho for another temple, a dual crush on a boss, as well as the king who built the temple “with the most sex stuff on the walls”—meet the feisty Trisha Singh, who then is transported to 1022 AD, meeting not only the ‘sexy’ king in person, but encounters courtly intrigue and cruelty.