Books for Screen - The Goodbye 2022 List
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GENRE: Spy Thriller | Action
“HE WHO LIVES IN THE SHADOWS OF ESPIONAGE, LIVES MANY LIVES, BUT IS LAID TO REST IN AN UNMARKED GRAVE.
Vishwamitra Saini — a disgraced spy is called in from cold when a death of a spy arises the suspicion of a mole inside the Indian Intelligence Community, and links certain events with a Chinese businessman in Shanghai. Saini is the only man the Company Chief, Dushyant Singh can trust to investigate.
But as Saini and Dushyant delve deep into it, they discover a secret so deep that transforms the operation into something more personal.
From India to China to Istanbul, Saini and Dushyant track the links to the mole. But a known enemy from the past lurks from the veil of shadows who threatens to destroy everything. This far from home soil, the rules of the games are entirely different — and the consequences are entirely dangerous…
Shroud For A Spy — is a thrilling tale of deception and mystery as the author takes you into the grounded fictional world of espionage.”
AMAZON RATING: 4.5/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 4.46/5
GENRE: Murder Mystery | Female Protagonist
Stabbed and lying in a pool of blood next to her killer, Nikita never imagined an end like this. A talented VJ, popular talk show host and national darling, the cruelty of it cut through the pain she was feeling.
She scanned her falling memory for answers. Who was this young man lying next to her? Where did he come from? Why did he stab her?
AMAZON RATING: 4/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 3.9/5
GENRE: Crime Thriller | Drama
Prem Bedi is the Mogul--the third-richest man in the country. He commands both fear and respect, and at fifty-three, he still looks handsome and aristocratic. But Bedi's smoothly run empire comes to a screeching halt when he's accused of killing his ex-wife and her husband, and dragged into a court battle. The ever-present spotlight on him grows brighter and harsher, and the questions grow louder--Did he do it? A story unfolding through several different perspectives, The Mogul is a howdunnit set in the fractured world of power, money, and crime.
AMAZON RATING: 4.7/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 4/5
GENRE: Memoir | Darma | Dark Comedy
How to launch the largest hedge fund in history on Wall Street by training in blackjack?
All around the world, the words ‘Wall Street’ conjure up a powerful image-for some, the centre of America’s capitalist system and for others, the home of rapacious bankers whose greed led to a global financial crisis. For a scrappy Indian-born computer scientist, however, Wall Street represented something else entirely - a chance to play in the largest casino in the world.
Bored with the tech world, Kamal Gupta devoted two years of his life to the single-minded pursuit of becoming a professional blackjack player and had grown his bankroll to thirty-two times its original size, getting barred from several casinos in the process.
In an unexpected turn of events, his gambling exploits brought him to Wall Street where his unique skills led to him raising eight billion dollars for the largest hedge fund launch in history.
Play It Right is a darkly comic account of Gupta’s improbable journey from New Delhi to Las Vegas to New York. It isn’t so much a story about money as it is about human ambition and beating the odds, whether at a casino, on Wall Street, or in life
AMAZON RATING: 4.7/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 3.5/5
GENRE: Historical Drama | Colonial India
Midnight, 15 August 1947. As India’s tryst with destiny reverberated across the world, Charlie Strongbow, born in Bombay, a renegade Englishman, mercenary, philosopher and schizophrenic, began his own bizarre journey.
While nascent India floundered and struggled, Charlie, along with an English goon called Thommo, a devious accountant named Willie, a vicious Portuguese temptress, Dona Maria, and twenty British desperadoes, took possession of Cross Island near the Bombay Docks. Here they functioned in illegal harmony, bound by no rules and no principles, and set about building a black-market trade between Southampton and Bombay.
There was no stopping Charlie—but for memories of his own past filled with the misery of childhood abuse and guilt at having abandoned his daughters. As he drank himself to senselessness and let his inner demons take over, Detective Desai, a man Charlie had destroyed, raised an unrelenting war against Cross Island. But the severest blow of all would be struck by Dona Mari. Based on true events, Four and Twenty Blackbirds is an utterly gripping novel— the disturbing, astonishing story of an Englishman who won everything but lost his soul on a no man’s land in the Arabian Sea.
AMAZON RATING: 4/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 3.9/5
GENRE: Crime Thriller | Urban Fantasy
Razia: a creature of the night and a political player, a well-dressed clubber and a lover of poetry. Hushed voices say she may be hundreds of years old, almost as old as her home: Delhi, the city of tombs, at once majestic and in disarray.
Razia is muse and antagonist to DCP Sajan Dayal, whose centuries-old roots lie in bureaucratic service. Assisting Dayal are Kapoor, a legend in the Delhi Police, and an idealistic young cop named Smita Dhingra, who - unlike Kapoor - is from the elite Indian Police Service. As the novel progresses, the officers’ pursuit of a serial collector of fingers quickly spirals into encounters with would-be vampires and werewolves, rampant sexual violence, the political pressures that attend every aspect of life in a capital city - and, at every turn, Razia.
A first novel of unusual beauty, Necropolis weaves poetry, brothels, ministers and migrants into a heady, twisted and darkly entertaining tale, peeling back the layers from a city that is simultaneously in thrall to its past, hostage to its present and bitterly divided as to its future.
AMAZON RATING: 4/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 3.9/5
GENRE: Slice Of Life | Family Drama
Families are like the sweet mangoes of Aamnagri—messy, filled with juicy secrets and sticking together through all times. The Awasthis of Aamnagri are the quintessential Indian family, who bumble through their lives encountering missing jewels and stolen eggs, deaths foretold, averted and a suspected suicide with no body. The mysteries are solved by the inquisitive minds of young Lakshmi and Guddu and the saffron-clad Guruji.
With charming agility, the Awasthis sail through life and its quirks. The advent of God-men, genuine and fake, is a source of both relief and embarrassment for them. But not for the Lady of the Mansion—Mataji. She is the sutradhar who strings this tale of silk sarees and talking parrots together, who handles bedridden bahus and in-danger bhaiyyas with equal ease, who is tyrannical and vulnerable at the same time. And through whom the Awasthi family discovers that happy endings come for a price—of truth and love.
All over a game of bridge!
AMAZON RATING: 3.9/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 3.5/5
GENRE: Murder Mystery | Drama
Beaten and brutally raped, her body is never found. However, the killers make one mistake. They leave a witness, a witness who has nothing to live for except revenge. And when he crosses the boundaries of time to make the guilty pay, a whole lot of dark characters come to light. There is Valentine, the superstar brand ambassador who sells anything for a price; there is Medici, a pharmaceutical company fraudulently manufacturing banned drugs; there is the perverted and sinister minded Dr Ranga and there is Este, the prostitute whose dark secret will blow up a daughter’s sanity. So, is there another murder waiting to happen?
Will Police Inspector Dorab Silva be able to connect the clues to prevent another crime? Will these gods of greed be exposed? And yes, you will be surprised by who you will find there, finally. Deeply unsettling, Hungry Gods takes a hard look at greed for wealth and power.
AMAZON RATING: 4/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 4/5
GENRE: Female Protagonist| Detective| Thriller
It was crazy really, for Darya to think she could have some peace and quiet at Heliconia Lane. Yes, it was located in a beautiful corner of South Goa—by the beach, no less—but after her Aunt Farideh disappeared twenty years ago—from this very place—nothing has been the same again. And now her uncle was dead under bizarre circumstances as were two of the neighbours on his street.
What was happening? Was there a murderer on the loose? Why were people dying? Was it connected to her aunt’s disappearance in some way?
And most importantly, was Darya going to be next?
A cosy, Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, Kiss of Salt introduces Darya Nandkarni, an amateur, and accidental detective, who is clever, spirited, resourceful, yet troubled and vulnerable. Her adventures will make you laugh, cry, gape, and marvel, and you won’t be able to put down the book until you’ve solved the mystery along with her in the beautiful side-streets of Goa
AMAZON RATING : 4/5 | GOODREADS RATING : 3.9/5
GENRE : Murder Mystery
Two corpses a woman lying dead on her bed, a man hanging from the ceiling fan.
A suicide note cum murder confession.
And a name … Shaunak Sodhi.
When the case comes their way, Senior Inspector Saralkar has just been diagnosed with hypertension and PSI Motkar is busy with rehearsals of an amateur play.
What appears at first to be a commonplace crime by a debt-ridden, cuckolded husband, who has killed his unfaithful wife and then hung himself, soon begins to unfold as a baffling mystery.
As clues point to a seven-year-old unsolved murder in Bangalore and other leads emerge closer home, Saralkar and Motkar find themselves investigating shady secrets, bitter grudges, fishy land deals, carnal desires, the dead woman Anushka Doshi’s sinister obsession with past life regression and her husband’s links to a suspicious, small-time god-man, Rangdev Baba. And then, suddenly, the murderer resurfaces and yet another life is in grave danger.
Can Saralkar and Motkar get to the bottom of an unimaginably shocking motive and stop the malevolent killer from committing the fourth murder?
AMAZON RATING: 4/5
GENRE: Folklore | Drama | Female Protagonist
The first madness was that she was born. That the Gods stuffed her into a bag of tiny human skin. The second madness was, the Gods stuffed Her inside—with Us. “Let her die. Patala has her eye on her,” warned the Village-Shaman.
Twenty years on, Amba is too embroiled in her human wars to bother about the voices inside her. Gun-toting psychopath Colonel Rosie Madbull is inflicting dreadful vengeance on her people to get his hands on the gold which is discovered under their soil. But he and his army of bloodthirsty criminalsa have to confront the battle-hardened Amba. But she is no ordinary girl. Fleeing from Madbull’s jail, into the fearsome Jotsoma forest, Amba is destined to fulfil many a prophecy—from seeking refuge inside a monster buffalo and coming face to face with the menacing Patala and her demonic pet Domovai. But her ceremony of ordeals is far from over. In an apocalyptic battle between the good and the evil, she will be forced to unleash the terrifying Furies. But they don’t come alone. They bring the insidious Others, who are now out of control. Hunting with Them will take Amba to the very edge of being a human